January birthstone is the Garnet. This stone has been used since the Bronze Age as gemstonesand abrasives. The word garnet comes from the 14 th century Middle English word gernet, meaning dark red. This is borrowed from Old French as Pomum Granatum (pomegranate) because it is a plant whose fruits contain abundant and vivid red seed covers which are similar in shape, size, and color to some garnet crystals.
Properties of the Garnet:
The species of the Garnet are found in every color with reddish shapes most common. There aresome Blue Garnets but it is rare and they were first reported in the 1990s.
The Garnet have some crystal structures and they don’t have any cleavage planes so when they fracture under stress, sharp, irregular pieces are formed.
Geological Importance:
The mineral garnet is commonly found in metamorphic and to a lesser extent igneous rocks.
Most of the natural garnets are compositionally zoned and contain inclusions. The garnets are unique and can record the pressures and temperatures of peak metamorphism and are used as geobarometers and geothermometers.
Uses:
Red garnets were the most commonly used gemstones in the Late Antique Roman world and the Migration period of the “barbarian” peoples who took the territory of the Western Roman Empire.
The gemstone varieties occur in shades of green, red, yellow, and orange. In the United States the Garnet is known as the January birthstone. It is the mineral for the state of Connecticut.
Cultural Significance:
The garnet is also the tropical birthstone of Aquarius in tropical astrology. In Persia, this birth gem was considered a talisman from nature’s forces like storms and lightning. Also, it was accepted that the garnet could signal approaching danger by turning pale.
There is a lot to learn about this gem and to read more about it, visit the website www.gemsociety.org
*Мухин Кирилл, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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