Minerals

MINERALS OF THE ELBA SIALND TERRYTORY

The Isle of Elba is one of the most important places for mineralogical and mining history and as such, is listed in the World Heritage Provisional List of Geological Sites of UNESCO. For more than 4000 years, generations of miners have excavated in search of, first copper, and then iron. Elba micaceous hematite with its characteristic pinkish crystals can be found in museums world wide. Back in the 1700's, the laws of modern crystallography were discovered by N. Stenone as he studied Elban hematite and quartz. The beautiful oligist crystal and the pyrite from Rio, the Calamite ilvaite and magnetite, the polychrome tourmaline, and the beryl from S.Piero and S. Ilario, are just a few of the more than 150 different types of minerals identified on the island. They can be found in the most prestigious nature museums in the world, studied and described in dozens of scientific works, not to mention the coveted samples of hundreds of collectors.

It's interesting to note, that even if today there has been no documented scientific research of merit, that the hunters and gatherers of the Paleolithic age in the plains of Lacona and the slopes of Mt. Capanne, used locally found quartz and flint stones in making their hunting and work tools. To the west, on Mt. Capanne, iron has never been excavated, but for at least the last 150 years scholars and collectors from all over the world have concentrated their efforts on this mountain which has produced collector value tourmaline and beryl as well as numerous other and rare crystals. The island has been known as mineral rich since antiquity, and the legend of the inexhaustibility of the minerals has been handed down over the ages. For centuries the abundance and purity of the Elban hematite has painted the backdrop for the human existence on the island, but in 1981 the last mine on the island was closed. After centuries of intense use, the old mines are no longer frequented by miners, but by mineral collectors and researchers. Today, the Mineral Park and mining areas with their abandoned work yards located on the eastern side of the island, offer an ideal place for those wishing to immerse themselves in a silent and ancient landscape, a place completely transformed by human activity, but at the same time preserved by the shear untamed force of nature that returns us to our primordial past. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Elba is world renowned for its beauty, rarity and in the scientific interest of its minerals.