WEBVTT - What Makes Something Valuable? (Part One) 0:00:03.160 --> 0:00:07.200 This is Red Pilled America. A quick question before we 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:09.959 start the show. How many shows are there out there 0:00:10.000 --> 0:00:12.920 like Red Pilled America. You know the answer. It's zero, 0:00:13.119 --> 0:00:16.320 and why because it's hard to produce a storytelling show. 0:00:16.840 --> 0:00:20.600 Join the fanbam and support storytelling that aligns with your values. 0:00:21.000 --> 0:00:23.959 Just go to Redpilled America dot com and click join 0:00:24.040 --> 0:00:26.599 in the top menu. You'll get add free access to 0:00:26.680 --> 0:00:30.560 our entire back catalog of episodes. Help us save America 0:00:30.640 --> 0:00:36.040 one story at a time. Throughout recorded history, humans have 0:00:36.120 --> 0:00:42.239 ascribed value to countless items. They become so coveted that 0:00:42.360 --> 0:00:45.800 accumulating them assures life changing wealth. I want to get 0:00:45.880 --> 0:00:49.479 Lucy some real pearls. I just love finding new places 0:00:49.520 --> 0:00:49.800 to wear. 0:00:49.920 --> 0:00:53.440 Diamonds go gentlemen, which can be melted down and recast. 0:00:53.720 --> 0:00:55.000 Its virtually untraceable. 0:00:55.120 --> 0:00:57.640 You look for oil, that's right when you pay for 0:00:57.680 --> 0:00:59.440 a place that has it, it depends. 0:00:59.800 --> 0:01:02.560 You can buy bitcoin. It's the global asset, it's the 0:01:02.600 --> 0:01:03.520 biggest brand. 0:01:03.640 --> 0:01:06.680 It's actually the best thermodynamically sound investment. 0:01:06.800 --> 0:01:10.479 Whether it be pearls, diamonds, rubies, gold, oil, or bitcoin. 0:01:10.880 --> 0:01:13.280 At one time or another, all of these things have 0:01:13.319 --> 0:01:17.680 been considered extremely valuable? But why? What makes something valuable? 0:01:21.319 --> 0:01:22.720 I'm Patrick Carelci. 0:01:22.680 --> 0:01:24.800 And I'm Adriana Cortes. 0:01:24.480 --> 0:01:27.600 And this is Red Pilled America, a storytelling show. 0:01:28.680 --> 0:01:31.199 This is not another talk show covering the day's news. 0:01:31.600 --> 0:01:33.360 We're all about telling stories. 0:01:34.040 --> 0:01:34.480 Stories. 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:37.160 Hollywood doesn't want you to hear stories. 0:01:37.200 --> 0:01:41.920 The media mocks stories about everyday Americans. If the globalist. 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:45.640 Ignore, you can think of Red Pilled America as audio documentaries, 0:01:45.640 --> 0:01:55.160 and we promise only one thing, the truth. Welcome to 0:01:55.200 --> 0:02:07.960 Red Pilled America. What makes something valuable? It's a deceptively 0:02:08.040 --> 0:02:11.239 simple question, and like many Red Pilled America stories, it 0:02:11.360 --> 0:02:15.040 surfaced in an unexpected way. Towards the end of twenty 0:02:15.120 --> 0:02:19.040 twenty five, we watched the price of gold and silver skyrocket. 0:02:19.280 --> 0:02:22.000 The price of gold it has soared into over four 0:02:22.080 --> 0:02:24.720 thousand dollars an ounce for the first time ever, with 0:02:24.880 --> 0:02:29.000 silver also making unprecedented gains. Then a few days later, 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:32.680 we heard an argument about, of all things, lab grown diamonds. 0:02:33.040 --> 0:02:36.320 One side insisted that they were nothing like their natural counterparts. 0:02:36.680 --> 0:02:40.600 The reasoning was straightforward. Lab diamonds may be chemically identical, 0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:44.240 but they're created in days, while natural diamonds take millions 0:02:44.280 --> 0:02:47.359 of years to form deep within the earth. That argument 0:02:47.360 --> 0:02:49.919 immediately brought to mind a scene from the movie Now 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:51.200 You See Me, Now You Don't. 0:02:51.520 --> 0:02:53.480 Diamonds created in laboratories. 0:02:53.760 --> 0:02:57.200 They purported to her value, but they're neither natural nor red. 0:02:57.639 --> 0:03:00.680 What honest woman wants a falsehood on her finger. One 0:03:00.720 --> 0:03:02.960 of the great truths left is the power behind us 0:03:03.160 --> 0:03:06.920 natural jib real diamonds full people with passion. 