Loose diamonds

The Age of a Diamond

A natural diamond is one to more than three billion years old. This is that time at its true scale.

Every person who has ever lived fits inside the bottom pixel of this line.
4.5 billion years ago
The Earth forms.
1 to more than 3 billion years ago
Diamonds grow in the mantle, 150 to 700 km down, where carbon crystallizes under great heat and pressure.
About 2.4 billion years ago
Oxygen builds up in the air.
About 540 million years ago
Animals spread through the seas, many with shells and skeletons.
About 470 million years ago
The first plants grow on land.
250 to 50 million years ago
Most diamond-bearing eruptions happen in this window. Kimberlite magma carries the stones up from the mantle at about 8 to 40 miles an hour.
66 million years ago
The dinosaurs die out.
About 300,000 years ago
The oldest known fossils of our own species.
1477
The earliest well documented diamond engagement ring, from Maximilian of Austria to Mary of Burgundy.
The last 80 years
About one lifetime.
Today
The stone is cut, polished and set. Making the ring takes about two weeks.

Choose your stone

We search dealers worldwide and bring the stones here, so you see each one before you decide.

A lab-grown diamond is the same carbon in the same crystal, grown in a few weeks.

Sources