The carat weight
The carat is a unit of weight. It originates from the orient, where, in ancient times people used carob seeds to weigh precious stones.
The oldest record of diamond trade goes back to 3000 BC. The diamond, for its hallucinatory properties and its luminosity, was already being traded in India.
And the latest is linked to De Beers. Mr Cecil John Rhodes (1853 – 1902) was a powerful politician, after whom Rhodesia was named, who little by little began to centralise and make purchases. He was an astute businessman. He began to buy various mines and consolidate them. In 1930, Ernest Oppenheimer who created the first syndicate which included all the mines in South Africa. Thereafter, he founded a network called the Central Selling Organisation which then became the Diamond Trading Company. The diamond producers consolidated under De Beers effectively said to Australia: ‘How would you like to mine for yourselves?’. On the condition that, everything that comes out of your mines, we will buy... Anglo American acquired De Beers in 2011.