0:03:07.200 --> 0:03:09.920 The discussion got us curious, so we looked up the 0:03:09.960 --> 0:03:12.960 price of natural diamonds and were stunned by what we'd learned. 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:16.079 Over the past three years, the price of natural diamonds 0:03:16.120 --> 0:03:19.560 has dropped roughly thirty percent, and what was perhaps most 0:03:19.600 --> 0:03:22.080 surprising was that near the end of twenty twenty five, 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:26.840 lab grown diamond engagement rings accounted for nearly sixty percent 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:30.320 of the US market. More than half of new engagement 0:03:30.400 --> 0:03:34.040 rings featured a lab grown diamond, with gold and silver 0:03:34.160 --> 0:03:38.119 skyrocketing while natural diamonds are plummeting in price. It got 0:03:38.160 --> 0:03:42.080 us to wondering what makes something valuable. To find the answer, 0:03:42.200 --> 0:03:45.400 we're going to tell the story of Debier's, the multinational 0:03:45.440 --> 0:03:49.680 diamond company that built the most successful monopoly in modern history. 0:03:53.480 --> 0:03:56.480 Along the way. We'll hear from Kevin de Merritt, founder 0:03:56.560 --> 0:03:59.600 of Lear Capital, one of the largest precious metal firms 0:03:59.640 --> 0:04:02.720 in the United States. When you strip away the romance, 0:04:02.760 --> 0:04:06.520 the marketing, and the carefully crafted illusions, the question of 0:04:06.640 --> 0:04:10.520 value becomes surprisingly difficult to answer. And what you discover 0:04:10.840 --> 0:04:13.280 again and again is that many of the things that 0:04:13.360 --> 0:04:17.239 humanity has prized most highly weren't naturally valuable at all. 0:04:17.600 --> 0:04:19.520 Their value was manufactured. 0:04:22.400 --> 0:04:28.760 It's eighteen seventy one in the northern cape of South Africa. 0:04:29.000 --> 0:04:33.400 Wind is blowing through the uncultivated grassland. Cattle is shuffling 0:04:33.520 --> 0:04:38.440 lazily in the distance, while a young mix raced laborer 0:04:38.640 --> 0:04:41.960 is doing what he always does, walking the same dusty 0:04:42.040 --> 0:04:45.400 path on the farm of two brothers. He's not searching 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:50.840 for anything, He's just working. Then he kicks a stone. 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:54.440 It catches his eye, a flash of light in the 0:04:54.520 --> 0:04:58.800 South African dirt. He bends down, brushes away the soil, 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:03.240 and lifts the tiny rough stone in the palm of 0:05:03.279 --> 0:05:07.799 his hand to him. It just looks different. But little 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:09.720 did he know that the stone in his hand is 0:05:09.760 --> 0:05:12.599 about to set off a chain reaction that will lead 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:16.200 to one of the most powerful monopolies in human history, 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:19.400 because what this laborer is holding is one of the 0:05:19.560 --> 0:05:23.359 rarest gems in existence, a diamond, and he found it 0:05:23.400 --> 0:05:26.400 on a farm that would come to be known as Debir's. 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:31.159 To understand the significance of this moment, we must go 0:05:31.320 --> 0:05:34.799 back way back to a time when diamonds were first 0:05:34.839 --> 0:05:42.000 recorded in human history. For most of human civilization, if 0:05:42.040 --> 0:05:45.640 you wanted a diamond, you had one place to go, India. 0:05:46.760 --> 0:05:49.800 For more than two thousand years, India was the only 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:53.920 known source of diamonds on Earth. These durable stones came 0:05:53.960 --> 0:05:57.920 from the river gravels of a region called Golconda, and 0:05:57.960 --> 0:06:00.919 they were nothing like those found in the massive mines 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:05.480 of South Africa. They were any rare, hard, and almost 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:11.080 impossible to get. Imagine this, hundreds of laborers standing waist 0:06:11.160 --> 0:06:15.359 deep in muddy rivers, scooping gravel into baskets, sifting and 0:06:15.600 --> 0:06:19.120 washing hour after hour, day after day, all for the 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:23.039 chance that maybe one in tens of thousands of pebbles 0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:27.640 would flash back a hard, cold light that was a diamond. 