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A rock excavated in a quarry near Klaipeda hid a real treasure. When the stone was cut, it sparkled with garnets, expensive red stones used in jewelry making. Our land is not a place for pomegranates, and the rock itself, full of pomegranates, probably came here with glaciers sliding down from Scandinavia.
The granite hid the grenades
Andrius Sasnauskas from Klaipėda, who makes various small products from stone, often goes to the Dovilai quarry, where, when digging gravel, workers often place larger stones on the edge.
The craftsman here buys materials for his products. So it was this time.
The man was immediately struck by pegmatite, approximately one meter high and about 80 cm wide, which turned out to be suitable for treatment.
“When I chose the stone, I saw that it was upset, a little crumbled, there was a lot of mica in it, I thought it would be good for me. After taking a good look at it, I suspected it might contain something else. ” A. Sasnauskas smiled.
It may not be a great feeling, but the find is actually very nice.
What a joy it was when the master brought the stone to the workshop, broke it and found pebbles inside.
“The whole interior was filled with little red garnets. It is a semi-precious stone. Sometimes you find one in Lithuania. It may not be a great feeling, but the find is really very nice. It is just a geological relic as proof that not just amber but also grenades ”, said the teacher.
It is possible that the mineral found belongs to a group of grenades called almandines. They are usually dark red in color, as found.
Took to the museum
A. Sasnauskas took a large part of these detected grenades to the Blacksmith Museum in Klaipėda for Dionyz Varkalis. The man expected the museologist to use the red pebbles to make jewelry.
“Dionisio only needed the material, I provided it to him. I did not open all the grenades, there are still many in that rock. It is worth mentioning that in the rock all these garnets are of different shades, from red to dark purple”, – A. Sasnauskas smiled.
Gift: the master brought the garnets to the Museum of the Smithy to the museologist D.Varkalis, in the hope that he could use these semi-precious stones in the production of metal jewelry in the Baltic style. (Photo by Vytautas Liaudanskis)
The gift made Klaipėda, a museologist, very happy.
According to D.Varkalis, this is not a sensation, because not so often the Lithuanian rocks hide such a treasure.
“I would very much like to use them for the production of Baltic jewelry. Especially those garnets are found in Lithuania. I heard for the first time that they can be found with us,” said D.Varkalis.
Only partially Lithuanian
However, Lithuania is not a grenade finder as the finder is usually called the area where those semi-precious stones were formed and there should be many more in one place than a single random rock.
According to scientists, rocks with semi-precious stones came to us when the glaciers slid down.
Geologist Professor Albertas Bitinas stated that all the largest rocks found in Lithuanian quarries or fields come from glaciers in Scandinavia.
Photo by Vytautas Liaudanskis
“And there is everything in those Scandinavian rocks, not just pomegranates. In the rocks in Finland, for example, there is gold. So there is nothing miraculous here. The rocks, then the tectonic forces lifted them to the surface, and the glaciers they exploded as far as Lithuania, “said A. Bitinas.
The formation of the pomegranates took place a billion or more years ago, which is why, according to geologists, they are very ancient minerals.
However, the chances of finding another rock containing grenades in the Deauville quarry are not high.
It is possible that the boulders with such a treasure of semi-precious stones are no longer around or at all.
“After all, the glacier, which opened up those rocks with grenades from its location, shook them over a very wide area. These rocks are random here, so it’s probably not worth waiting for any more of them,” said geologist A Bitin.
Outdoor collection
Gintarė Sakalauskienė, the director of the Vaclovas Intas Republican Stone Museum, which has been operating in Mosėdis for more than 40 years, confirmed that the museum has rocks found in Lithuania that contain beautiful red garnets.
“We have pomegranates in the exhibition. There are also those brought from abroad. We even have green ones, not just ordinary red ones. There are also Lithuanian pomegranates that can be seen in large boulders found in our fields or quarries. We have large stones in the park. . you can see red pomegranates the size of a pea, “said G.Sakalauskienė.
Most of the museum’s “improved” boulders come from the Skuodas district, which is probably not called the Land of Akmenai in vain, but Mosėdis itself, the capital of Akmenai.
“Most of the exhibits in our museum are collected during the recovery period, when there were still many large rocks around and many had not yet been destroyed. Because many such large stones were taken to Kretinga where they were crushed and turned into rubble. Just I can be glad that someone else found such a treasure: a rock full of pomegranates, “said the museum director.
Granada business card
The pomegranate (from the Latin pomegranate, “granulated”) is a mineral of the silicate class, not silicate.
The group of pomegranates is divided into almandines, andradites, brutosularios, hidrogrosularios, piropas, espesartinas, uvarovitas.
Almandin, or almandite, the most common mineral in the pomegranate group, is the iron-aluminum pomegranate (chemical formula: Fe3Al2 (SiO4) 3) found in metamorphic and magmatic rocks.
They come in a variety of colors: red, deep red, red to purple, brown, black.
Almandin is found abundantly in the gem quarries of South India and Sri Lanka, which is why it is sometimes called Ceylon ruby.
Recently, large deposits of almandine pomegranate have been found in northeastern Australia and have been named Australian ruby.
There are many areas in Mongolia, Brazil, and the United States where good quality almandines are found, sometimes interfering with the mica shale. Many of them are found in Madagascar, the Czech Republic, Norway, and Russia.
Archaeological research shows that various nations, including the Huns, date back to the 5th century. almandinos used for jewelry.
This stone was first described by the German scientist-minerologist Georgius Agricola in 1549.
The Almindians gained the greatest popularity in the 18th century. In Europe. These minerals are still used in jewelry making.
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