20 or 30 thousand years ago, during a much colder climate, gigantic wooly mammoth used their magnificent tusks to battle each other and fight predators - perhaps even roving bands of early people - and then when they died, the tusks were buried in the permafrost. As the eons passed, the tusks absorbed the minerals in the soil in the first steps toward petrification, and took on the various colors we see today.
Eventually, they were dug up or exposed by rivers or storms, and the descendants of those same people the mammoth fought turned them into such useful and beautiful items.
Gotta like that. Too bad they're not a bit more affordable.
Won't be long before the Democrats find a way to ban them.
A handy chart:
Sources of color in fossilized ivory:
carbon – black
cobalt – green/blue
chromium – green/blue
copper – green/blue
iron oxides – red, brown, and yellow
manganese – pink/orange
manganese oxides – black
Need a link!
ReplyDeleteOk, but be ready for sticker shock. Scroll through the pages to see what's been sold.
Deletehttps://www.gunnerproducts.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=64
Ban the sales because the mammoths could go extinct - oh wait ...
ReplyDeleteNo, you have been mislead.
ReplyDeleteThe blues and greens are from the formation of the phosphate mineral vivianite, during the mineralization of the tusk.
Chromium, cobalt, and copper ions, do not occur in glacial tills, at a concentration to be able to color material.
If they are saying it's those ions, its from a lab impregnation.
~JO:)