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India
 The Indian sub-continent has the longest continuous legacy of jewelry making anywhere. While Western traditions were heavily influenced by waxing and waning empires, India enjoyed a continuous development of art forms for some 5000 years.[26] One of the first to start jewelry making were the peoples of the Indus Valley Civilization. By 1,500 BC the peoples of the Indus Valley were creating gold earrings and necklaces, bead necklaces and metallic bangles. Before 2,100 BC, prior to the period when metals were widely used, the largest jewelry trade in the Indus Valley region was the bead trade. Beads in the Indus Valley were made using simple techniques. First, a bead maker would need a rough stone, which would be bought from an eastern stone trader. The stone would then be placed into a hot oven where it would be heated until it turned deep red, a color highly prized by people of the Indus Valley. The red stone would then be chipped to the right size and a hole drilled through it with primitive drills. The beads were then polished. Some beads were also painted with designs. This art form was often passed down through family; children of bead makers often learnt how to work beads from a young age.
Jewelry in the Indus Valley was worn predominantly by females, who wore numerous clay or shell bracelets on their wrists. They were often shaped like doughnuts and painted black. Over time, clay bangles were discarded for more durable ones. In India today, bangles are made out of metal or glass. Other pieces that women frequently wore were thin bands of gold that would be worn on the forehead, earrings, primitive brooches, chokers and gold rings. The people of the region were much more urbanized than the rest of the area, so the jewelry worn was of heavier make once the civilization developed. Although women wore jewelry the most, some men in the Indus Valley wore beads. Small beads were often crafted to be placed in men and women's hair. The beads were so small they usually measured in at only one millimeter long.
Unlike many other cultures, Indus Valley jewelry was never buried with the dead. Instead, jewelry was passed down to children or family. Nobility and goldsmiths often hid their jewelry under their floorboards to avoid theft.
As time progressed, the methods for jewelry advanced, thus allowing complex jewelry to be made. Necklaces were soon adorned with gems and green stone.
Although they used other gems prior, India was the first country to mine diamonds, with some mines dating back to 296 BC. However, axes dating to 4,000 BC found in China from previous factions of the country, contain traces of diamond dust used to sharpen the blades. While China used the diamonds they found mainly for carving jade, India traded the diamonds, realizing their valuable qualities. This trade almost vanished 1,000 years after Christianity grew as a religion, as Christians rejected the diamonds which were used in Indian religious amulets. Along with Arabians from the Middle East restricting the trade, India's diamond jewelry trade lulled.
Today, many of the jewelry designs and traditions are still used and jewelry is commonplace in Indian ceremonies and weddings.
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 Americas
Jewelry played a major role in the fate of the Americas when the Spanish established an empire to seize South American gold. Jewelry making developed in the Americas 5,000 years ago in Central and South America. Large amounts of gold were easily accessible, and the Aztecs and Mayans created numerous works in the metal. Among the Aztecs, only nobility wore gold jewelry, as it showed their rank, power and wealth. Gold jewelry was most common in the Aztec Empire and was often decorated with feathers from birds. The main purpose of Aztec jewelry was to draw attention, with richer and more powerful Aztecs wearing brighter, more expensive jewelry and clothes. Although gold was the most common and popular material used in Aztec jewelry, silver was also readily available throughout the American empires. In addition to adornment and status, the Aztecs also used jewelry in sacrifices to appease the gods. Priests also used gem encrusted daggers to perform animal and human sacrifices.
Another ancient American civilization with expertise in jewelry making was the Maya. At the peak of their civilization, the Maya were making beautiful jewelry from jade, gold, silver, bronze and copper. Maya designs were similar to those of the Aztecs, with lavish head dresses and jewelry. The Maya also traded in precious gems. However, in earlier times, the Maya had little access to metal, so made the majority of their jewelry out of bone or stone. Merchants and nobility were the only few that wore expensive jewelry in the Maya Empire, much the same as with the Aztecs.
In North America, Native Americans used shells, wood, turquoise, and soapstone, almost unavailable in South and Central America. The Native Americans utilized the properties of the stone and used it often in their jewelry, particularly in earlier periods. The turquoise was used in necklaces and to be placed in earrings. Native Americans with access to oyster shells, often located in only one location in American, traded the shells with other tribes, showing the great importance of the body adornment trade in Northern America.
Although initially of interest either as a curiosity or a source of raw material, jewelry designs from the Americas has come to play a significant role in modern jewelry.
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Pacific
Jewelry making in the Pacific started later than in other areas because of relatively recent human settlement. Early Pacific jewelry was made of bone, wood and other natural materials, and thus, has not survived. Most Pacific jewelry is worn above the waist, with headdresses, necklaces, hair pins and arm and waist belts being the most common pieces amongst island cultures. Jewelry made of flowers in Hawaii are called leis and are now commonly associated with that area and its relaxed, tourist friendly attitude.
Jewelry in the Pacific, with the exception of Australia, is worn to be a symbol of either fertility or power. Elaborate headdresses are worn by many Pacific cultures and some, such as the inhabitants of Papua New Guinea, wear certain headdresses once they have killed an enemy. Like the typical tribal cliché, many tribesman wear boar bones through their noses.
