still buried deep beneath the earth. the border between europe and asia the word girls men belts an old turkey and a chain of precious and semiprecious stone deposits that follows the mountain range for hundreds of kilometers from north to south has long been known as the gemstone belt of the. heart of the gemstone delta some any north of you. is dotted with defunct pits. anatoly in a forest ranger lives in a log cabin near the abandoned simeone in sky a mine shaft which was famous for its rich deposits in the nineteenth century. the most valuable gems can be found here. crystal and maureen. to copper wires bend at the right angle and

placed inside metal tubes point to a gemstone vein. this may be geological prospecting on the cheap but it's a method that's really great rewards for some practitioners. look the part that means the vein runs somewhere from the northeast. to southwest. the soon as we move away from the vein and then go back to their initial position. here they tell us there are lots of veins there all over the place here's another one and. as soon as we move away they go back to their initial position i think the energy coming from the people in the earth's magnetic field play a part in this when you go along a vein come across a hollow where the sticks cross over each other like this. what we don't know is the depth of the vein.

to get closer to the contacts this is where the closest to the surface. where you won't find anything but splinters through. three diggers are looking for blue aquamarine crystals in an old pit looking for gems as these diggers way of life many of them do it as a sideline but some are full time professionals. here it gets out of the surface. in the old days. right here. now. they know what to do and their intuition helps dave determine the veins direction and now they're trying to break through to it as they remove a pile of stones. there are some pretty big chunks here.

we examine them. and break them up. there must be some crystals in the. blue crystals inside milk white cts a thick and sticky substance these aquamarine are not used for jury they're mainly for collectors if you diggers patient and lucky enough you might find something like this. all these miners are certain they'll hit their streak of luck some day and many even seek support from the mistress of the copper mountain. local people regard her as the patron saint of diggers. she appears as a magical lizard wearing a golden crown. my dear kind lady to you in all humility with an open heart not with evil folds please give me

a nice stone don't leave me out to dry help me find the church's stone first i was skeptical about it but when i try there's a soul that had worked. this stretch of highway follows an underground strip of rock packed with emeralds beryl and alexandra the year old emerald banda some thirty kilometers wide and about two kilometers in length this is the birthplace of geologist. emeralds are the main line of his research. from time immemorial people here have literally been sitting on them or some of the veins are forty to fifty meters below ground a long time ago the french dug for emeralds and beets they used to be nearby you might say people are walking on emeralds but you can see for yourself. i these swampy banks of the river produced a geological sensation in the early nineteenth century. it is in one thousand one

stumbled on pale aquamarine colored stone. it took them to you could do it in a book where scientists said they were emeralds in the summer of eight hundred thirty one emeralds were found right here on the banks of this river and exactly in first bits these unique emeralds were found. jim stone experts regard emeralds found in the urals is the best in the world they use a special scale to assess the color and transparency of a stone but there's another special quality of these your old chum stones that won't appear on any scale but why did they see emeril of the supposed to be a green color i will create a look at this one you see a trace of blue in that this means they come from a pit yes there is a blue streak tells you that they were dug out from. the village of the emerald capital of the year olds it's seen better days barrel was produced here in the

soviet era a strategic material used in nuclear reactors before the early one nine hundred eighty s. it was mined in an open pit later an underground mine was built on the site. parents live in militia. his father is a mining engineer he spent a lifetime working in the chefs. with the. produce be really a more strategically important enterprise. in those days. were just a by product so to speak the breakup of the soviet union in the economic downturn that followed in its wake eventually brought production to a halt demolish if pitt has been closed since one thousand nine hundred three its equipment is gradually falling into disrepair only heavy duty pumps are still in operation pumping out subterranean water from the pit. scientists say some seven hundred kilograms of emeralds valued at twenty four million dollars could be

produced here each year but the pit remains closed meanwhile law enforcement officials say that up to fifteen thousand carats of your all emeralds are illegally traded annually supplied by informal miners who take emeralds from wherever they can find them most often it's from garden piles of refuse and abandoned mine shafts . files you see in the background have been flushed only once flushing will reveal that the roskilde gemstones their so called crude crystals that. these waste piles have been flushed three times but they no longer belong to anybody some call them the miracle field others the field of fools but. you want to know why the place has this name anyone without special qualifications can find gems there will be the and the of any collector now here's a valuable stone. it seems to be

