# The History of Moldavite

> The history of Moldavite, from the Ries impact 14.8 million years ago to Stone Age finds, Bohemian jewelry, scientific discovery and the TikTok boom.

- Source: https://moldavitegems.com/history.html
- Publisher: Moldavite Gems (https://moldavitegems.com/)
- Last updated: 2026-10-20
- Cite as: Moldavite Gems. "The History of Moldavite." https://moldavitegems.com/history.html. Updated October 2026.

Moldavite's story spans deep geological time, the Stone Age, Enlightenment science, Bohemian jewelry and a 21st-century social-media boom.

## Timeline

| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| ~14.8 million years ago | An asteroid strikes what is now Bavaria, Germany, forming the ~24 km **Nördlinger Ries** crater. Melted surface sediments are hurled 200–450 km east and solidify in flight as green glass. |
| Paleolithic (~25,000+ years ago) | Moldavite fragments appear at Old Stone Age sites in Lower Austria and Moravia, worked or carried as objects. It is often said a Moldavite piece was found near the Venus of Willendorf; that specific claim is widely repeated but poorly documented. |
| 1786–1787 | Josef Mayer, a professor in Prague, presents the first scientific description of the stones, found near Týn nad Vltavou, calling them a kind of "chrysolite". |
| 1836 | The name **Moldavit** comes into use, after the Vltava river (German: *Moldau*). In Czech it is **vltavín**. |
| 19th century | Faceted Moldavite becomes fashionable in Bohemian and Austro-Hungarian jewelry, sometimes sold as "bottle stone" or "water chrysolite". |
| 1900 | Austrian geologist Franz Eduard Suess coins the word **tektite** (Greek *tēktos*, "molten") and argues for a cosmic origin. |
| 1950s–1990s | Competing origin theories: volcanic glass, lunar volcanism, and terrestrial impact. |
| 1960s onward | Chemistry, isotopes and matching ages tie Moldavite firmly to the Ries impact. This is now the scientific consensus. |
| 20th century | Moldavite becomes a protected Czech national gemstone and is classed as a reserved mineral under Czech mining law. |
| 2008 | Mining at the famous Besednice locality ends, according to dealer accounts, making Besednice pieces increasingly scarce. |
| 2020–2022 | A social-media surge (especially TikTok) sends demand and prices soaring and floods the market with fakes. |
| 2023–2026 | Prices settle on a high plateau; top grades keep climbing as legal supply shrinks. |

## Moldavite in Czech culture

In South Bohemia Moldavite has long been a local treasure, collected from fields and sandpits after ploughing and rain. It became a traditional engagement and keepsake stone, and Czech museums such as the Moldavite Museum in Český Krumlov preserve major collections. Today it is regarded as a symbol of the region.

## From folk stone to global phenomenon

For most of the 20th century Moldavite was an affordable regional curiosity. New Age writers from the 1980s onward promoted it as a stone of transformation, and social media in 2020–2021 turned it into a global must-have. That demand, together with dwindling legal supply, explains today's prices. See [Price](https://moldavitegems.com/price.html).