Very educational. Miles better than other flashy gem films. Love the end to end journey---from the high end jewel store to the mine in the mountains, to the craft shop, back to the store. The film is rich in local culture and local people's lives. Love the authenticity.
I really like to follow the locations of your videos on Google Earth. Please give us lots of clues to identify the areas. So fun to tag along. I found the remote hot springs!! :)) I am a geologist, and I love geography too. Spinel is my new August birthstone. But this part of the world is a place I knew nothing about. Amazing geology! Spent three wonderful hours watching and studying this. Learned a ton. WONDERFUL.
Wait until you can spot kimberlite complexes from Google Earth. At Creedemore Lakes in Colorado you can see how the lakes (decomposing kimberlite pipes) line up along a NW to SE fracture, up to the northeast is the Chicken Park pipe which was tested to be diamondiferrous. Lost Lakes in Colorado near Creedemore Lakes also appear as a succession of decomposing kimberlite pipes. At Kelsey Lake to the north diamonds were mined for some time and there are still a lot of reserves which aren't currently being mined. You can also find similar structures in the area of Winkler crater kimberlite in Kansas (Riley County?). Kimberlite pipes appear as treeless parks in otherwise forested area since most kimberlites don't support tree growth, there are often distinct vegetation anomalies over the pipes, and there is also the presence of rounded cobbles at the surface that were brought up as Xenoliths and polished by the magma in the chaos of the eruption. Searching streams near kimberlite will likely yield many garnets, chrome diopside, and rarely diamonds that were shed from the pipes over years of erosion.
If you get a chance to visit the ultramafic pipes on the Navajo reservation take the opportunity. Some of the most beautiful spinels I've come across were from these pipes.
How come you have not known Tajikistan if Alexander the Great new it? My point is it is shameful not to know the country, which existed way before the Alexander came to conquer it and made 200 weddings of his soldiers to local girls. Although only one marriage had sustained, which was Selevk's one. Hudjand city still has a citadel had been built by the Alexander Great. Now it is a museum.
i especially like the original story at the beginnings of these documentaries. A very wise queen to listen to the sage. Very sad she got killed and the city sacked. I want to call the stone Lal, now.
Dear Patrick!I love this Spinel for its pink color.Why not bring me a Spinel for starters in our business?How much does this cost plz? And inform me of the Sri Lanka trip to the Moonstone mines there!
Thanks for this look at the MidEast. Bizarre -the fascination for royalty, and pieces of mineral. To me, it is a pity that such things as honesty, loyalty, ethics, justice are given such little value. It kind of seals the fate of this blighted planet.
I rough estimate of what some of these stones would cost to buy would have been nice. I liked seeing the life styles and interaction with the locals. The best part of the presentation. Nice to see how these remote people live.
So there's a tiny chance that wolves might bite off their dogs' ears, so to prevent that they chop off their dogs' ears. Yeah, that totally makes sense.
The real reason is that the wolf can grab hold of an ear and hold the dog until another wolf can rip the dog's throat out. The translation here probably got that messed up.
Dynamite isn’t gentle. Claim Gentle at the beginning then are shown the Dynamiting in the mine. The damage to sizeable stones must be to fracture, producing more smaller pieces for sale. Paid per stone maybe? Or is that being cynical?
It’s just the same when they mine for emeralds in Pakistan they just blow the arse out of them and end up with lots of low grade damaged stones. I get they use old equipment and can’t afford it but you have to spend and invest to get the product out safely like they do in Colombia, hence better stones👍
I don't understand this man goes all around the world gets in everybody's business checks out everybody's Stones goes in everybody's mines and yet never buys a single Stone I don't understand lol
It's a nice change to see men doing a difficult, dangerous and dirty job being treated by their employers with a little of that respect that any human being is entitled to. And they are directly employed by their government, well their government seems to be the sort of people who can be trusted with employees ? What a contrast to those places in Africa and Lattin America.
The film creator is so ignorant and negligent to translate properly.1 The language Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan speak on is FARSI group of languages. The languages are similar but not identical to Iranian one, which is not original for 2 others. 2. Some miner mentioned "Lal" and it is “Ruby” on farsi but not Spinel as it was translated so basically the miner talked about Rubies. And indeed, Tajikistan has rubies, emeralds and spinels as well but not in great funds.3. There are not shamans in Islam as it was presented but the lady has extraordinary abilities of her brain so she can see the future. Only Buddhism fosters shamanism as one of its ways of believes. 4. When will English translators make some efforts to learn a pronunciation of the names in their originality? The letter “H” must be pronounced just the same as the first letter in “house” for the city was named Horog and “Dushanbe” has to be pronounced with a stress on the last syllable and “e” letter. Have not I known the ordinal names I would not be able to understand what places she is talking about in this video.
Believe me the English version is not so bad in comparison to the Russian translation. The latter seems to have been done using Google translator and then read by some degenerate without any correction
The beauty and fire .....no natural colour stone comes close spinel .......its perfect and it usually don't need any human efforts to make it good, spinel taken from earth and cut itself is enough to see the beauty, red spinel is rare then red sapphire(present day ruby) , I really dont understand why scientific community made red sapphire as ruby and left the real ruby( red spinel), scientific community say its because of chemical properties, then the present ruby is more close to sapphire with only addition of chromium, red spinel is rare then present day red sapphire , Science must once again reconsider about Ruby, all the ancient discovery indicates that red spinel had been used in crown jewel, so fact is Red spinel is real ruby
what a primitive way to process the ore! there must be a better way, they are probably loosing 70% of their gems. I am sure a similar system to diamond milling could be used to get far better results.
There’s always a better way in all of these series. They use high explosives that crack the gems in other docs he’s done like Afghanistan/Pakistan. It’s always interesting the locals always dig at the historic mines and geological maps or flying IP or mag isn’t used so they are probably sitting on better deposits if they had modern prospecting methods and drilling. The governments would be well served hiring some geotechnical help but they rarely see the tax money and it’s an endless loop where nobody helps the miners extract gems or gold using better methods. Part of it is they can’t buy explosives like we would use in first world mining operations and use old bombs because the countries are terrorism havens. Afghanistan is the most frustrating one to watch because they dynamite the vein and crack so many Emeralds.
Do you have a documentary on Taaffeite?? I enjoyed your doc on Tanzanites and how they are heat treated to get the color. I would love to hear about how Taaffeites are heat treated to get their colors!!