a bare ileum crystal it doesn't look too good as it's covered with dust and claims that. it isn't fact an emerald in accordance with international close if occasional . but here in the urals is just called the emerald green or. some jewelry firms indian ones in particular are only too ready to buy such cheap stones they're specially treated and then resold at the price of emeralds. aleksandr cell of on a fist generally recognized as an expert on the certification of emeralds and other precious stones the certificate guarantees that the customer is not mining so-called refined beryllium or to put it plainly fake emeralds. emeralds are a variety of. they only different color. painting radioisotopes. changed their color. has set up a certification center in the town of sirte and. in addition he's founded

a private museum of minerals and jewelry complete with gem cutting workshops. cutting alone produces unique gems from emeralds and more modest semi-precious stones like topaz amethyst and other colored crystals. each gemstone splinter or even a plain looking one is given a new lease on life important as well as local stones are cut here but local stones no matter how plain they might be are dear to the masters hearts. gemstone is closer to the soul i feel like its soul is warm up maybe because it's rushing through and. there's a fountain in front of the museum in the small courtyard visitors are immediately drawn to its rich tech aeration covered in uncut chunks of greenish barrel it stands a monument to the locals love for their gemstones. bryson

. bounce from phones to impressions. whose phone starts on t.v. dot com.

the old village of at the very center of the year old gemstone belt legend has it that a long time ago women and children used to wash ruby and sapphire stones at the cattle's watering hole today college undergraduates would be geologists come here from moscow each summer to get hands on training they stay at the house which once belonged to a local priest alexander is a prospector with years of experience. he takes the students on a guided tour of an old quarry tells them about the nuts and bolts of his job. they

go to a place where piles of pink. covered a hundred years ago and. show me. you can see right through. the students look like seasoned digger says they flush the rock hunting for beautiful stones fires anyone with enthusiasm once they get their hands a bit dirty. the students and their professors in the praise of the professional digger. this is

a captivating and useful experience feel more confident. even from the way to. the skills they get here in the classroom. only through personal contacts that each small find is a delight for them like a valuable gift in a different sacks full of much bigger term alliance we're told from here to village fairs is. impossible to estimate how many of these were incinerated in for an asus to produce nickel. but you see what you've got there. oh yeah it's real big family well worth the effort. now there's a praiseworthy stone. well more or less how are we going to divide them among us. from time to time the pit steep sides reveal gemstone outcroppings this dangerous rift was discovered only a few years ago diggers got away with the crystals in no time but they were at risk

of being buried alive in a massive landslide it is impossible to let's get in there to see if anything is left of the vein. for you pin you know you stay put for a while. sometimes people do get inside the vein this is dangerous. numerous gemstone pits are scattered in the forests around the village but few people know where gemstones were mined in the old days. you could name it was there that this trench here is for exploration he would accuse the merchant workman mind of the supposed to be they were off the top barrel but they were only the top layer there are several pits here who will bid you thirty to forty percent of them and certainly not more than fifty percent have been worked out there and they should be down there has to have been.

a mill that belong to the merchant who own the pits stood here by the riverside a long time ago stories of treasures are well known but all that remains of the mill are wall fragments and old grindstones lying in the grass the mill produced more than simple flour. for most of. here is his silver mill it's made flour but they also little stroke and the hope of finding gold in it is there and they mined stones in these pits wood with or ancestors did work hard. but then the stones had a heart of value they worked like titans and they got paid for the job of their work as well the compensated. every village and a chance to build one or two more shops handling semiprecious stones most of the

people working in cramped conditions using more now obsolete equipment are self-taught craftsmen. these workshops are anything but cost effective they can survive because marginal people don't stay long. it's not an easy job if you're doing it and you've got to look at a new group as you can't give it up just like that when these stones are like little kids when you first hold them in your hands they're rough but you know what you need to work and polish them and only then did i look so much. these are my kids polished and sparkling. looking model s. . several times a year stone cutters come to you considering board to attend a fair featuring serpent tonight rhoda knight jasper cornelian and many more their wares reflect the whole spectrum of semiprecious stones found in the urals these

are pieces of art made from landscape jasper from the southern year olds and these are all lumps of rock crystal from the northern end of the same mountain range other tables display deskilling jewelry from the traditional ural school most of the masters and diggers have known one another for years there aren't that many new faces. only a handful of monsters in the urals work with local stones everybody is trying to make good for popular consumption. there's a brisk trade in melaka where firms that year at the fair the euro master scoffed at african malakai because of its banal striped pattern. that used to be mined in the euro's is only found in museums. deposits have been completely exhausted. what do people take home from the euro's gemstones jasper and mel a kind those are the stones they so shape with are original but this malecon is

