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Which Is A Diamond
I
Which is a Diamond II
Become a Gemologist
Knowledge of diamond starts in India, where it was first mined. The word most generally used for diamond in Sanskrit is transliterated as “vajra,” "thunderbolt," and “indrayudha,” "Indra's weapon." Because Indra is the warrior god from Vedic scriptures, the foundation of Hinduism, the thunderbolt symbol indicates much about the Indian conception of diamond.
Early descriptions of diamond date to the 4th century BC. By then diamond was a valued material. The earliest known reference to diamond is a Sanskrit manuscript by a minister in a northern Indian dynasty. The work is dated from 320-296 BCE.
Small numbers of diamonds began appearing in European regalia and jewelry in the 13th century, set as accent points among pearls in wrought gold. By the 16th century the diamonds became larger and more prominent, in response to the development of diamond faceting, which enhances their brilliance and fire. Diamonds came to dominate small jewels during the 17th century and large ones by the 18th century.
In the 13th Century, Louis IX of France established a law reserving diamonds for the king. This bespeaks the rarity of diamonds and the value conferred on them at that time. Within 100 years diamonds appeared in royal jewelry of both men and women, then among the greater European aristocracy, with the wealthy merchant class showing the occasional diamond by the 17th century.
As more diamonds reached Europe, demand for them increased. The earliest diamond-cutting industry is believed to have been in Venice, a trade capital, starting sometime after 1330. Diamond cutting may have arrived in Paris by the late 14th century. By the late 14th century, the diamond trade route went to Bruges and Paris, and later to Antwerp.
By 1499, the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to the Orient around the Cape of Good Hope, providing Europeans an end-run around the Arabic impediment to the trade of diamonds coming from India.
In the 18th century the diamond became even more abundant. They were worn principally by women. Substantial quantities of diamonds arrived from South America, making conspicuous display of the gem possible. Diamonds were reserved for evening since it was considered vulgar to parade them by day. Rather than a miscellany of jewels of different types, a matched set of jewelry -- was now worn at all important social events.
Two events near the end of the 19th century helped change the role of diamonds for the next century. First, the discovery in the 1870s of diamond deposits of unprecedented richness in South Africa changed diamond from a rare gem to one potentially available to anyone who could afford it. Second, the French crown jewels, sold in 1887, were consumed by newly wealthy capitalists, particularly in the United States, where a taste and capacity for opulent consumption was burgeoning.
Seen under the blaze of gas and electric lighting, diamond's brilliance showed to greater advantage than colored stones, and so designs incorporated them in far greater numbers than at any time in history.
Before the 1870s diamonds were still rare, and associated with the aristocracy. In 1871, however, world annual production, derived primarily from South Africa, exceeded 1 million carats for the first time. From then on, diamonds would be produced at a prodigious rate.
Simultaneously, the fall of Napoleon III in 1871 left the Third Republic of France with a problematic symbol of monarchy: the crown jewels, largely reset by Empress Eugenie in the style of the great Louis kings. It was decided to auction the bulk, retaining a few key objects for the State.
With French buyers such as Boucheron and Bapst in attendance, Tiffany & Co. of New York bought the major share; 22 lots for $480,000, a sum greater than the combined purchases of the 9 next-largest buyers.
Today diamonds are mined in about 25 countries, on every continent but Europe and Antarctica. However, only a few diamond deposits were known until the 20th century, when scientific understanding and technology extended diamond exploration and mining around the globe. For 1,000 years, starting in roughly the 4th century BC, India was the only source of diamonds.
In 1725, important sources were discovered in Brazil, and in the 1870s major finds in South Africa marked a dramatic increase in the diamond supply. Additional major producers now include several African countries, Siberian Russia, and Australia.
It is a modern misconception that the world's diamonds come primarily from South Africa: diamonds are a worldwide resource. The common characteristic of primary diamond deposits is the ancient terrain that hosts the kimberlite and lamproite pipes that bring diamonds to Earth's surface.
Diamond production has increased enormously in the 20th century. India's maximum production, perhaps 50,000 to 100,000 carats annually in the 16th century, is very small compared to the current production of around 100 million carats.
For the most part, except for major wars and economic recessions, diamond production has been steadily increasing since then, with non-African sources growing in relative proportion. Major production is now dominated by Australia, Botswana, Russia, and Congo Republic (Zaire), but South Africa is still a major producer, in both volume and value.
© MMII, CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights
Reserved. Information courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History
At a time when human right’s groups want to outlaw the sale of diamonds mined in war-torn parts of Africa, these Canadian stones are being hailed as the “Boy Scouts” of diamonds – they’re politically correct and plentiful.
There’s just one problem: the diamonds are buried in ice.
