NYT: Identifying Diamonds

From the 5 July 2006 New York Times:

At This Lab, No Stone is left Unturned or Unmarked

One of the features making Gem Certification and Assurance certificates effective is the use of a device called Gemprint, which, by shining a laser through a diamond, captures its unique sparkle pattern, just like a human fingerprint. A copy of this Gemprint image goes on each G.C.A.L. certificate, making it impossible to switch stones or claim a stone is better than it really is. The guarantee can only be thwarted by completely recutting a diamond, at a considerable loss in size and value.

Once G.C.A.L. has certified a diamond, company experts use a cold laser to engrave a logo and serial number onto its rim, though Mr. Palmieri admits that such markings, only a few microns deep, could be easily removed.

NYT: Earliest Jewelry

 

From the 23 June 2006 New York Times:

Old Shells Suggest Early Human Adornment

Archaeologists say they have found evidence that in one respect people were behaving like thoroughly modern humans as early as 100,000 years ago: they were apparently decorating themselves with a kind of status-defining jewelry -- the earliest known shell necklaces.

If this interpretation is correct, it means that human self-adornment, considered a manifestation of symbolic thinking, was practiced at least 25,000 years earlier than previously thought.

Jewelry was probably one of the earliest ways people conveyed aspects of their social and cultural identities.