| Botswana Crystals and Stalactites Story |
| During 1970's, we had a permanent team collecting Agate nuggets in the Tuli Block, on the South Eastern part of Botswana near the Zimbabwe and South African border. That part of the world is very flat land, with only a few, very low hills and some shallow, wide, dried-out river beds. It rains a little more than in the rest of Botswana. That does not mean very much, because in some parts, rain comes only once every few years.
Some agate nodules (the famous "Botswana Grey " and the "Botswana Pink Agate") were found over the surface of the land or just under the surface. We picked them by hand or we had to use a pick and shovel to loosen the ground and find more. One of our teams came across a shallow pit with a different formation:... the stalactites. They were close to each other, all in one level, just under the surface of the grass. In the beginning, we thought that we will find more as we went deeper. But we could not find a second level. Just the first one, covering less than 50 square feet. It looked like somebody put them there by hand...We had them analyzed by geologists in Johannesburg and we learned a lot about the geological history of that part of the world. The base of some specimens shows a heavy concentration of remains of green twigs. It proves that the land had very heavy vegetation, probably large forests. Many millions of years ago, the area was flooded by sweet and then by sea water. Calcar, lime and other minerals were deposited around the core of each twig and grew outwards in a tubular form. The color, was influenced by the salts in the water and by the type of marine animals originally living under sweet and then salty water conditions. After the water receded, a major volcanic eruption must have taken place, because a mountain formed on that part of the world. The mountain had a cave. Some formation became part of the ceiling of that cave and continued to grow as stalactites. Later on, a powerful explosion occurred in that sealed cave, because all sorts of crystals were formed on the skin of most of the stalactites. Either then or later, further movements of land made the whole mountain disappear because, today, that land is flat, like a table top,for tens of miles around. Not much rain, no rivers within 100 miles and the oceans are some 500 miles to the East and nearly 1,000 miles to the West. How did the specimens concentrate together, face up, in that small natural pit, nobody can explain. There was not any sign of further rock formation underneath, down to some 40-50 feet of clay that we uncovered.. Where did the mountain go? The cave, the forest, the "bottom of the sea" situation? All what we have to show for so many changes in the nature are a few crystallized stalactites. They show the color of the salt, the "off" white. Petrified crystals in unique formations for each finger. We have found very few pieces and only some of them are offered here. Any comments would be most welcome. |