Block of the Week: Calcite

Calcite became a part of Minecraft in the first part of the Caves & Cliffs update in June 2021, making it a fairly recent addition to the game. In the second part of the update, though, we added another place to find it. Those more inclined to mountaineering than caving will be pleased to learn that it’s now also present in seams scattered across stony peaks.

As you might expect, you’ll need a pickaxe to collect calcite. And at the time of writing this block’s role in the game is purely decorative. But it does make a decent building material – hard, somewhat blast-resistant, and inflammable.

In fact, it’s a perfect decorative option if you want to class up your in-game bathroom. What do you mean your Minecraft house doesn’t have a bathroom? Where do you..? Never mind, I don’t want to know.

In the real world, calcite is a fairly common mineral and one of the most stable forms of calcium carbonate – better known as chalk. It’s pretty soft, rating just 3/10 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, but it is quite pretty – especially in its impure forms, where it can be grey, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, brown, or even black.

Its combination of good looks and common occurrence means that it was often carved into artifacts by many ancient cultures, including the Egyptians who associated it with their cat-goddess Bast. The Vikings also used a transparent variant for navigating on cloudy days. 

In the natural world, the shells of marine organisms like plankton, oysters, and some sponges are made of calcite, and crystals of calcite formed the lenses of the primitive eyes of trilobites, which went extinct about 250 million years ago. It’s even thought to have had a small but important role in the origin of life on Earth.

Today, humans mostly use calcite to stabilize and decontaminate soils, and in the repair of concrete. How the mighty have fallen. But given how hard it is to get your hands on Minecraft, we recommend treasuring it nonetheless.