Note 106 — Chapter XIII · The Symbolism of Jade

Laufer writes in this connection: “If we consider how many years, and what strenuous efforts it required for European scientists to discover the actual sites of jade in Central Europe, which is geographically so well explored, we may realize that it could not have been quite such an easy task for primitive man to hunt up these hidden places”. Laufer thinks that in undertaking to overcome the difficulties experienced in discovering jade in Europe, early man “must have been prompted by a motive pre-existing and acting in his mind; the impetus of searching for jade he must have received somehow from somewhere.… Nothing”, he says, “could induce me to believe that primitive man of Central Europe incidentally and spontaneously embarked on the laborious task of quarrying and working jade. The psychological motive for this act must be supplied.… From the standpoint of the general development of culture in the Old World there is absolutely no vestige of originality in the prehistoric cultures of Europe which appear as an appendix to Asia.”106