0:06:28.400 --> 0:06:31.719 Prior to the eighteen hundreds, the entire world production of 0:06:31.800 --> 0:06:35.719 gem quality diamonds amounted to only a few pounds a year. 0:06:36.240 --> 0:06:39.880 Their rarity gave them an instant mystique. They weren't just 0:06:39.960 --> 0:06:44.280 pretty stones. They were strange. They would scratch any other material. 0:06:44.600 --> 0:06:46.800 They were durable enough to where they didn't seem to 0:06:46.839 --> 0:06:51.640 wear down. Like gold, they didn't corrode, decay, tarnish, or degrade. 0:06:52.040 --> 0:06:56.320 And also, like gold, diamonds sparkle. They caught the light 0:06:56.440 --> 0:07:00.239 in a way other gems didn't. For early rulers and priests, 0:07:00.560 --> 0:07:04.600 they felt supernatural, so from the beginning, diamonds were never 0:07:04.720 --> 0:07:08.159 a normal luxury. They weren't like cloth or spices, or 0:07:08.160 --> 0:07:11.520 even gold coins that passed from hand to hand. They 0:07:11.520 --> 0:07:15.840 were whispers from the gods, tiny pieces of indestructible light. 0:07:16.680 --> 0:07:19.600 In the ancient world, almost no one ever saw one. 0:07:19.960 --> 0:07:24.560 They were reserved for royalty, mystics and religious figures. Diamonds 0:07:24.560 --> 0:07:28.320 were mounted into idols, set into ceremonial weapons, or sown 0:07:28.360 --> 0:07:31.280 into robes that only the most powerful humans on earth 0:07:31.320 --> 0:07:35.240 would ever wear. And because they were small and extremely valuable, 0:07:35.480 --> 0:07:39.280 they had another quality as well. They were portable. They 0:07:39.280 --> 0:07:42.240 could be sewn into a hem or slipped into a seam, 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:45.840 providing the flexibility of carrying a small fortune in the 0:07:45.880 --> 0:07:49.080 lining of a cloak. Long before there was a phrase 0:07:49.160 --> 0:07:53.120 like stock portfolio, diamonds began to develop a second identity, 0:07:53.720 --> 0:07:56.800 not just as symbols of divine power, but as tiny, 0:07:56.960 --> 0:08:00.920 portable storehouses of wealth. Because if something can't be concealed 0:08:01.040 --> 0:08:04.080 or carried in times of upheaval, it struggles to function 0:08:04.160 --> 0:08:06.840 as a long term store of value during times of stress. 0:08:07.600 --> 0:08:11.080 That's why gold and silver, coins and diamonds were considered 0:08:11.160 --> 0:08:15.560 valuable to refugees and land and factories were not. By 0:08:15.600 --> 0:08:18.640 the Middle Ages, those Indian diamonds had made their way 0:08:18.680 --> 0:08:22.360 west along the same trade routes that carried silk, spices 0:08:22.400 --> 0:08:26.440 and porcelain. Muslim merchants baried them through Persia, and the 0:08:26.520 --> 0:08:30.080 levant Italian traders brought them to the courts of Europe. 0:08:30.320 --> 0:08:34.439 Little by little, diamonds began appearing in royal treasuries in France, 0:08:34.559 --> 0:08:37.760 England and the German States. But if you look at 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:41.080 who handled them, who cut them, and who evaluated them, 0:08:41.280 --> 0:08:47.240 a pattern emerges. Many of the hands holding those stones 0:08:47.280 --> 0:08:50.920 belonged to Jews, and this was not by accident. Medieval 0:08:50.960 --> 0:08:53.800 Europe ran on a system of guilds. If you wanted 0:08:53.800 --> 0:08:56.800 to be a carpenter, mason or goldsmith. You didn't just 0:08:56.840 --> 0:08:59.720 decide one day to open a shop. You joined a guild, 0:09:00.000 --> 0:09:03.920 a powerful fraternity of craftsmen that controlled training prices and 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:07.199 who was allowed to work. Guilds weren't just labor unions. 