Monday Geology Picture: Kimberlite in Kimberley

For this week’s “Monday Geology Picture”, here’s a snap of a mine cart filled with kimberlite rocks — and a mantle xenolith or two. I took this picture last year when I visited The Big Hole Museum in Kimberley, South Africa. The rock kimberlite was named after the town of Kimberley, of course! For those who are unfamiliar, kimberlite is the ore that is mined for diamonds, and many of the early diamond mines in South Africa were located in the vicinity of Kimberley. One of those old mines, which is called The Big Hole or Kimberley Mine, has been turned into a museum. The museum is well worth visiting if you find yourself in this part of South Africa.

Here’s a closer view of some of the rocks in the cart:

Book Review: Diamonds, Gold, and War

My thick paperback copy of Diamonds, Gold, and War.

Earlier this week I shared a picture of a few books on diamonds that are on my current reading list. I’ve also mentioned in a couple of previous posts that I’d like to share with you a little information about some of the geology-themed books that I’ve read recently.

Today I’ll be blogging about the first book, which is titled Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa. The book was published in 2007 and was written by Martin Meredith, a journalist, biographer, and historian who has also written several other non-fiction books about Africa, such as Mugabe: Power, Plunder, and the Struggle for Zimbabwe’s Future and The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair. Meredith has also written an intriguing looking book titled Born in Africa: The Quest for the Origins of Human Life that I’ve just added to my reading list – so perhaps I’ll review that book later in the year!

I read Diamonds, Gold, and War (hereafter abbreviated as DGW) over a couple months last year. The book is thick, so it took me a few airplane trips and many nights at home to read through. Although it took me awhile to read, without a doubt DGW is the most interesting and important book that I read last year. The book provides a detailed account of key events in South African history focusing on the 1870s to the 1910s. During this time period, rich deposits of diamonds and gold were discovered and developed into mines, kicking off the modern economic development of the region and a legacy of mining that continues to be important to the South African economy to this day. Some of the mineral deposits that were first discovered in South Africa over a hundred years ago are still being mined in today. Several large mining companies, such as De Beers, were founded in South Africa during this time period. However, while the rich mineral deposits played an important role in the economic development of the country, they also led to a fierce battle to control the new-found riches. At the turn of the century, the British battled the Afrikaner Boers for control of southern Africa, waging a costly and bloody war that badly affected both parties. In addition, businessmen such as Cecil Rhodes schemed to dominate the mining industry, ruthlessly forcing aside the competition. During this time period, South Africa’s mineral wealth was largely controlled by a few individuals, who often exploited their mine workers and who did not put much emphasis on health and safety standards, considering mine injuries and deaths to simply be part of the cost of doing business.

Here’s an excerpt from the book’s introduction:

“… in 1871, prospectors exploring a remote area of sun-scorched scrubland in Griqualand, just outside the Cape’s borders, discovered the world’s richest deposits of diamonds. Britain promptly snatched the territory from the Orange Free State. Fifteen years later, an itinerant English digger, George Harrison, stumbled across the rocky outcrop of a gold-bearing reef on a ridge named by Transvaal farmers as the Witwatersrand. Beneath the reef lay the richest deposits of gold ever discovered. The gold strike transformed the Transvaal from an impoverished rural republic into a glittering prize.

What followed was a titanic struggle fought by the British to gain supremacy throughout southern Africa and by the Boers to preserve the independence of their republics. It culminated in the costliest, bloodiest and most humiliating war that Britain had waged in nearly a century…

Two men personified the struggle: Cecil Rhodes and Paul Kruger. Rhodes, the son of an English country parson, used his huge fortunes from diamonds and gold to promote the expansion of the British empire as well as his own business interests… Paul Kruger, the Boer leader and landowner, whose only education was the Bible and who believed the earth was flat, defied Britain’s prime ministers and generals for nearly a quarter of a century.”

DGW covers a fascinating and important time period in South Africa’s history. The book is thoroughly researched and contains several pages of historical pictures and maps. Although the book is long (570 pages) and a little cumbersome at times, overall it is extremely readable – it’s not dry history at all. The book is full of rich detail and anecdotes. In particular, Meredith paints a vivid picture of Cecil Rhodes and Paul Kruger, two of the most influential – and also the most controversial – figures of the time period. Meredith also paints a vivid picture of the early days in the mining towns of Kimberly (diamonds) and Johannesburg (gold).

