The Diamond Timeline

The word diamond descends from the Greek adamas — the unbreakable. Where earlier ages read the stone as a talisman of invulnerability, healing and protection, our own has settled on a plainer trinity: wealth, durability, quality. The thread between those readings runs four thousand years, and it begins not in Antwerp but in the riverbeds of India.

Ca. 400 BCE — The first diamonds in India

The earliest known reference to diamonds is a Sanskrit manuscript, The Lesson of Profit — the Arthasastra — set down by Kautiliya between 320 and 296 BCE. Already the qualities we still prize are named with startling precision:

A diamond that is big, heavy, capable of bearing blows, with symmetrical points, capable of scratching from the inside a glass vessel filled with water, revolving like a spindle and brilliantly shining is excellent. That with points lost, without edges and defective on one side is bad. — Arthasastra, Kautiliya, ca. 320—296 BCE

Diamonds were a valued material long before they were ornament. Beads bored by diamond drills, dated to the 4th century BCE, have been found at ancient sites in Yemen. The Sanskrit names carry the same charge as the Greek: vajra, thunderbolt, and indrayudha, the weapon of Indra. India would remain the world’s only producer and exporter of diamonds until 1725.

To the Mediterranean

Tracing the stone through early writing is difficult, for it travelled under many names. Plato’s student Theophrastus (ca. 372—322 BCE), in De lapidibus — On Stones — applied adamas not to diamond but to emery, the corundum-bearing rock that is the hardest mineral after diamond itself. Four centuries on, Pliny the Elder gave the stone its first great valuation in the Historia naturalis (77—79 CE):

The substance that possesses the greatest value, not only among precious stones, but of all human possessions, is adamas; a mineral which for a long time was known to kings only, and to very few of them. These stones are tested upon the anvil, and will resist the blow to such an extent as to make the iron rebound and the very anvil split asunder. — Pliny the Elder, Historia naturalis

Ca. 1300 — The first trade routes to Europe

Diamonds begin to appear in European jewels through the 13th and 14th centuries. Venice was the earliest trading capital, and there, sometime after 1330, came the first attempts to polish the natural faces and blunt the damaged points of the rough. By the close of the 14th century the route had reached Bruges and Paris, and in time Antwerp. When Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1499, Europe could at last reach India directly: Goa became the Portuguese trading centre, and a diamond route ran Goa to Lisbon to Antwerp, carrying a yearly import of one to two thousand carats until 1725.

1475 — The early round brilliant is born

In 1475 the Scaif appears — a polishing wheel charged with a paste of olive oil and diamond dust, the invention of Lodewyk van Berken of Bruges. With it comes a revolutionary idea: absolute symmetry in the placement of facets. In 1565 Benvenuto Cellini gives the first written description of diamond-polishing equipment. The craft of releasing light from the stone has begun.

17th century — Jean-Baptiste Tavernier

The intrepid French trader Jean-Baptiste Tavernier was the first European granted leave to visit the Indian diamond fields. In Les six voyages de Jean-Baptiste Tavernier he describes the Coulour mines near Golconda, famous for their precious stones, and records the larger diamonds and the myths that had gathered around them. His most celebrated acquisition was a remarkable blue diamond — the stone we know today as the Hope.

A new era — Brazil, Africa and Russia

Year	Event	Effect on production
1725	New deposits found in Brazil	Lisbon imports rise from 1,000—2,000 to 100,000—200,000 carats
1867	Secondary deposits found in South Africa	The African era begins
1870	First primary deposits at Kimberley	Rough production climbs steadily
1877	—	1.8 million carats
1892	—	3 million carats
1913	—	6 million carats
1949	Russian deposits found in Siberia	A further 15 million carats added to world output

From a single Sanskrit line to the Siberian fields, the diamond’s history is the slow widening of a once-royal secret — until the unbreakable stone, known for so long to kings only, became the most recognised gem on earth.