0:09:07.360 --> 0:09:11.160 They were social clubs, religious institutions, and protection rackets all 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:14.760 mixed together, and there was one basic rule. You had 0:09:14.800 --> 0:09:17.880 to be Christian. If you weren't Christian, if you were 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:20.600 Jewish or any other faith for that matter, you were 0:09:20.640 --> 0:09:23.959 locked out of most of the respectable trades. You couldn't 0:09:23.960 --> 0:09:27.319 become a master carpenter, you couldn't become a guild goldsmith. 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:30.800 Your options shrank to a tiny list of professions that 0:09:30.880 --> 0:09:34.440 lay outside guild control. Two of those professions were money 0:09:34.520 --> 0:09:37.960 lending and gem polishing, and those turned out to be 0:09:38.040 --> 0:09:42.080 the perfect combination for diamonds. Christian doctrine at the time 0:09:42.200 --> 0:09:45.920 frowned on usury, or lending money at interest, so the 0:09:46.040 --> 0:09:49.520 Church pushed Christians away from the business of high interest lending. 0:09:49.800 --> 0:09:54.360 But economies still needed loans. Kings, princes, and merchants. They 0:09:54.440 --> 0:09:57.960 all needed people willing to extend credit to expand an 0:09:58.000 --> 0:10:01.480 empire or go to war, or corner or market that 0:10:01.600 --> 0:10:04.280 vacuum was filled in large parts by the Jewish community. 0:10:05.320 --> 0:10:09.319 Money lending requires collateral. Something that holds value, is portable 0:10:09.360 --> 0:10:12.400 and can be redeemed in any major city. Land isn't 0:10:12.400 --> 0:10:16.560 practical for that livestock dies. But throughout history gold and 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:17.760 silver fit that bill. 0:10:17.880 --> 0:10:20.280 I mean, gold has been around for a long time 0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:23.920 and most people kind of remember talking about it in 0:10:23.960 --> 0:10:24.440 the Bible. 0:10:29.040 --> 0:10:32.240 That's Kevin de Merritt, founder of Leer Capital, one of 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:35.000 the largest precious metal firms in the United States. 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:37.400 Gold began as a store of value in four thousand 0:10:37.440 --> 0:10:41.680 BC in ancient Egypt, and silver followed very closely after. 0:10:42.200 --> 0:10:45.720 Was widely used as accounting money, where prices and wages 0:10:45.760 --> 0:10:49.120 were denominated in silver by weight. So by around six 0:10:49.240 --> 0:10:52.400 or seven hundred BC, the first standardized coins using gold 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:55.520 and silver, making really the birth of money as it's 0:10:55.600 --> 0:10:56.640 recognized today. 0:10:57.040 --> 0:11:00.280 Throughout history, gold and silver have been so widely viewed 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:03.840 as holding value that systems had to be to protect 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:05.119 coins from scammers. 0:11:05.280 --> 0:11:08.440 A great story about the Romans was in the beginning, 0:11:08.640 --> 0:11:11.439 people would take their gold coins and they would shave 0:11:11.520 --> 0:11:14.079 off a little the edge of the coin, right, you 0:11:14.080 --> 0:11:15.720 would just get the coin to shave off the edge. 0:11:15.840 --> 0:11:18.880 So some people believe that the reeds, the little you 0:11:18.920 --> 0:11:21.480 know things on the edge of the coin, were there 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:24.000 so you can hold onto the coin. That isn't the case. 0:11:24.080 --> 0:11:26.080 They put the reeds on the edge of the coins, 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:28.240 the Romans did so you couldn't scrape them off. 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:31.120 So gold and silver have been viewed as valuable for 0:11:31.240 --> 0:11:34.439 thousands of years. They were used in money lending as 0:11:34.480 --> 0:11:37.360 collateral because they held value, were portable, and could be 0:11:37.400 --> 0:11:40.920 redeemed in any major city. When diamonds came along, they 0:11:40.920 --> 0:11:43.880 were added to gold and silver as collateral for lending. 