Treasure hunt begins in England

Chapter 434 Emerald Information
Because of the interest aroused by the previous Mayan jade, Liang En inquired a lot of information in private, and through the information, he also earnestly and comprehensively learned all kinds of knowledge about Central American jadeite.

According to the current classification, the quality of Guatemalan jadeite is obviously not as good as Burmese jadeite, but the quality is not as good as it is, but they are indeed real jadeite.

More importantly, this kind of jadeite is indeed the oldest known jadeite, and it was not 1000 years ago as Liang En remembered, but more than 1000 years ago.

In the Mayan era, jadeite products were an indispensable sacrifice in religious ceremonies to worship the sun god, and it was also a holy medicine for curing terminal illnesses.

At that time, the ancient Mayans regarded jadeite as a symbol of health and status. The jadeite ornaments carved by local jewelers were used in religious and temple sacrificial ceremonies, and could only be enjoyed by patriarchs and priests.

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

For example, consciously use jade as a good labor tool or weapon, or gradually rise to become a ritual vessel for various religious sacrificial occasions.

Due to the emphasis on jadeite, the Mayans regarded jadeite as the most important means of production and a symbol of wealth, so the Mayans buried a large amount of jadeite with them after their death.They even polished jadeite into balls and put them in their mouths, symbolizing the immortality of the souls of the dead.

Many of the ancient Mesoamerican emeralds were excavated from the tombs of local people. In addition to wearing various emerald jewelry, the remains also had emerald masks used to cover the face.

From this point of view, the Mayans are indeed somewhat similar to the Chinese. At least when Liang En sees the jade masks of the ancient Maya, he always subconsciously thinks of the traditional golden jade clothes in China.

However, with the invasion of the Spaniards, the cultural beliefs of the local people were gradually destroyed by the belief that the Spaniards believed that they were demons, 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, jadeite is used for massage therapy.

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

Apart from this Mayan culture jade ring, Liang En didn't see anything of value in this antique market, so he left here, and then returned to Dublin by plane at night.

After returning to Dublin, Liang En only had a day's rest before going to the Dublin National Library to search for various information about Guatemalan jadeite.

Although Ireland is a very young country in Europe and has no previous experience of colonization, as part of the United Kingdom in the past, the archives contain a large number 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 place where the feedback came out was located in a Mayan ruins park in Guatemala.

In other words, this thing is indeed a product from a certain settlement in the Mayan civilization, and the information on the Yuhuan indicates the location of a possible jade workshop, not a mine.

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

When he found out that he had used a card but still found nothing, he realized that he might still need the most traditional means to find this jade mine, which is why he came to the archives today.

Fortunately, as his status in the academic world continues to improve, he is now also the kind of person who is qualified to enter the important archives storage area to directly view the originals of those documents, and at the same time, he can also access many internal materials that are not open to the public.

Some of the reasons why these materials are not disclosed to the public are because the carriers of the materials themselves are very fragile and cannot withstand material or copying, and some are because the content recorded in them is not suitable for disclosure.

For example, the pages of some materials have been incomplete, and some have records about how the European colonists suppressed the local indigenous resistance at that time.

To be honest, the practice of suppressing indigenous resistance looks disgusting, fully reflecting the cruelty of those European colonists back then, and of course it is not suitable to be disclosed to the public now.

Through these materials, Liang En found the most comprehensive records about the Mayans. Although the Mayan civilization had already entered the end when the first colonists arrived in Central America, the clues left behind were much more than today's.

Through the collection of information on the Mayan ruins in Guatemala, plus the only clue that the target location in his mind was located in the river valley, Liang En quickly locked 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 at the same time, 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 ruins.

During further analysis, he ruled out a river valley with fertile soil, because the mountainous area that produced emeralds in his impression looked a little barren, and there were not many flat lands, which obviously didn't fit.

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 on these two places.

The core of these materials is the various discovery reports along the route, because from some details of those ruins, it can be inferred what this passage was used to do in the past?

For example, if there are water tanks for feeding animals in the surrounding ruins, then through these things, it is possible to roughly estimate the flow of people and goods on this road.

At the same time, the settlements around the road can also provide details about what the road is for and how long the entire road has been maintained.

After a simple comparison, Liang En quickly focused on the upper valley of the Motagua River, because there are a lot of traces of revisions in the ruins around this route, which means that this route has been used for several times. .

At the same time, the scale of the settlements on the roadside is not too large, which proves that the main items transported on this road are not too large, but probably relatively precious items.

Because only in this way, the road leading to the valley can last for such a long time under the premise of a small transportation volume. If it is wood or grain, the result of this kind of transportation is likely to be higher than the value of the goods themselves.

"It looks like I'm 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."

(End of this chapter)