How did they carve it?....................
That is the truly amazing thing about these jade
artifacts. They could only be carved by abrasion
using hard or harder grit materials and all by
hand.
As an artist when I look at some of the inscriptions
and carvings made in this material I am just lost
to realize it was done by hand.
Even the Chinese jades used some primitive grinding
machines such as bow drills and foot powered lathes,
but as far as we know the artisans of this
time didn’t have them.
A diamond will cut diamond, so jadeite will cut jadeite?.............
It’s really remarkable. For grinding, drilling and some polishing, carborundum and garnet come to mind. Garnet is pretty common though not in jewelry quality in the Southwest, USA so it might be found further south.