By Alistair Thomson
Dakar - Ancient Greeks believed them the tears of the gods, while the Romans thought they were splinters of fallen stars.
Diamonds have held a mystical place across many cultures since recorded history began, from their use in Hindu devotional objects in India 2 400 years ago to amulets and lucky charms.
One of the hardest substances known to man, diamonds also have their practical uses and have long ground, cut and pierced their way through increasingly hi-tech industrial processes.
| 'A lasting memory that endures just as a diamond does. Forever' |
But, when Erasmus Jacobs picked up a heavy white pebble near the banks of South Africa's Orange River in 1867, he can hardly have suspected his find would help put a smile on the faces and a sparkle on the ring fingers of millions of young brides around the world.
The discovery two years later of an even larger diamond saw adventurers from across the globe converge on South Africa in the "great diamond rush", digging several huge mines around Kimberley including one known simply as "The Big Hole".
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Apart from the huge increase in world diamond output, South Africa's diamond rush changed the nature of the industry worldwide when British colonial entrepreneur Cecil Rhodes secured control over rights to two of the biggest mines.
In 1888 Rhodes formed De Beers - named after the farmers whose land the mines were on - which rapidly became the dominant force in production and sales of rough diamonds worldwide, a position it still holds to this day.
"Diamonds are forever / Sparkling round my little finger / Unlike men, the diamonds linger / Men are mere mortals who are not worth going to your grave for," sang Shirley Bassey in the title song to the eponymous 1971 James Bond box office hit.
Two decades later hundreds of thousands of Africans were going to their shallow graves in the name of diamonds in wars driven by greed and brutal battles for the diamond fields of Sierra Leone, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The public outcry over conflict or "blood diamonds" led by British-based lobby Global Witness threatened to take the lustre off the image of the gems, carefully developed and nurtured by De Beers through decades of costly advertising to underpin its virtual monopoly on global sales of rough stones.
A girl's best friend had become an AK-47-wielding rebel's best friend, hardly the romantic image desired by De Beers - or by blushing brides.
The industry hit back with the "Kimberley Process", a scheme designed to squeeze blood diamonds out of the market by issuing certificates proving gems had been legitimately mined.
But with polished diamonds virtually impossible to trace to the mine they came from and uncertain controls in a notoriously opaque industry, it is unclear how successful the scheme is.
De Beers now finds itself fighting a public relations battle on another front since Bushmen hunter-gatherers in Botswana, the biggest diamond producer by value, linked government evictions from their traditional hunting grounds to mining rights.
De Beers denies any link but has been confronted by Bushmen and their high-profile celebrity supporters, with protests at the recent opening of its first United States store and at an exhibition of some of the world's rarest and most valuable diamonds that opened this weekend in London's Natural History Museum.
Nevertheless, with more than $60-billion worth of diamond jewellery sold last year, the gems' lustre seems to be intact.
"They are all I need to please me / They can stimulate and tease me / They won't leave in the night, I've no fear that they might desert me / Diamonds are forever," Bassey sang.
Some take her words literally: for a fee US-based Lifegem offers to subject your loved one's cremated remains to intense pressure and heat to create a unique customised gem, as "a lasting memory that endures just as a diamond does. Forever".
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