Our age is the only one after streamlined razor-sharpness, right? Think again. In what may be “the oldest use of industrial diamonds yet,” Peter Lu, a graduate student at Harvard discovered through microscopy that the Chinese used the hardest naturally-occurring substance to polish their ceremonial sapphire axes to a sparkling sheen.
Yet another scientific vignette that proves my Productivity of Interscientific Research theory, e.g. geological knowledge and techniques applied to an archaeological question. With finds such as this use of abrasive, earlier bipeds and civilizations older than Harappa, isn’t it obvious that our forebears were up to a lot more than we give them credit for? Viva SCIENCE!
