Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

Because of the interest aroused by the previous Mayan jade, Liang En consulted a large amount of information in private, and through the information, he also carefully and comprehensively understood all kinds of knowledge about Central American jade.

According to the current grade classification, the quality of Guatemalan jade is obviously not as good as Myanmar jade, but the quality is not as good as Guatemala, but they are indeed real jade.

More importantly, this kind of jadeite is indeed the oldest known jadeite. The first time it was used was not 1,000 years ago in Liang En's memory, but more than 1,000 BC.

In the Mayan era, jade products were indispensable sacrifices in religious ceremonies to worship the sun god, and they were also used as sacred medicine to treat terminal illnesses.

At that time, the ancient Mayans regarded jade as a symbol of health and status. Jade ornaments carefully carved by local gemstone craftsmen were used in religious and temple sacrificial ceremonies and could only be enjoyed by the patriarchs and those priests.

In fact, at the beginning, jadeite, like other stones, was only used as a production tool. However, compared with ordinary stones, jadeite has stronger hardness and toughness, so it is given more jobs.

For example, jade can be consciously used as a good work tool or weapon, or it can gradually become a ritual vessel and used in various religious and sacrificial occasions.

Due to the emphasis on jade, the Mayans regarded jade as the most important means of production and a symbol of wealth, so the Mayans would bury a large amount of jade with them after their death. They would even polish jade into round balls and put them in their mouths to symbolize the immortal soul of the deceased.

Many of the ancient Mesoamerican jadeites today were excavated from the tombs of local people. In addition to various jade jewelry, those remains also had jade masks used to cover their faces.

From this point of view, the Mayans are indeed a bit similar to the Chinese. At least when Liang En saw those ancient Mayan jade masks, he would always subconsciously think of the traditional gold-lined jade clothes in China.

However, with the invasion of the Spanish, the cultural beliefs of the locals were gradually destroyed by what the Spaniards considered to be demonic beliefs, and this emerald culture gradually disappeared into history.

But this does not mean that this culture has completely disappeared. For example, among the ancient techniques that are still preserved in Central America today, there is the method of using jade for massage therapy.

For Liang En, the worst problem now is that when he was watching the news in his previous life, he did not remember those complicated geographical names, so he only knew that the jade was in a valley in Guatemala, so it was not easy to find the location of the mining area. .

Apart from this jade ring of Mayan culture, Liang En didn't see anything else of value in this antique market, so he left here and took a plane back to Dublin in the evening.

After returning to Dublin, Liang En only rested for one day and immediately went to the National Library in Dublin to search for various information about Guatemalan jade.

Although Ireland is a very young country in Europe and has no previous colonial experience, as a part of Britain in the past, the archives contain a large amount of British content about the colonization of Central America.

Of course, before coming to the archives, he also tried to use a [Detection (R)] card to check the jade ornament in his hand, and found that the location where the feedback was found was in a Mayan ruins park in Guatemala.

In other words, this thing is indeed a product from a certain settlement of the Mayan civilization. The information on the jade ring only points to the location of possible jade workshops, not mines.

From a certain point of view, this is also the biggest flaw of this kind of card, because of the randomness, sometimes the random location may not be the location Liang En wants to find.

When he found that he still found nothing after using a card, he realized that he might still need the most traditional method to find this jade mine. This is why he came to the archives today.

Fortunately, as his status in the academic world continues to increase, he is now the kind of person who is qualified to enter important archive storage areas and directly view the original documents. At the same time, he also has access to a lot of internal information that is not open to the public.

Some of the reasons why these materials are not disclosed to the public are because the carrier of the data itself is very fragile and cannot withstand materials or copies, and some are because the content recorded in it is not suitable for disclosure.

For example, the pages of some materials are incomplete, and some of them contain records about how European colonists suppressed the resistance of local indigenous people at that time.

To be honest, the methods of suppressing the indigenous resistance look disgusting and fully reflect the cruelty of the European colonists back then. Of course, it is not suitable to be disclosed to the public now.

Through this information, Liang En found the most comprehensive record about the Maya people. Although the Mayan civilization had already entered its final stage when the first colonists arrived in Central America, there were many more clues left behind than there are today.

Through the collection of information about the Mayan ruins in Guatemala, and the only clue that the target location was in the river valley, Liang En quickly targeted three areas.

These three areas have a unified feature, that is, they are all located at one end of a linear site distribution area, and this end is located in a river valley.

Because in Liang En's view, if the ancient Mayans really valued jade so much, they would have formed an important trade route, so just look for places with river valleys among the linearly distributed sites.

During further analysis, he excluded a valley with fertile soil, because the mountainous area that produced emeralds in his impression looked a bit barren and there was not much flat land, which was obviously inconsistent with this.

As for the other two places, they both looked like the target locations, so Liang En recorded these two places and then searched for more information about these two places.

The core of this information is the various discovery reports along the line, because from some details of those ruins, it can be inferred what the channel was used for in the past?

For example, if there are troughs for feeding animals in the surrounding ruins, then through these things we can roughly estimate the flow of people and logistics on this road.

At the same time, the settlements surrounding the road can also provide details about what the road did and how long it lasted.

After a simple comparison, Liang En quickly focused his attention on the upper reaches of the Motagua River, because the ruins around this route have a large number of traces of modification, which means that this route has been used for several eras. .

At the same time, the settlements on the roadside are not too large, which proves that this road mainly transports items that are not too large but may be relatively precious.

Because only in this way can the road to the river valley be maintained for such a long time with a small transportation volume. If it is wood or grain, the freight is likely to be higher than the value of the goods themselves.

"It seems that I am going to Guatemala next, but I still need to make some preparations before that." After spending three or four days checking all the information, Liang En made a decision. "This is not a safe place."