The Portuguese sailors on their voyages of discovery to India had prefabricated stone pillars on board as rulers’ signs to be placed along the coasts, presumably also as ship’s ballast

Miscellaneous: news all around natural stone and rock

News from the Elgin marbles: A robot-made copy of the head of Selen’s horse in the British Museum is on show at the Freud museum in London. It was produced by the Institute of Digital Archaeology at the University of Oxford

Limestone disc discovered in Mexico sheds new light on the 24 years of war that put an end to the Classic Maya world

The kingdoms of Lakamha‘ and Po‘p were political rivals but had a common base of beliefs and traditions

Miscellaneous: news all around natural stone and rock

“Extreme XL“ is a freestanding sink of Glass Design company with optionally Bianco Calacatta or Nero Marquina marble for the base

Embedded in the subducting tectonic plates, ocean water in large amounts reaches the transition zone in the Earth‘s mantle

Nevertheless, there is no real sea there, only rock that would not be moist and would not drip

The Yellowstone National Park was established 150 years ago as the world’s first such institution

In the geysers, mud pots or steam fumaroles, the forces of the earth’s interior come right up to the surface

Stonemason couple Orianne Pieragnolo and Louis Dutrieux have started their “Route de la Pierre“ (Stone Tour)

The two want to ride their bicycles all the way to China and get to know the stone architectures and cultures along the way

It’s actually microbes that move mountains

Chinese scientists outline how humanity cann harness the interaction between minerals and microbes

Apprentices in horticulture and landscaping learned the know-how for dry-stone walling and also the ability to work in a team

The walls once played an important role in the pastures on the slopes and are evidence of the culture

Notre-Dame de Paris: the approximately 1000 cubic meters of limestone needed for the reconstruction are to come from 9 quarries

Suppliers are quarries from the area of Saint-Maximin (Oise) et Soissons (Aisne), located in the basin Lutétien