Moldavites story is believed to start approximately 15 million years ago, when an asteroid entered Earth’s atmosphere and broke in two, landing in south eastern Germany and forming the Reis and Steinheim craters. The Meteorites approached from the southwest, and the resulting impact instantly melted the rock at the impact site, sending it into the air and around 200-400 km northeast into what is today the Czech Republic and just over the borders into Germany and northern Austria. For anyone who wants to delve a bit deeper, a paper from 2010 detailing further scientific theories into the asteroid impact that created Moldavite can be found here.

As the melted rock thrown from the impact fused incredibly quickly in the air, it did not have time to form a defined crystal structure, which is necessary for it to be classed as a mineral. Instead, it is known for being ‘amorphous’, i.e having no defined crystal structure, and is classed as a mineraloid, joining the ranks of other famous mineraloids such as Opal and Obsidian. Moldavite is part of a larger group of ‘Impactites’ or Impact Glass, crystals and rocks formed as a result of meteorite strikes, including Libyan Desert Glass, Darwin Glass and other Tektites (Did you know - Tektite comes from the Greek ‘tēktos’ which means ‘melted’ or ‘molten’). Moldavite is simply put, a natural glass, and so can fracture and break in the same way as other glasses. It will also have bubbles present, although they bubbles may be both rounded or elongated, due to the fast movement of the molten rock. It will also contain flow line and lechatelierite, which is a form of Si02 formed at very high temperatures. The presence of these 3 are the main ways of identifying true Moldavite.

Moldavite is always green, although the shade can vary from a deeper, bottle green to a more yellow green colour. Recently, brightly coloured ‘Moldavite’ has been popping up on eBay, these candy coloured reds and yellows are glass imitations.

There are many wonderful stories and legends surrounding Moldavite that span thousands of years, one of my favourites is the theory that the infamous Holy Grail was carved from a large piece of Moldavite. The legend goes that after Lucifer fell from heaven, Archangel Micheal struck his crown, causing a large “emerald” to fall to Earth (many ancient stories refer to any green gems as Emerald, in the same way that any blue gems were called Sapphire). This interesting story is backed up by a later story that the notoriously hard to track down Holy Grail was supposedly later found and presented to Napoleon, who was disappointed when he realised that the cup was nothing more than a chunk of green glass - which in a roundabout way is precisely what Moldavite is (albeit it one with a much more exciting and unusual origin!)