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Extracting diamonds
There are two methods for extracting diamonds, depending on the conformation of the ground from which they are extracted. The first consists of bringing large quantities of material to the surface, from which, following a large reduction of debris and a wash, the rough diamonds are taken. In the second, instead, the diamonds are brought to the surface (on rivers and on sandy beaches) by water erosion, thus making the extraction easier. The extraction of diamonds can be industrial, artisan, or manual. Diamonds are very rare: 250 tonnes of material have to be removed in order to find one carat of diamonds (one carat equals 1/5 of a gram). The annual World production amounts to about 100 million carats of which only fifty percent is used to manufacture jewels and only one percent has the necessary qualities to become an investment diamond.
There are no news on the discovery of the first diamond, however we know, from an ancient text from the fourth Century B.C., that in India diamonds were already being exchanged. Up until the 18th Century, India remained the sole producer. The Greeks did not know diamonds even though the name derives from the Greek “ADAMAS” (invincible). The Romans, however, used them both for making incisions and as talismans. Up until the Middle Ages, the Persians and the Arabs shared the diamonds monopoly. In the 13th Century Venice became the greatest Western commercial power, and thanks to the Doges many diamonds were brought to Antwerp. Legend has it that it was Lodewijk van Berckem who invented the diamond cut. The 18th Century brought in a change: the Indian mines became exhausted, but, by coincidence, in 1725 large diamonds deposits were found in Brazil. The first reaction was a market explosion, the diamond offer was very high and the reserves were thought to be inexhaustible. This caused a drop in the price of rough stones, but not of the processed ones which, on the contrary, went up in value due to the noteworthy rise in demand. Contemporarily many factories for the processing of diamond were established. However, they were not destined to last long, since the raw material soon became exhausted. In 1886 when the reserves were thought to be extinguished, an African farmer found a diamond in the Oranje River. Two years later the legendary “Star of Africa” was found, and the diamond boom began in South Africa.
Thus began the war between Cecil Rhodes (owner of the Kimberley mines) and Barney Barnato, until the time of Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, who in 1931 founded De Beers, which still today, controls ninety percent of the World diamond market.
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