How it began
Prehistoric people in what is now Taiwan worked green nephrite, a form of jade, from the Fengtian deposit in the east of the island. Tools and ornaments of Fengtian nephrite have been found at more than 108 sites in Taiwan dating from the early Neolithic to the Iron Age, about 3000 BCE to 500 CE. The Pinglin workshop, close to the deposit, was described by the archaeologist Kano as the largest ancient jade workshop in Southeast Asia.
How it works
Workers shaped the stone without metal. Debris from Pinglin shows a sequence: a square preform about 1 centimeter thick was cut and its corners removed to make an octagonal blank, then bracelets were drilled out of the blank one inside another, leaving round cores. The nephrite was grooved with stone cutting tools and then snapped, and researchers think bamboo drills may have been used. Leftover discs could become blanks for four ear pendants each.
How it spread
After Neolithic migrants settled Luzon from Taiwan about 4,000 years ago, Fengtian nephrite was exported to the Philippines for more than 2,500 years. Between 500 BCE and 500 CE two specific ear pendant forms, the three-pointed lingling-o and a double animal-headed pendant, were distributed through the Philippines, East Malaysia, southern Vietnam and peninsular Thailand. The authors of a 2007 study suggest a small number of skilled, perhaps itinerant, craftsmen made them from Taiwan blanks.
What changed first
Jade adzes, bracelets, bell-shaped beads and tubular beads became widespread in Taiwan and the Philippines. A Fengtian nephrite bracelet from Nagsabaran in northern Luzon, dated between 1800 and 1500 BCE, matches the size range of 24 bracelets dated 2300 to 1600 BCE from Youxianfang in southwestern Taiwan.
Where it stands today
It was generally believed that prehistoric jades in Taiwan were imported until a 1997 Raman spectroscopy study showed that the jades from Beinan came from Fengtian. A 2007 paper in PNAS used electron probe microanalysis to trace artifacts across Southeast Asia to the same source and described one of the most extensive sea-based trade networks of a single material in the prehistoric world. Use of jade in Taiwan itself was already declining by 500 BCE.