At the Ekati Diamond mine on the Barren Lands of Canada’s Northwest Terrritory, spring’s wind-chill the temperature can be 70 below, reports correspondent Carol Marin.
Diamond History
Find out more about the long history of this sparkling stone.
Jim Excell, the man in charge of the mine estimate sthat one pit alone will
yield an astonishing number of diamonds, 7 or 8 million carats. At $100
a carat, the gems would be valued at $700 or $800 million.
But most people have never heard of Canadian diamonds. "Most Canadians don’t know anything about it,” says Mathew Hart, author of the just-published book “Diamond.”
“A lot of people will still say, ‘Oh yeah, I read something about it, is there anything to that?’ Well, four million carats a year; next year, another six million. Yeah, it’s a huge discovery.
This treasure hunt in the Northwest Territory, an area twice the size of Texas, where the caribou (300,000) outnumber the people (64,000) by 21 to 1, actually began about 30 years ago. That’s when geologists discovered there a collection of minerals, including garnets, which were a clue that diamonds were nearby.
Then in 1991 after eight years of prospecting, Charles Fipke struck pay dirt. From that discovery came the Ekati mine which opened in 1998. A sort of biosphere on ice, the $600 million diamond mine houses 500 people, who live and work there on shifts - two weeks in and two weeks out, 365 days of the year including Christmas.
Just one of its pits is two-thirds of a mile wide and 900 feet deep. It consists of kimberlite pipe, hardened lava from ancient underground volcanoes in which the diamonds are buried.
In just one day, 10,000 tons of kimberlite will be stripped from this mine, crushed and rinsed and refined to yield a ziplock bag of 10,000 carats – roughly 4.5 pounds – of diamonds worth about $1 million.
In the Northwest Territory, 50 million acres have already been staked by small prospectors like Dave Smith. After 30 years of prospecting – first for gold, then for diamonds – Smith says the he’s found is bigger than the Ekati mine.
“In size it’s considerably larger,” he says. “In grade, we don’t know yet so. The results of the drilling will tell the tale.”
Nine years ago, Eira Thomas was prospecting a site not far from the Ekati mine. She had been drilling for days, without any luck, until she took one last sample. That’s when she found a 2.5-carat, beautiful, clear, triangular-shaped diamond.
Says author Hart, “Eira was 24 years old, a greenhorn prospector with the ink still wet on her geology degree when she stood on melting lake ice in the middle of a huge lake - and the drillers wanting to pull the whole thing down and get the hell to shore - Eira hit the motherload.
Her mine, which opens next spring, stands to make $200 to $400 million a year in just rough diamonds. When it does, Canada will be producing a billion dollars worth of Artic or “clean” diamonds a year, so called because they do not come from the war-torn reaches of Africa.
The “conflict” or “blood” diamonds come from Angola, Congo and Sierra Leone, where men, women and children were made homeless – and limbless- in wars financed by the diamond trade.
Thomas estimates that 96 percent of the world’s diamonds are produced from non-conflict areas. Hart calls that “complete baloney.”
He says those who produce blood diamonds don’t keep records or produce auditable returns. Which is why it was impossible, even for Eira Thomas, to tell us, with any certainty, about that two-carat diamond around her neck, a present from her father.
Though a tiny percentage of Canadian diamonds are now being microscopically branded, to show where they were mined, virtually all of the world’s diamonds are sold with nothing that identifies its country of origin. So if you wanted to buy a non-conflict Canadian diamond in New York’s diamond district, it would be just about impossible.
And so far, stories about “blood” diamonds and diamond wars in Africa haven’t affected diamond sales in the slightest.
Says author Hart, “Until the consumers for some reason or other rise up and say, ‘You know what? Like, I don’t need a diamond that badly. Until you can prove to me where the diamonds come from, I’m not gonna buy them.’ If that happened, you bet there’d be a clean diamond stream in no time at all. But it hasn’t happened yet.”
Even though Canada has just one mine in operation, it is already the fifth-largest producer of quality diamonds in the world. But don’t expect the price to go down when Eira Thomas’ mine opens next year.
“New producers, just like old ones, want to keep the price high and the message( A diamond is forever. A diamond is love. A diamond is romance.) one we all remember,” says Hart.
Everyone knows those images are marketing games but the games work: Eighty-five percent of American women are said to own at least one diamond.
“They basically have convinced people to buy a product worth nothing,” says Hart. “You can’t drive it. You can’t make it into clothes. You can’t roof your house with it. It’s just a fantastically wonderful, glorious blaze of something that has no value whatever except that it looks really great.”
© MMII, CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved.
60 Minutes 2 (May
8, 2002)
Diamonds: A History
