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Greek adámas is formed from the prefix a- (not) and damáō (to tame, to conquer). An adámas is an untameable, unconquerable thing. The word originally referred to any extremely hard substance — steel, certain alloys, or hard stone — before narrowing to the crystalline carbon we now call diamond. Latin borrowed it as adamas, which became diamantem in Vulgar Latin, then diamant in Old French, then diamond in Middle English. The word lost its first syllable during this journey, shedding the 'a' that carried the negation. The unconquerable thing lost part of its own name.

Diamonds were first mined in India, along the alluvial deposits of the Krishna and Godavari rivers, as early as the fourth century BCE. India was the world's only source of diamonds for over two thousand years. The Koh-i-Noor (Mountain of Light), one of the most famous diamonds in history, was mined in the Golconda region and passed through Mughal, Persian, Afghan, and Sikh hands before the British East India Company acquired it in 1849. It now sits in the Tower of London. India wants it back.

The De Beers corporation, founded by Cecil Rhodes in 1888, created the modern diamond market by controlling supply and manufacturing demand. The slogan 'A Diamond is Forever,' written by copywriter Frances Gerety in 1947, convinced Americans that diamond engagement rings were an ancient tradition. They were not. Before De Beers's campaign, engagement rings were often set with rubies, sapphires, or no stone at all. The 'tradition' is a marketing invention less than eighty years old.

Synthetic diamonds, first produced by General Electric in 1955, are now chemically identical to mined diamonds and cost a fraction of the price. The diamond industry's response has been to market 'natural' diamonds as more authentic — selling geological age as a luxury feature. The unconquerable stone is now competing with its own replica, and the replica is winning on every metric except mythology.