So, I am hell bent on figuring out when the first diamonds were found. Most documentation credits India in the beginning of the 4
th
century B.C. It appears that in 1725 Brazil discovered diamonds then in the 1860’s South Africa started producing diamonds.
You see it appears that diamonds were pushed up through volcanic activity and were spewed down tracts on the side of the volcano. Over centuries the volcanoes were weathered down by wind and rain to rolling hills. The stones tumbled down water ways and became known as allvivial diamonds. This happened over many millions of years. So, you can see that many peasants and average people may have come across these stones with no idea of what they even were.
My conclusions are that there is no way of telling when someone saw them first. Remember diamonds are over several million years old. Maybe a Neanderthal or Homosapien who knows. It only becomes important when someone recognizes its importance.
When the human mind was able to realize the stone was harder and more durable than any other they had encountered I would think their minds would be curious.
So, they at some point began to trace the source and that is what brought us back to India where it is believed the first mining began. The Mongol leaders were some of the first to start gathering diamonds in quantity. Then the monarchs of Europe all got in on the action.
Now I have a book in my library that was printed in 1874. It was written by Louis Dieulafait a French professor of physics. He did some calculations on diamond prices. He formulated a chart of diamond prices in