Moldavite

Moldavite is a green natural glass, mostly silica with some alumina, and one type of tektite. Wikipedia gives its colour as forest or olive green, sometimes with a bluish cast, and says it is often transparent or translucent, its mossy look picked out by swirls and bubbles inside; pieces from Moravia lean towards brown. Earth scientists now agree it was made some 14.7 million years back, when a giant meteorite struck what is now the Ries crater in southern Germany and hurled melted rock through the air, where it cooled before landing over a wide field reaching from Germany into Austria and the Czech Republic. Most pieces come from southern Bohemia. The name, first used in 1836, comes from the Vltava (Moldau) river, and its wrinkled, pitted skin is the work of natural acids in groundwater. Prehistoric people flaked it into tools, and today it is set, rough or cut, in jewellery. Hall calls it a stone for the New Age, says it has served as a talisman for good fortune and fertility since the Stone Age, and links it with communication with the higher self, inspiration, the letting go of fixed ideas and the stirring of latent memories. She adds that the glass is delicate, and that cleaning it with salt leaves scratches.