A diamond is the oldest item that anyone can own - it's three billion years in age, a strategic and high tech super material for our technological society that is formed in the earth's interior and shot to the surface by extraordinary volcanoes. It is carbon in its most concentrated form, composed solely of carbon -- the chemical element fundamental to all life, thus it is a native element. It is also extremely pure, containing only trace amounts of boron and nitrogen. The diamond's close cousins are mineral graphite and amorphous carbon.