THE DISCOVERY OF DIAMONDS IN SOUTH AFRICA. Hopetown Hopetown lies at the edge of the Great Karoo. It...
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Transcript of THE DISCOVERY OF DIAMONDS IN SOUTH AFRICA. Hopetown Hopetown lies at the edge of the Great Karoo. It...
THE DISCOVERY OF DIAMONDS
IN SOUTH AFRICA
Hopetown
• Hopetown lies at the edge of the Great Karoo. It is situated on an arid slope leading down to the Orange River.
• Hopetown was a quiet farming area until several large diamonds were discovered there between 1867 and 1869.
Eureka Diamond• The Eureka Diamond was
discovered by Erasmus Jacobs, 24, on a farm on the Orange River. He was resting under a tree when he saw the stone shining in the sun. Erasmus used the stone in a game of ‘marbles’ until his mother noticed it.
• She mentioned it to a neighbour, Schalk van Niekerk, who offered to buy it but Mrs Jacobs gave it to him for free saying, "You can keep the stone, if you want it".
• He sold it for £500 (which is the equivalent of R900,000 today)
Star of South Africa• The Star of South Africa is a 47.69-
carat white diamond found by a Griqua shepherd boy in 1869 on the banks of the Orange River.
• He sold the stone for 500 sheep, 10 cows and a horse to Schalk van Niekerk, a local farmer famous for having acquired the Eureka Diamond in 1866.
• He sold it for £11,200 (the equivalent of R19 million today).
• The discovery caused many prospectors to rush to this new diamond field known as New Rush (later known as Kimberley).
Why didn’t they recognise its value?
An ugly stone …
… gets cleaned …
… polished and cut …
… and made into jewellery!
Open-pit Mining
• Open-pit mining is a surface mining technique of extracting rock or minerals from the earth by their removal from an open pit.
• This form of mining differs from extractive methods that require tunneling into the earth, such as long wall mining.
Kimberley