The world’s love of diamonds started in India where diamonds were gathered from the country’s rivers and streams. Historians claim that India was trading in diamonds as early as the 4th century BC. In the early 1700s, as India’s diamond supplies began to decline, Brazil emerged as an important source when diamonds were discovered by gold miners as they filtered through the gravels of local rivers. Once it reached its full potential, Brazil controlled the diamond market for more than 150 years.

The story of the modern diamond market began on the African continent, when diamonds were discovered in Kimberley, South Africa in 1866. Cecil Rhodes established De Beers Consolidated Mines Limited only 22 years later, in 1888. By 1900, De Beers, through its mines in South Africa, dominated 90% of the world’s production of rough diamonds.

At the end of the 1970s, South Africa, Zaire (now renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo), and the former Soviet Union were the world’s most important rough diamond producers. In 1982 a new productive mine in Botswana called the Jwaneng mine added to world production. This source of high quality diamonds boosted Botswana’s production so much that the country became third in the world in total diamond recovery, and second in diamond value.

Diamond mining increased dramatically worldwide with the discovery of sources in Australia in 1985 and important new deposits in northern Canada in 2000.