Downtown San Jose hosts a number of fun and important Costa Rica museums, most within easy walking distance from one another.

One of those, the Costa Rica Jade Museum, is a must-see for visitors wanting to look back to the life and culture of those who came before us.

While most people probably think of a museum as a place where old things and art from the past have been put on display—and where a couple of hours can be whiled away before hitting the malls—the displays are far more.

A good museum has two characteristics:

• A single piece (or multiple pieces of an artist) like a carving, painting, or statue provides a glimpse back in time to the artistic soul of a particular artist while
• A collection of pieces from many people (most whose names are forever lost in time), from different social groups, and covering an extended period of time (often measured in epochs or centuries), affords today’s observer an opportunity to see the evolution of a people’s culture, religion, and secular life.

The museum, located in the National Insurance Institute (Nacional de Seguras), hosts the world’s largest collection of pre-Columbian (pre Christopher Columbus) jade, more than 6,000 pieces.

The appearance of jade carvings in Costa Rica, about 600 B.C., coincided with a seminal, dramatic cultural change in the country that lasted for nearly 1,000 years until replaced by another seminal, seismic change when gold replaced jade.

While people had lived in Costa Rica for perhaps 13,000-15,000 years, sophisticated jade carvings suddenly appeared on the scene over the course of a few decades. The suddenness, coupled with the relative sophistication of the earliest carvings (rather than an evolution from simple, crude carvings to more and more sophisticated objects) and the dramatic cultural, religious, and material changes that quickly ensued, are strongly suggestive of a once insular society suddenly introduced to and influenced by outside cultures.

Jade, like gold after it, represented a tectonic change in culture.

It wasn’t just art.

It came to represent, in an historical blink-of-an-eye, man’s changing view of himself and his relationship with the gods.

And that, of course, led to a profound change in culture, not only in religious rituals but in material life as well.

Now, certainly, most of the visitors who go to the museum have no idea about—or interest in—the role jade played in the evolution of society 2,500 years ago. They simply enjoy the beauty and mystery of the green stone carvings.

And, fact is, that’s more than enough reason to visit the Costa Rica Jade Museum.