COSTA RICA JADE MUSEUM

History happened.

Or, more accurately, perhaps. . . prehistory happened.
Now, I'm normally one of those guys who, dragged into a museum, spends 15 seconds looking at an ancient artifact before moving to another---and another---and an hour later wondering where to go for lunch.

The depth of my insouciance, quite staggering actually, makes my sudden interest in Costa Rica prehistory the more remarkable.

The trigger for that sudden intellectual interest?

A mastodon.

Or that the first Costa Ricans, perhaps small bands of hunter gatherers who followed the harvest cycles of fruit or nut-bearing plants and movements of game, not only saw these beasts but actually hunted them about 10,000-12,000 B.C.

Or, that mastodon bones were found just a miles from my home.

I was hooked because, OMG!, my own neighbors, separated only by time, hunted the mighty Mastodon almost off my doorstep.

Which made me wonder, what else were my earliest neighbors up to?

I discovered that thousands of years after the mighty Mammoth and Mastodon had left the world's stage, the descendants of the earliest hunters had moved to settlements, learned how to grow crops and developed their own cultures and belief systems.

But, as millenium after millenium passed, once isolated prehistoric communities had more and more exposure to outside, perhaps far away, peoples with their own sets of culture, arts, belief systems, and rituals.

This led, as you might expect, to changes in their own culture as they accepted or adapted practices and beliefs of others.

Then, sometime around 600 B.C., a seminal, dramatic change in culture occurred.

Not because of a Mastodon but a rock: Costa Rica jade.

You see, long before gold was viewed as valuable by the mighty Mayas, there was jade. It was seen as symbolic of renewal and life and, over centuries, became a valuable part of their view of life, development of culture and ritual.

Over time, jade carvings became more-and-more sophisticated, recreating objects important to their world view and religious beliefs.

And, sometime around 600 B.C., similar jade carvings began appearing in Costa Rica, some brought to the land and others carved by locals, resulting in a dramatic cultural change, in ideology, religious rituals, and material culture.

No longer viewed as simply a pretty rock, jade was revered for its mythic and power-bestowing symbolism used by shamans in important rituals and becoming valuable in its own right.

For around a thousand years, its influence on culture and life in Costa Rica can't be understated as its carved figures connected humans with mythical gods.

And, until the advent of gold---and its resulting tectonic change in culture---Costa Rica jade ruled.

But, that's a story for another day.

For more information about the cultural importance of jade, visit From Jade to Gold in Costa Rica

Visiting the Costa Rica Jade Museum

The museum, located in the Instituto Nacional de Seguras (National Insurance Institute), the tallest building in downtown San Jose, also displays a wide variety of ancient artifacts in stone, wood, and other media.

Tel. (506) 2287-6034

Address: 7th Avenue, between 9th and 11th Street, San Jose

Admission Fees: Foreigners $8.00

Hours:

Mondays to Fridays from 8:30am to 3:30pm.

Saturdays 9:00am to 1:00pm. Closed Sundays and holidays.

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