Why “soft” jade is better

Описание: I mentioned in the video that nephrite has a massive advantage in "fracture toughness," making it one of the most mechanically indestructible stones on Earth. But ancient cultures didn't just use this to make pretty statues. They used it to make weapons of war.

Thousands of years before the Bronze Age, cultures across the globe realised that if you hit a piece of flint or quartz against a tree or a bone, it shatters. But if you carve a battleaxe or a heavy club out of nephrite, those tangled mineral fibres act as a natural shock absorber.

You could literally smash a nephrite weapon against a solid wooden shield with full force, and the stone would not break. Long before we had steel, the most devastating, high-tech military hardware on the battlefield was a piece of "soft" green jewellery.