Personally, the book was an important one for me to read. I’ve been living in South Africa for nearly five years. During this time period, I’ve worked as a geologist in both the diamond and gold industries. Fortunately, the mining industry in South Africa looks quite different today than it did back in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Today, mining companies are much more socially responsible, and there is also a great emphasis placed on the health and safety of employees. The modern South African mining industry isn’t perfect, but it has come a long, long way. I found it extremely valuable to read DGW in order to better understand the origins and complex development of South African’s mining industry. In addition, I found it fascinating to read about how deposits of diamonds and gold were first discovered and developed in South Africa. Fortunately, Meredith’s descriptions of geology are fairly accurate, as history books go! I didn’t spot any glaring geological errors or omissions.

Overall, I highly recommend reading DGW. The book provides a wonderful example of how geology influences history. The discovery of rich mineral deposits in South Africa played a key role in shaping the country’s history and continues to shape the country to this day. If neither diamonds nor gold were discovered in South Africa, the country’s development would likely have taken a radically different path, for better or for worse.

Monday Geology Picture: Diamond Reading List

Three books on my reading list. — Three books on my reading list… one book comes with two maps!

Since I started working for De Beers a little over two years ago, I’ve slowly but surely been learning all about diamonds and diamond geology. I’ve also been learning about the history of diamond mining in southern Africa and elsewhere in the world. In some other posts, I’ll have to share a little about the books on diamonds that I’ve already read. However, for this week’s “Monday Geology Picture” I thought I’d share a picture of three of the next books on my diamond reading list. I’m particularly excited to read the book on occurrences of diamond in South Africa – it comes with two great maps!

What geology books are on your reading list?

Monday Geology Picture: Kolmanskop from Above

Kolmanskop from above #1, February 2015.

Apologies for the short hiatus in my blogging. I’ve been travelling and generally very busy with work these past two weeks. However, I have another “Geology Word of the Week” post coming up soon, so stay tuned!

Today I want to share another view of the abandoned diamond mining town of Kolmanskop. I’m currently in Namibia for business, and I flew over Kolmanksop earlier today and managed to snap a few aerial pictures of the town with my phone. I previously visited Kolmanskop on the ground, and I shared some pictures here and here. However, I like these aerial views of Kolmanskop. They show the small buildings surrounded by a sea of sand, with the real sea sparkling blue on the horizon.

Kolmanksop from above #1, February 2015. — Kolmanksop from above #2, February 2015.

Kolmanskop from above #3, February 2015.

Monday Geology Picture: Sand Sign at Kolmanskop

An appropriate sign near Kolmanskop, Namibia. — A road sign near Kolmanskop, Namibia.

For this week’s “Monday Geology Picture” I’m sharing another picture from Kolmanskop, an abandoned diamond mining town in Namibia. Many of the buildings at Kolmanskop have been partially filled with sand. You can see more of my pictures from Kolmanskop here. When you drive along the paved road near Kolmanskop, you pass a roadside warning sign that says “Sand”. I suppose that the sign is warning drivers about sand covering the road or perhaps sandstorms creating poor visibility for driving, but when I saw the sign I thought that it was quite funny because it really states the obvious. Of course there is sand in the Namib Desert, especially at Kolmanskop!

Does anyone else have pictures of fun geologically themed roadsigns?

Kolmanskop in Pictures

Kolmanskop #1. Sitting on some sand in one of the abandoned houses.

Last month I spent some time in Namibia for work. During one of my days off, I was able to spend some time visiting Kolmanskop. Located in the Namib Desert a few miles outside of the seaside town of Lüderitz, Kolmanskop is a “Ghost Town” that is the remains of a former diamond mining town. Kolmanskop was founded shortly after diamonds were discovered in the region in 1908 and was abandoned to the elements in 1954, after the diamond supply was depleted. Over the last sixty years, Kolmanskop has been decaying in the desert, battered by the wind and swept over with sand. Today, many of the buildings are half-filled with sand. The discarded possessions of the town’s former inhabitants are either slowly disintegrating in the open air or are precariously protected by glass display cases. The town of Kolmanskop is managed as a tourist attraction by the diamond mining company Namdeb. Tourists can pay a fee to visit the town during certain hours. At their own risk, tourists can wander through the abandoned buildings.

