Where did gem cutting and Lapidary get its start?
Before ancient ancestors wore clothes, they decked themselves with jewelry fashioned from products of the hunt – teeth, claws, bones, antlers, feathers, and shells. These materials were soft and easy to work with. In their struggle for survival, Stone Age humans learned to shape rocks and other hard materials as tools and weapons, by simply chipping them. When color, marking, or form striking, they used them as religious or magic objects, or for personal decoration. Some of the earliest fashioning techniques for rocks were probably the same as for wood and bone, scratching and drilling. People later learned to polish stones by rubbing them with abrasives like river sand. (Sand is mostly quartz and will abrade anything of Mohs hardness 7 or less.) This not only enhanced surface luster but sometimes revealed a transparent, vividly colored interior beneath a dull, frosted surface. Slowly, more elaborate techniques evolved. Around 3000 BC, Mesopotamian’s were using primitive lapidary wheel
