The gemstones in our jewelry industry are all ancestors, with an average age of thousands or tens of thousands of years.
But you have to ask, which is the oldest? Bao Jie thinks it should be a spotted snail ~ because people grew up in the golden age of dinosaurs, after hundreds of millions of years of precipitation, they have the colorful light that is now full of spirituality:
It can be said that the snail is both a gem and a fossil!
However, although it is a little old, it is still a "small fresh meat" in the jewelry world – it was not officially recognized as a gemstone until 1981.
After 40 years, the spotted snail has gradually entered the public vision.
People are not only intoxicated by its colorful rainbow, but also deeply fascinated by its effect, you know, the spotted snail is a popular "feng shui stone" all over the world
Spotted snail, small science popularization
Spotted snail, also known as "spotted stone". It is a type of fossil nautilus, which belongs to prehistoric organisms.
Nautilus fossils have undergone hundreds of millions of years of evolution on Earth, but their appearance, habits and other changes are very small, and they are called "living fossils" in the ocean.
1. The secret of formation
75-70 million years ago, the snail was produced in a warm shallow sea inhabited by a variety of marine life, including the Nautilus.
Due to the frequent orogenic activity of the Rocky Mountains, the volcano erupts frequently, often dropping ash several meters thick on the surface of the sea, causing a large number of organisms in the shallow sea to die quickly and be buried.
Day after day, the ash in the area is four kilometres thick.
Later, as the earth's crust moved, the formations in the shallow sea gradually returned to their position close to the ground. The nautilus buried deep under it at that time became a unique snail fossil in the world today because of the closed effect of abundant iron, magnesium and volcanic ash.
2. History of spotted snail discovery
Unlike other gemstones, the snail waited for tens of millions of years before it was finally discovered by humans and became a veritable "old fresh meat".
In 1908, a member of the National Geographic Survey team found mineralized fossils of the snail along the St. Mary's River in Alberta.
But it wasn't until 1981 that high-quality spotted snail gemstones with commercial mining value were discovered.
The International Jewelry Federation (CIBJO) officially recognized the conch as a gemstone in 1981. Arguably, the spotted snail is one of the three most important gemstones newly discovered worldwide in 50 years.
The strongest feng shui stone
The colored snail gem has a long history and a legendary myth! The earliest records come from the legends of the North American Indians.
1. Mysterious legends
In the Indian tribes, they called the snail a sacred stone, and there is a magical legend.
Legend has it that during the harsh winter months, heavy snow blew away all the food reserves of the Blackfoot Indians. Before the extermination crisis, the great goddess told the Indian princess that this magical gem would bring you herds of buffalo.
Under the guidance of the goddess, the princess successfully found this colorful gem. The brilliant sunlight shone on her rainbow-like skin muscles, looking noble and magical.
The next day, buffalo herds appeared on the grasslands not far from the tribe. And this stone is actually a spotted snail, because it summons buffalo, also known as "buffalo stone".
2. World Transporter Stone
In fact, not only their people, but also many countries around the world believe that conch stone is a well-known "transit stone".
Because it is a paleontological fossil, the conch swept away, so many people in the business field use it to attract money.
At the same time, the spotted snail is a multi-functional gemstone with love, career, wealth and health, especially with extraordinary therapeutic and regulatory effects
In the first half of 1999, the spotted snail swept all over Japan! The Japanese believe that the spotted snail can express love, so they named it "Heaven and Earth Long Stone", which is also very romantic
It is said that the gifts given to the princess by the Japanese emperor at that time were all spotted conch rings.
In China, Mr. Li Juming, a master of feng shui, also wrote a book specifically for Bancailuo. He believes that the snail has a strong functional magnetic field after tens of millions of years of precipitation.
Women wearing spotted snail jewelry can not only eliminate bad luck, remove negative energy, enhance fortune, but also balance the body's magnetic field, promote the feelings of husband and wife, and soothe people's hearts.
How to choose high-quality spotted snails?
The jewel-quality spotted snail is found in a very small area east of the Canadian Rockies, which is the only source in the world.
There is no uniform grading standard for the snail. When we get a piece of snail, how do we identify its quality? Simply put, the following 4 areas should be focused:
1. Color classification
The snail can display all the colors in nature or you can imagine, and in a plane as small as 1 square centimeter, there can be countless color combinations.
High-quality spotted snails are divided into "monochrome" or "multi-color".
In general, red and green are more common, blue and purple are rarer, and deep red, violet, and gold are very rare. The highest quality spotted snails can evenly display more than 3 colors.
2. Color transition
With the change of angle, the color of some color snails will change.
Some are very significant, such as red turning green, green turning blue... This condition is called "two-color".
Some of the color changes of the snails are very subtle, just in a series of main colors, so they are called "monochrome".
The best gemstones can achieve spectral conversion, what does that mean? It means that as the angle changes, each color in the spectrum will be displayed in turn.
3. Color brightness
The high-quality spotted snail, its color and iridescence (meaning that the color changes with different angles) is very dazzling.
When choosing, if the snail is gray and dark, it means that the quality is not good.
4. Rotation range
When we rotate the snail, some of the colors become dim until they disappear into the darkness.
Therefore, the higher the quality of the spotted snail, the greater its rotation visible range, the same will be very bright, just a change in color
Generally speaking, if a piece of spotted snail has 3 colors and is very dazzling, it is AAA level; if the brightness is average, it is AA level; if it is dim and not dazzling, although it can display 3 colors, it can only be listed as A level.
Today, the Canadian government has increasingly stringent requirements for the collection of snails. After the pit of the spotted snail is excavated, the gravel must be laid back, and the turf must be laid to restore the original appearance, otherwise it is illegal.
And when mining, you can't destroy the snail in a large area, you can only mine some of the snail's gravel, and after processing it into a gemstone, it can be seen that it is very rare