Visiting Kolmanskop was a fascinating and surreal experience. As I explored the ghostly town, I felt keenly aware of the insignificance and ephemeral nature of my life. I wondered if, one day years from now, a young woman will wander through the decaying remains of my home… or perhaps come across a former possession of mine– maybe a book, with my name written on the front cover, dusty in the corner of an antique shop– and wonder, just for a moment, about the object’s former owner. Wandering through Kolmanskop, I found myself thinking about one of my favorite Carl Sagan quotations, from the book Pale Blue Dot:

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there- on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

With that quotation in mind, enjoy my pictures from Kolmanskop:

Forget Rent… I’m Moving to the Smithsonian

Elephant in the Rotunda, Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Picture taken from wikipedia here.

There is nothing better than having an empty museum all to yourself. If I ever become wealthy, I think that I’ll rent out the great museums of the world at odd hours so that I can quietly appreciate them. Or maybe I’ll just hone my burglary skills and sneak it at night. I’m not interested in stealing anything, just enjoying the richness of the exhibits without all the lines, tourists, and misbehaving toddlers.

One of my favorite books from childhood is From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, a book about a little girl and her brother who run away from home and live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a week or so. After all of the tourists go home for the day, the two children have the run of the museum, bathing in the public fountain, sleeping in an antique bed in one of the exhibits, and generally having a good time with all of the artwork and artifacts. After reading this book, I nearly packed a bag and ran away to the nearest big museum, which fortunately was several hours away. Running away from home is not easily accomplished by an eight-year-old stuck in rural New Hampshire with no public transportation.

Just over a year ago [Note: in 2005 since this is a re-post], I was again ready to run away from home (well, from my apartment, I guess…) and move into a museum. More specifically, I was ready to move into the Smithsonian Department of Mineral Sciences, the behind-the-scenes home of the thousands of rocks, minerals, and gems which are not on public display. Far less than 1% of the Smithsonians mineral collection is on display for the public. The reason there is so little on display relates to space constraints, not to lack of impressive specimens.

There are hundreds upon hundreds of more minerals and gems that should be on public display but which are instead tucked away in storage. Yes, I’m quite willing to take sponge baths in the department bathroom and roll out my sleeping bag in one of the labs or collection rooms. So many beautiful samples to appreciate, so little time. I really must move in there.

As part of a summer internship in geochemistry, I went to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum to pick up some volcanic glass samples. Really, the samples could have been Fed-Exed to the lab where I was working, but I was so excited about the prospect of interacting with the curators of the Smithsonian that my summer boss surprised me with a ticket to Washington and meetings with several of the curators.

At couple of weeks later, I flew up to Washington and took the subway to the museum. I went in the public entrance and found the special office where I was signed in as a visitor. Tim, a researcher in the volcanology and petrology division, came down and brought me up to the department. I felt very cool and professional as I was led upstairs– not everyone gets to go behind-the-scenes at the Smithsonian! I was also very curious. Tim led me by doors that had very interesting signs, such as “meteorite collection” and “time-of-flight mass spectrometer” and by laboratories that had intriguing-looking machines and chemicals. I didn’t realize that the Smithsonian did so much research. In addition to taking care of the thousands upon thousands of mineral, gem, and rock samples in their collection, they also actively conduct research on many of the samples.

Within about five minutes of arriving at Tim’s office, my “work” for going up to the Smithsonian was done. Tim had already organized, photographed, and documented the samples I was taking, so all he had to do was hand me the envelope, really. There was an awkward moment or two, then finally I asked somewhat sheepishly and also as politely as possible, “So, could I please see some of your rocks?”

Tim generously indulged my interest, showing me bits and pieces of the volcanological reference collection, the seafloor collection, and the ultramafic xenolith collection. We chatted about rocks and petrology as he browsed for interesting samples. I asked him if there were any fulgurites in the collection, and he showed me several. I’d never seen a fulgurite before, and I was impressed.