from africa most people are well aware of the fact they're still willing to buy an . artist a lego pile of cards flowers from stone he matches and with this petals with leaves made of nephrite nephrite leaves look exactly like the real thing pots and all. tiny silver pins are used to hold parts of the flower together because the glue doesn't last long alone the flower itself is more durable and it can never wither. the light radiates through its petals and the flower seems alive but looks are deceptive as the lifeless flower is hard and cool to the touch. the stone has a mind of its own but if it doesn't feel like being a flower it's going to be one in the beginning on made several attempts to tame stones but nothing came of it. as a result i had

a whole bucket of stone flows and leaves only then did i realize that stones could never be time to. work on display at the museum of stones and. a celebrated collector owns these pieces. his collection isn't limited to your all stones he's devoted a lifetime to it. around the world recognize that his unique. supports already have helped him set up a museum of his own. when i have a mosque in two thousand diatoms i realize that this fine collection should be long to my hometown and everybody must have a chance to see its. afficionado in his own right widely known in the year old his home collection is nothing spectacular but each item

reveals a bit about him. just look at these sugar like crystals work. very . well. and this. is jim. out in the open. in. downing i talk to these colored courts. and they're really wonderful they help me get any problems or misfortune. with. many of these stones were mind at the same place where the legendary mining engineer didn't have found gemstones one hundred years ago academics went to for advice and he made great contributions to geology though he never revealed all his secrets or he was the first and only one to find. you found. twelve

carrots. just couldn't find a single one in many years until a ship shy of devoted himself to studying old maps and the legacy of past mining engineers by retracing their forgotten paths. there are no records of the legacy of our ancestors none what nothing about pits that's only. until issued shy of joining city give a local director of the rez have mineralogical reserve on frequent visits to the pits to assess their deposits. exploring the pits is going to require a lot of digging. there's nothing but barren rock here no crystallization. there is something left. we have to find some big samples.

ok let's get on with the job. diggers rely on telltale signs rather than intuition they know that if they don't see such signs there's no point in messing about in that vein here is a very thin vein its center than your little finger there will be a bulge but make no mistake about it where it joins the torch vein over there crystals all over the place i'm telling you. this pit was once thought to be empty but there are still some treasures to be found if the crystal is flushed and polished it will begin to sparkle. for you should be done very carefully if you've got clever fingers you'll make a nice rose very beautiful. sciences yet on ravel all the mysteries of the gemstone belt. researchers studying old gemstone pits mapped them

according the accounts of pioneers who often refused to disclose all of their secrets. here and i myself don't believe in mysteries a mystery a simply so. thing you don't know a good miner has no secrets except a place where he's working that there are many pits to be found in the gemstone belt. but their contents remain unknown with nobody knows. day in and day out they go from one pit to another driving an all terrain vehicle through the forests where their forefathers also mind. the secrets of old miners are being put back on the maps the same units guy a pit is a case in point it's gemstone deposit as not been exhausted. the winch is still in good order the pain has not even peeled off and the rope remained from the

soviet times if you still find. all we need to do is to put the engine on place as soon as the engine is here the winch will start working. but old records say this plant was forty meters deep with that when a large nast of crystals was found at a depth of only fourteen meters. this means that the main has good prospects but the because apparently they were planning to mine stones at a lower level if the p.t. is to be restored and made up aeration all this will require an outlay of at least one hundred million roubles but it's not yet clear who will furnish that kind of capital. if water is pumped out miners could regain access to chefs that produced riches for over a hundred years. deep beneath the earth's surface stones are just waiting for someone to rediscover their unique beauty.

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time period hotels are recent. human rights groups in palestine as israel points a man accused of portraying arab prisoners top adviser and pope. russia's drug enforcement agency down on dealers producing a. makeshift laboratory. with almost all the votes tallied. the ruling walk as a second chance in a recession and. a support for a pro russian. six am in moscow good to be with you here on r t our top story this hour in israel

many palestinians are frustrated by the appointment of me to oversee their affairs in jerusalem known as captain george he's accused of torturing prisoners during an interrogation at a secret prison artie's paulus leader has more. i was kidnapped by an israeli commando on the twenty first of may nine hundred ninety four they came to my country to my land to my house and arrested me before the eyes of my children. most afraid of romney spent the next eighteen years in a secret prison later dubbed israel's upper grade and his interrogator and that's still sends chills down the spines of prisoners. they have to remember captain george he personally participated in the top and abuse of prisoners who torture and abuses in abu ghraib are exactly the same as those in the israeli secret prisons of six years ago the.