0:11:44.280 --> 0:11:48.480 That's because they were all globally recognizable wherever you went. 0:11:48.679 --> 0:11:51.320 They were viewed as valuable, and in some ways in 0:11:51.400 --> 0:11:56.400 medieval Europe, diamonds had an added benefit. If you were 0:11:56.480 --> 0:12:00.120 Jewish in a Christian kingdom, your safety was never guaranteed. 0:12:02.320 --> 0:12:05.440 Edicts could be announced, crowds could turn, you could be 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:08.080 expelled on a short notice from the place your family 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:11.559 had lived for generations. In that world, wealth that can 0:12:11.600 --> 0:12:15.280 be moved overnight is more than just convenient, it's life saving. 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:20.480 So diamonds served two roles at once, collateral for loans 0:12:20.720 --> 0:12:24.000 and an emergency vault. That could be stitched into your 0:12:24.080 --> 0:12:29.360 clothing over generations that created expertise. Diamonds were not as 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:32.920 fungible as gold or silver. Fungible, meaning one diamond gem 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:35.880 couldn't just be traded for another of the same size, 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:38.680 unlike a gold or silver coin that could be traded 0:12:38.679 --> 0:12:40.920 for another gold or silver coin of the same weight. 0:12:41.240 --> 0:12:47.760 Diamonds come in different colors and qualities. Jewish traders and craftsmen, 0:12:47.960 --> 0:12:51.000 locked out of the guild system began developing a deep 0:12:51.040 --> 0:12:54.280 familiarity with these stones, how to evaluate them, how to 0:12:54.320 --> 0:12:56.840 cut them, how to move them quietly from one royal 0:12:56.880 --> 0:13:04.040 court to another. As one historian put it, by the 0:13:04.080 --> 0:13:08.880 early modern period, diamonds and Jewish communities had become intimately connected, 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:12.760 and once that connection was established, it shaped the entire 0:13:12.880 --> 0:13:14.240 global diamond trade. 0:13:14.640 --> 0:13:19.000 From the outside, it looks almost accidental. Jewish communities were 0:13:19.000 --> 0:13:23.480 scattered across the map in Lisbon, Antwerp, Venice, Hamburg and Vienna. 0:13:23.760 --> 0:13:27.160 They were connected by family ties, by letters sent from Afar, 0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:30.360 and by trade. They already had this skeleton of a 0:13:30.400 --> 0:13:33.880 cross border network. At the exact moment the world needed 0:13:33.880 --> 0:13:37.520 a cross border network to move tiny, high value objects, 0:13:38.000 --> 0:13:41.200 so diamonds began to flow along the Jewish trade routes. 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:45.760 Lisbon and Antwerp became early hubs ports where Indian stones 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:49.560 entered Europe, got evaluated and cut, then made their way 0:13:49.640 --> 0:13:53.439 into the crowns and jewelry boxes of kings and queens. 0:13:53.559 --> 0:14:01.680 Then history intervened. In fourteen ninety two, the Spanish monarchy 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:06.360 issued the Alhambrad Decree expelling Jews from Spain. In Portugal, 0:14:06.640 --> 0:14:11.240 similar pressures followed across the Iberian world. Jewish communities faced 0:14:11.280 --> 0:14:15.840 a simple choice convert or leave. Many left. When Jews 0:14:15.840 --> 0:14:18.720 were forced out of Lisbon and Antwerp, they carried their 0:14:18.720 --> 0:14:22.360 skills with them and their hand tools. A factory wasn't 0:14:22.400 --> 0:14:25.520 needed to cut diamonds. All that was needed was a bench, 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:28.280 a wheel, and some powder, all of which could fit 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:31.920 into a cart. So when those families resettled in Amsterdam, 0:14:32.160 --> 0:14:36.400 they didn't just start over, they remade the industry. Amsterdam 0:14:36.480 --> 0:14:40.040 quickly