After showing me through the rock collections, Tim arranged for me to be shown some of the mineral, gem, and meteorite collections. For the rest of the afternoon, I was given attention by various middle-aged, male curators who clearly don’t see too many pretty, young females in their day-to-day work. They easily impressed me. The mineral collection took my breath away. There were a few particularly impressive samples on display in large glass cases, and the rest were neatly filed away in dozens upon dozens of large, metal cabinets. The curator of the mineral collection knew the place by heart and was a walking encyclopdia of mineral knowledge. He kept trying to find unusual specimens to impress me. At one point, he told me to close my eyes and hold out my hands. He filled my hands with what felt like many crystals, maybe a half-inch in diameter. After a few seconds, my hands become very cold. I felt as if the crystals were sucking all the heat out of my hands. The mineral curator told me to open my eyes, and when I did I saw that there were about two dozen large, raw diamonds in my hands. A single one of those diamond crystals would probably have paid for my college education…

I was able to see only a couple of pieces in the gem collection, which has somewhat tighter security than the rest of the collection. However, who needs gems when you can see meteorites? The meteorite samples are kept in a large, room-sized vault. Another Tim, whom I’ll refer to as “Meteorite Tim,” showed me the collection. There were many impressive samples, but I think I enjoyed looking at the tektites most. Filed away with the tektites were several samples of Libyan Desert Glass, a beautiful yellow-green glass that is actually impact glass created when a meteorite hit the desert sands millions of years ago.

I became so interested in this glass that I wrote an article about it for Skeptic Report shortly after my trip to the Smithsonian. I’m pleased to say that Dr. Farouk al-Baz recently discovered Kabira Crater, the crater formed by the meteorite that almost certainly formed this desert glass. Note that I made a mistake in this article– a small one, but one I think I should point out. Cristobalite is a high-temperature polymorph of quartz, not a high-pressure one. The high-pressure polymorph of quartz is actually sitshovite. You can find both cristobalite and stishovite in the desert glass, I believe, but I’d double-check with Meteorite Tim on that.

Anyway, after showing me many wonderful tektites and meteorites, Meteorite Tim pointed to a very special-looking meteorite sitting in a fancy, round glass case.

“Do you know what that is?” he asked.

I didn’t have a clue. I peered at the rock and guessed, “A moon rock?”

Meteorite Tim picked up the sample, case and all, and put it under a nearby microscope.

“Look there,” he said.

I looked at the microscope, adjusting the focus slightly and trying to look all professional. I saw a few reddish-brown little patches on the rock surface. I still had no idea what I was looking at.

Finally, Meteorite Tim said, “This is ALH 84001.”

I jumped, saying, “Really?” I eagerly peered back through the microscope.

“Is that…?” I couldn’t even finish my question.

“Yes, that’s the little bit of rock that caused the big ‘life on Mars’ debate.”

Microscopic view of ALH84001. Image taken from wikipedia here.

I didn’t see a view of the meteorite that was this close-up, but the above picture gives you a sense of what I was looking at… possible traces of fossil life from another planet. Now, that’s a cool rock.

Honestly, I think that the recent images from Mars showing evidence that water is actively transforming the planet are far more compelling evidence for the potential for life on Mars than some possible little fossilized traces of life in a single Mars meteorite. Still, seeing a rock from Mars– any rock from Mars, since there’s only thirty or so identified Mars rocks here on Earth– is a neat thing to see. I was definitely ready to move into the meteorite vault at that point.

Finally, after several hours of showing me around, I decided that I had taken up enough time of the generous curators and scientists in the Mineral Science Department. I was impressed with how they treated me. I was just an undergraduate student at the time, but they treated me with great respect. Of course, they tried to impress me by showing off their best samples, but in their conversation they engaged me as if I were a colleague of theirs. In a way, I guess I was. After all, I was taking some of their precious rocks away with me.

I think that this story highlights one of the biggest perks of being a scientific researcher: access to all kinds of neat museums and the knowledgeable researchers and curators who work there. Scientists maybe don’t get paid a lot, but who would begrudge, say, The Bad Astronomer a behind-the-scenes tour of a meteorite collection? Maybe my friends with consulting and finance jobs make far more money than I ever will as a scientist, but how many behind-the-scenes tours of the Smithsonian’s Mineral Department have they had? Yes, there are definitely perks to being a scientist.

At the end of my afternoon visit, I walked out the front door of the Smithsonian with three dozen volcanic glass samples in my purse. Security didn’t even check my bag… I should have palmed one of those diamonds. Or, better yet, a meteorite.