Stones through history

Six and a half thousand years of fascination

Stones have accompanied humanity since long before writing. The first organised mines, the first long-distance trade, the first wars over a precious resource: gems are everywhere in our history. Here are the milestones that matter.

The first deposits

Around 6500 BC, the lapis lazuli mines of Badakhshan open in Afghanistan. They still supply the world today — eight millennia of continuous working. Around 3300 BC, the pharaohs send expeditions to mine Sinai turquoise: among the oldest organised mines known, with their camps, inscriptions and logistics.

In 1323 BC, the funerary mask of Tutankhamun is inlaid with lapis lazuli, turquoise, carnelian and obsidian — a summary of Bronze Age gem trading. Around 50 BC, Cleopatra works her own emerald mines on the Red Sea, and gives them away engraved with her likeness.

The Western turning point

In 1477, Maximilian of Austria gives Mary of Burgundy the first diamond engagement ring in history — a gesture that would found an entire industry. In 1668, the traveller Tavernier sells Louis XIV a great blue diamond brought back from India; stolen during the Revolution, it resurfaces as the Hope diamond, reputedly cursed.

In 1812, the mineralogist Friedrich Mohs publishes his hardness scale from 1 to 10, still in use two centuries later. In 1867, a child picks up a shiny pebble on the banks of the Orange River in South Africa: the Eureka diamond triggers the greatest diamond rush in history.

The modern era

In 1902, Auguste Verneuil creates the first synthetic ruby: for the first time, humankind manufactures a gem. In 1905, the Cullinan is discovered, 3,106 carats — the largest rough diamond ever found, today cut and set in the British Crown Jewels. In 1967, a flash of blue in the savannah: tanzanite is discovered at the foot of Kilimanjaro, the only deposit in the world.

Today, laboratory diamonds, chemically identical to natural ones, are shaking up the jewellery trade — and artificial intelligence identifies stones from a photograph. The story continues.