became the new center of European diamond cutting. At 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:42.840 the same time, the Dutch Republic was rising as a 0:14:42.880 --> 0:14:47.520 maritime power. Its great trading company, the Dutch East India Company, 0:14:47.760 --> 0:14:52.360 wanted direct access to Indian goods. Jewish merchants helped finance 0:14:52.400 --> 0:14:55.760 those voyages and in return secured their place in a 0:14:55.840 --> 0:15:00.560 lucrative trade. Soon Amsterdam replaced Lisbon as the main European 0:15:00.600 --> 0:15:04.520 portal for Indian diamonds. Stones came in on Dutch ships, 0:15:04.680 --> 0:15:07.520 got cut by Jewish craftsmen, and headed back out in 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:11.960 refined form into the royal courts of Europe. Then, in 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:16.000 seventeen twenty five, the world caught a break. For centuries, 0:15:16.040 --> 0:15:19.120 people had worried that India was running out of diamonds. 0:15:19.520 --> 0:15:23.480 The trickle of stones was slowing, prices were rising. There 0:15:23.560 --> 0:15:27.440 was a real fear that diamonds, these symbols of indestructible wealth, 0:15:27.680 --> 0:15:31.120 might actually disappear. Then a discovery was made in an 0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:35.440 unlikely place. In the early seventeen hundreds, miners searching for 0:15:35.520 --> 0:15:40.440 gold and Brazilian river beds started finding unfamiliar stones. They 0:15:40.480 --> 0:15:44.560 were hard, they scratched metal, They looked suspiciously like diamonds, 0:15:44.960 --> 0:15:48.360 or had got back to Europe. Tests confirmed it. The 0:15:48.400 --> 0:15:52.320 world had a second diamond source. For a while, Brazilian 0:15:52.400 --> 0:15:56.960 stones eased the pressure. European elites could keep buying, jewelers 0:15:57.000 --> 0:16:01.240 could keep designing, but the geopolitical balance was shifting. By 0:16:01.240 --> 0:16:05.400 the mid eighteenth century, Britain dominated the seas, its navy 0:16:05.400 --> 0:16:08.760 controlled the shipping lanes, and as a result, its trading 0:16:08.800 --> 0:16:13.240 companies muscled their way into every profitable enterprise. So it's 0:16:13.280 --> 0:16:16.840 no surprise that Britain gradually took control of the diamond 0:16:16.840 --> 0:16:20.520 trade as well. London, not Amsterdam, became the new trading 0:16:20.560 --> 0:16:24.720 center for uncut stones, and once again the merchants followed. 0:16:25.040 --> 0:16:29.120 Jewish diamond traders moved their operations to London, keeping their 0:16:29.120 --> 0:16:32.880 cutting factories in Antwerp, where labor and expertise were established, 0:16:33.000 --> 0:16:36.600 and shipped finished gems to royal courts across Europe. At 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:39.200 the top of this ecosystem sat a small number of 0:16:39.240 --> 0:16:43.920 elite specialists, expert evaluators, and financers who became known as 0:16:43.960 --> 0:16:48.560 court Jews, trusted Jewish advisers who handled loans, jewels, and 0:16:48.640 --> 0:16:52.960 delicate diplomacy for kings. In Sweden, this role was filled 0:16:52.960 --> 0:16:56.360 by the Isaac family, and Hamburg by the Lippolds, and 0:16:56.440 --> 0:16:59.520 in Vienna by the Oppenheimer's, a name that will hear 0:16:59.600 --> 0:17:02.960 again later in this story. By the late seventeen hundreds, 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:07.240 Jewish traders controlled virtually the entire world of diamond traffic, 0:17:07.560 --> 0:17:10.639 but there was a problem they couldn't solve. The earth 0:17:10.680 --> 0:17:13.719 seemed to be running out of the shiny stone again, 0:17:14.280 --> 0:17:19.119 Brazilian production began to fade. India's supply was nearly exhausted 0:17:19.160 --> 0:17:22.080 as well. By the eighteen sixties, it looked like the 0:17:22.119 --> 0:17:25.520 age of diamonds was coming to an end. Then a 0:17:25.600 --> 0:17:28.280 boy on the far tip of South Africa picked up 0:17:28.280 --> 0:17:36.560 a shiny rock and it changed everything. 