Island jewelry is still very much primal because of the lack of communication with outside cultures; some areas of Borneo and Papua New Guinea are yet to be explored by Western nations. However, the island nations which were flooded with Western missionaries have had drastic changes made to their jewelry designs. Missionaries saw any type of tribal jewelry as a sign of the wearer's devotion to paganism. Thus many tribal designs were lost forever in the mass conversion to Christianity.
Australia is now the number one supplier of opals in the world. Although Australia wasn't colonized until later on in history, it is now famous for its vast supplies of opals. Opals had already been mined in Europe and South America for many years prior, but in the late 1800's, the Australian opal market entered as the dominant producer of opals. Australian opals are only mined in a few select places around the country, making it one the most profitable stones in the Pacific.
One of the few cultures to today still create their jewelry as they did many centuries prior is the New Zealand M_ori, who create Hei-tiki. The reason the hei-tiki is worn is not apparent; it may either relate to ancestral connections, as Tiki was the first M_ori, or fertility, as there is a strong connection between this and Tiki. Another suggestion from historians is that the Tiki is a product of the ancient belief of a god named Tiki, perhaps dating back to before the M_oris settled in New Zealand. Hei-tikis are traditionally carved by hand from bone (commonly whale), nephrite or bowenite; a lengthy and spiritual process. The Hei-tiki is now popular amongst tourists who can buy it from souvenir or jeweler shops.
Other than jewelry created through M_ori influence, jewelry in New Zealand remains similar to other western civilizations; multi cultural and varied. This is more noticeable in New Zealand because of its high levels of non-European citizens.
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Modern
Modern jewelry has never been as diverse as it is in the present day. The modern jewelry movement began in the late 1940s at the end of World War II with a renewed interest in artistic and leisurely pursuits. The movement is most noted with works by Georg Jensen and other jewelry designers who advanced the concept of wearable art. The advent of new materials, such as plastics, Precious Metal Clay (PMC) and different coloring techniques, has led to increased variety in styles. Other advances, such as the development of improved pearl harvesting by people such as Kokichi Mikimoto and the development of improved quality artificial gemstones such as moissanite (a diamond simulant), has placed jewelry within the economic grasp of a much larger segment of the population. The "jewelry as art" movement, spearheaded by artisans such as Robert Lee Morris, has kept jewelry on the leading edge of artistic design. Influence from other cultural forms is also evident; one example of this is bling-bling style jewelry, popularized by hip-hop and rap artists in the early 21st century. With the world's designs more accessible to jewelers, designs have blended in aspects from many different cultures from many different periods in time.
The late 20th century saw the blending of European design with oriental techniques such as Mokume-gane. The following are noted as the primary innovations in the decades following the year 2000: "Mokume-gane, hydraulic die forming, anti-clastic raising, fold-forming, reactive metal anodizing, shell forms, PMC, photoetching, and [use of] CAD/CAM."
Artisan jewelry continues to grow as both a hobby and a profession. With more than 17 U.S. periodicals about beading alone, resources, accessibility and a low initial cost of entry continues to expand production of hand-made adornments. Popular because of its uniqueness, artisan jewelry can be found in just about any price range. Some fine examples of artisan jewelry can be seen at The Metropolitan Museum.
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Body Modification
It can be difficult to determine where jewelry leaves off and body modification takes over, because they are different sub-categories of body art. For the most part, jewelry used in body modification is plain; the use of simple silver studs, rings and earrings predominates. In fact, common jewelry pieces such as earrings are themselves a form of body modification, as they are accommodated by creating a small hole in the human ear.
Padaung women in Myanmar place large golden rings around their necks. From as early as 5 years old, girls are introduced to their first neck ring. Over the years, more rings are added. In addition to the twenty-plus pounds of rings on her neck, a woman will also wear just as many rings on her calves too. At their extent, some necks modified like this can reach 10-15 inches long; the practice has obvious health impacts, however, and has in recent years declined from cultural norm to tourist curiosity.[32] Tribes related to the Paduang, as well as other cultures throughout the world, use jewelry to stretch their earlobes, or enlarge ear piercings. In the Americas, labrets have been worn since before first contact by innu and first nations peoples of the northwest coast. Lip plates are worn by the African Mursi and Sara people, as well as some South American peoples.
In the late 20th century, the influence of modern primitivism led to many of these practices being incorporated into western subcultures. Many of these practices rely on a combination of body modification and decorative objects; thus keeping the distinction between these two types of decoration blurred. As with other forms of jewelry, the crossing of cultural boundaries is one of the more significant features of the art form in the early 21st century.
In many cultures, jewelry is used as a temporary body modifier, with in some cases, hooks or even objects as large as bike bars being placed into the recipient's skin. Although this procedure is often carried out by tribal or semi-tribal groups, often acting under a trance during religious ceremonies, this practice has seeped into western culture. Many extreme-jewelry shops now cater to people wanting large hooks or spikes set into their skin. Most often, these hooks are used in conjunction with pulleys to hoist the recipient into the air. This practice is said to give an erotic feeling to the person and some couples have even performed their marriage ceremony whist being suspended by hooks.
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