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Brazilian production 0:18:55.480 --> 0:18:59.280 began to fade. Handhandlers sifting through the riverbeds were coming 0:18:59.359 --> 0:19:04.040 up dry. India's supply was nearly exhausted as well. By 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:07.160 the eighteen sixties, it looked like the age of diamonds 0:19:07.240 --> 0:19:10.880 was coming to an end. But then in eighteen seventy one, 0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:14.000 a mixed raced laborer was walking on a farm in 0:19:14.040 --> 0:19:16.760 the Northern Cape of South Africa when he saw a 0:19:16.800 --> 0:19:19.879 glint of light in the dirt. The property he was 0:19:19.920 --> 0:19:23.560 on belonged to two brothers, Dietereric and Johannes de Bier, 0:19:24.040 --> 0:19:28.200 ordinary Boer farmers who thought they owned pasture, not treasure. 0:19:28.920 --> 0:19:32.680 Unknown to the Deber brothers, an onslaught of diamond prospectors 0:19:32.880 --> 0:19:36.280 had been flooding to their area. Four years earlier, a 0:19:36.359 --> 0:19:39.160 shepherd boy was walking on a farm near the Orange River, 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:42.600 about eighty miles southwest of the Deber property when he 0:19:42.640 --> 0:19:45.320 found a shiny pebble in the dirt. He picked it 0:19:45.400 --> 0:19:48.360 up and took it home. His family treated it as 0:19:48.359 --> 0:19:52.320 a curiosity. Kids played with it. It got passed around 0:19:52.400 --> 0:19:55.560 like a toy. Eventually the stone found its way to 0:19:55.600 --> 0:19:59.119 a neighboring farmer, a man named Schok van Niekirk. He 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:02.240 had a good eye and a good memory. The stone 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:05.080 reminded him of a rumor he'd heard about diamonds in 0:20:05.160 --> 0:20:08.680 far off lands. He decided to send it off for testing. 0:20:09.280 --> 0:20:12.440 After bouncing through several hands, it landed on the desk 0:20:12.560 --> 0:20:15.840 of a respected scientist in the Cape Colony of South Africa, 0:20:16.040 --> 0:20:20.240 who inspected it and tested its hardness. He finally issued 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:23.640 his verdict. It was a diamond. The first major diamond 0:20:23.680 --> 0:20:26.720 recorded in South Africa. It would come to be known 0:20:26.800 --> 0:20:30.280 as the Eureka Diamond. Newspapers wrote a few small pieces 0:20:30.280 --> 0:20:33.639 about this curious find. There was some local excitement, but 0:20:33.720 --> 0:20:37.200 it did not start a stampede. Many people still believed 0:20:37.280 --> 0:20:41.280 diamonds couldn't exist in Africa for centuries, they'd only come 0:20:41.320 --> 0:20:45.280 from the riverbeds of India and Brazil. A lone stone 0:20:45.400 --> 0:20:49.240 in the Cape felt like a freak accident, a geological fluke, 0:20:49.760 --> 0:20:54.119 but two years later that illusion died. In eighteen sixty nine, 0:20:54.280 --> 0:20:57.399 another shepherd was walking near the Orange River, but about 0:20:57.440 --> 0:21:00.840 twenty miles northeast of where the Eureka diamond was found, 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:05.280 when he noticed a peculiar stone. It was big, about 0:21:05.280 --> 0:21:08.480 eighty three and a half carrots. He wasn't sure what 0:21:08.560 --> 0:21:11.600 it was, but he figured it might be valuable, so 0:21:11.680 --> 0:21:15.040 he traded it away for five hundred sheep, ten oxen 0:21:15.280 --> 0:21:18.160 and a horse. And the buyer it was the same 0:21:18.280 --> 0:21:21.680 farmer that bought the shiny pebble two years earlier, Choke 0:21:21.760 --> 0:21:25.280 von Niekirk. Von nie Kirk, once again, sensing he was 0:21:25.320 --> 0:21:29.000 holding something special, passed the stone along to Cape town merchants, 0:21:29.080 --> 0:21:32.160 who sent it on to Europe. When it finally hit 0:21:32.200 --> 0:21:36.679 the London market, the reaction was explosive. The stone sold 0:21:36.720 --> 0:21:39.600 for a staggering amount. It was then cut and polished 0:21:39.600 --> 0:21:43.600 into a glittering gem that became famous worldwide. It became 0:21:43.680 --> 0:21:47.160 known as the Star of South Africa. The sale sent 0:21:47.200 --> 0:21:50.159 a jolt through the diamond world. If a stone this 0:21:50.440 --> 0:21:53.240 large was pulled out of the ground in South Africa, 0:21:53.480 --> 0:21:57.159 that suggested something far more important than one lucky find. 0:21:57.480 --> 0:22:01.720 It suggested a new source of diamonds. Newspapers in Europe 0:22:01.760 --> 0:22:05.480 and America seized on the story. Headlines shouted about a 0:22:05.520 --> 0:22:08.959 new diamond frontier. In an age obsessed with gold rushes 0:22:09.000 --> 0:22:12.119 and new worlds, the idea of an African diamond region 0:22:12.359 --> 0:22:17.879 was irresistible. Prospectors, fortune hunters, hustlers and drifters started packing 0:22:17.920 --> 0:22:22.040 their bags. They'd come from Britain, Germany, hall in Australia 0:22:22.119 --> 0:22:25.359 and the United States. They boarded ships for Cape Town, 0:22:25.720 --> 0:22:30.080 then treked inland under brutal conditions, heat, dust, disease, and 0:22:30.119 --> 0:22:33.399 all the dangers of a colonial frontier. Which started as 0:22:33.520 --> 0:22:38.080 curiosity quickly became a phenomenon. The diamond rush had begun. 0:22:39.000 --> 0:22:42.280 Prospectors began combing through the Orange River and then the 0:22:42.359 --> 0:22:45.720 val River that fed it. But then something strange happened. 0:22:46.080 --> 0:22:48.800 In eighteen seventy one, a mixed race laborer found a 0:22:48.840 --> 0:22:51.200 shiny stone on the land of the De Beer Brothers, 0:22:51.520 --> 0:22:54.960 which was not near a river bed. This didn't completely 0:22:55.000 --> 0:22:58.879 make sense. For centuries, diamonds were believed to originate in 0:22:59.000 --> 0:23:02.359 river beds because nearly all known stones from India and 0:23:02.400 --> 0:23:07.000 Brazil were recovered from river deposits. This belief was reinforced 0:23:07.040 --> 0:23:09.560 by the Eureka Diamond and the Star of the South, 0:23:09.880 --> 0:23:13.920 both found near river beds. People believed diamonds were somehow 0:23:14.040 --> 0:23:17.720 river related, but what they didn't know was that diamonds 0:23:17.760 --> 0:23:21.560 come from deep within the Earth's mantle, about sixty miles 0:23:21.560 --> 0:23:25.000 below the Earth's surface. Under extreme heat and pressure, carbon 0:23:25.040 --> 0:23:29.480 atoms crystallized to form diamonds, a hard, durable gem. These 0:23:29.480 --> 0:23:33.640 diamonds are transported upward by rare volcanic eruptions through vertical 0:23:33.680 --> 0:23:38.080 conduits of magma that solidify into rock called kimberlight. Over 0:23:38.119 --> 0:23:41.720 millions of years, erosion breaks down this soft volcanic rock, 0:23:41.920 --> 0:23:45.399 releasing diamonds that are then carried and concentrated by rivers 0:23:45.600 --> 0:23:49.520 into gravel. Beds. Rivers act as a kind of natural mind, 0:23:49.760 --> 0:23:53.639 digging into the earth, eroding the volcanic rock, eventually exposing 0:23:53.680 --> 0:23:57.399 the diamonds within the kimberlite pipe, then wiping away the soil. 0:23:57.920 --> 0:24:01.440 But by eighteen seventy one no one identified this process. 0:24:02.200 --> 0:24:05.000 So when that extrace laborer found a diamond on the 0:24:05.040 --> 0:24:08.480 De Beer brother's property property that was nowhere near a river, 0:24:08.800 --> 0:24:12.240 people were a bit shocked. Word of his findings spread 0:24:12.240 --> 0:24:15.800 to the prospectors on the valen Orange River. These diggers 0:24:15.840 --> 0:24:19.720 followed the rumors, then followed each other. Soon men began 0:24:19.880 --> 0:24:23.199 drifting onto the de Beer property, scratching at the soil, 0:24:24.200 --> 0:24:29.320 digging experimental pits, sleeping in tents and makeshift shelters. At 0:24:29.320 --> 0:24:32.120 first it was a nuisance. Then it became a problem. 0:24:32.359 --> 0:24:36.480 These independent diggers began invading the De Beer farm outright, 0:24:36.920 --> 0:24:40.560 squatting on corners of the property, hammering stakes into the earth, 0:24:40.920 --> 0:24:45.760 declaring claims without permission. In the colonial legal system, miners 0:24:45.800 --> 0:24:49.600 had powerful friends that de Beer brothers did not. They 0:24:49.640 --> 0:24:52.800 were not wealthy, they were not politically connected, they didn't 0:24:52.840 --> 0:24:55.640 have private armies, and they were up against a government 0:24:55.720 --> 0:24:59.280