Sometimes I have to remove various objects from my sand samples because they simply don’t fit through the neck of my vials. They are mostly pebbles of different sizes but also bigger stones, pieces of wood, shells or corals. However, I’ve recently got the idea of… collecting them and stopped throwing anything away! I also took a couple of photographs for you (the real width of the frames is about 4 cm):

Shooting small objects is always exciting and funny. I had to use my macro lens and build a small photographic tent from two plastic boxes covered at the top with a semitransparent sheet (sandwich paper actually). The light was provided from the top by two regular desk lamps, the role of paper being to filter the direct light and thus smoothing the shadows.

I guess even better results could have been achieved with three sources of light (two from the sides and one from above) but I only have two lamps so… here’s the setup of my small photo laboratory.

Yes, this is the origin of my sample no. 107 IL-HD. The place is located on the Israeli shorelines of Dead Sea: Ein Gedi Spa, an amazing oasis and tourists attraction in the middle of nowhere.

The place is overhelming you by what it’s written on the shield right at the entrance: it’s the lowest place on Earth, with 418 m below sea level. We’ve been there on August 2nd, 2007 when the thermometer indicated just 47 °C. It was incredibly hot. When getting off the car, the body had to adapt to an increase of two folds in ambient temperature (from 23 to 47 °C) and it felt like the blood gets out of the body through the boiling skin.

However, plenty of people seemed to enjoy packing themselfs with the famous Dead Sea sludge. This is said to contain an impresive amount of minerals and salts and it is sold in most of the shops in Israel as soap, skin softener, shower and bathing products and so on.

But my focus was not on sludge but of course on… sand. Collecting it was not a problem at all since it was plenty of it just everywhere around us. Trying to avoid the curious look from the tourists I quickly filled a half liter bottle and we took a few photographs around.

Among many others, this was an unforgettable experience in Israel and I am more than happy for being able to also get a sand sample from there. Trying at home to dry it out was an impossible task: the sand had so much salt in it that it purely adsorbed all the water from atmosphere and therefore it never got dry.

Article under construction!!!

A lot of people collect stones from their holidays and when they return home, the stones are being forgoten somewhere on a shell in the basement. I personally find the stones somehow… cold and inexpresive, even if they are picked-up from a spot of a great importance. But it’s a matter of taste that for me a grain of sand has a much stronger meaning, maybe also due to its reduced size. It looks like a big portion of human history has been squeezed in one single cubic milimeter.

Well, there are samples and samples… Most are coming from common places like a small river or a regular beach at the sea side but some are loaded with hundreds and thousands of years of history. That’s how I’ve got the idea of picking-up the samples originating from special locations such as archeological sites or ruins of glorious civilisations and list them on this blog. Once I’ll get a new samples it will be added here so please check this article often to see the updates.

To easy identify the sample’s location, I will describe each sand using the sample number in my collection (e.g. 921), the ISO code of country and first order administrative division (e.g. TH-PA), followed by the full description: Country, Region, City, Location, GPS coordinates. So here it goes:

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921 TH-PA
Thailand, Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya, Ayutthaya, Wat Mahathat, 14°20’43″N 100°35’40″E

920 TH-PA
Thailand, Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya, Ayatthuya, King Naresuan The Great Palace, 14°20’43″N 100°35’40″E

Ayutthaya is the ancient capital of the Siam kingdom, founded by the king U-Thong in 1350 and distroyed by the Burmese army in 1767. The ruins of the ancient city form now the Ayutthaya historical park, which I visited on the October 30, 2008. The park is huge and due to limited time available, I could visit only 4 temples in a half-day trip by bus from Bangkok, with Wat Mahathat being the final stop:

869 TR-AL
Turkey, Antalya, Side, Site of Apollo Temple (Pamphylia), 36°45’50″N 31°23’14″E

848 DZ-TP
Algeria, Tipaza, Tipaza, Ruines of old city, 36°35’42″N 2°26’38″E

272 YE-MA
Yemen, Ma’rib, Baraqish, Ma’een ancient city, 16°1’6″N 44°48’16″E

239 PE-AM
Peru, Amazonas, Chachapoyas, Ku?lap ruins (Andes), 6°25’6″S 77°55’23″W

202 LB-BQ
Lebanon, Beqaa, Baalbeck, Old temple ruins (Bekaa Valley), 34°0’25″N 36°12’12″E

108 IL-HD
Israel, HaDarom, Massada, Walls of fortress (Dead Sea), 31°18’60″N 35°21’15″E

092 IL-HA
Israel, Haifa, Caesarea, Roman Hypodrom, 32°29’53″N 34°53’25″E

Caesarea was a city and harbor build by Herod the Great about 25-13 BC in honor of Emperor Caesar. The ruins of Caesarea Maritima (ancient name, called also Caesarea Palestina) lie on the shore of Mediteranean Sea in Israel betwen Haifa and Tel Aviv.

046 JO-MN
Jordan, Ma`an, Petra, Archelogical site, 30°19’19″N 35°27’39″E

The first major objective has been reached just a few days ago: the sample no 1,000 entered my collection. As per today November 15, 2008, my collection has 1,011 samples from 158 countries. I am very happy with the numbers so far and although not the quantity is my main target, it is a lovely feeling to know that 1,000 little vials hold, nicely arranged in a shell, the history of 158 countries from this planet. Since I collect small quantities, available place should not be a problem in the future and I like to dream of the day when the sample no 10,000 will be added to the collection.

The great achievement was possible due to a trade started some time ago and which was finished now. Because my tradding buddy also needed small amounts only, we were able to trade a huge amount of sands: over 100 samples in a 2 kg and 3 kg pack, respectively. We had a very exciting conversation by email before setting the trade and the collection has grown with 10% with only one trade.

About 100 samples arrived from South Korea in a 2.9 kg parcel (thank you, Christopher)

As my real start as sand collector began in Israel, I though about writing a few words about these particular piece of Earth who fascinated many civilisations and still continues to do so. Once you get to know it a little, you either love it or hate it but you definitely can not remain indifferent to its overwhelming charm.

This first part of my articles on sands of Israel refers to those sands locally known under the name of khalutsa sands, also spelled by some authors as halutza or haluza (see the samples no 0063, 0064 and 0065 in my Sand Atlas). In opposite to some other articles of mine about sand, the name khalutsa sands reflects here their geographical position and nothing about geology, although for many people it has a quite deep political implication as well.

Collecting khalutsa sands (sample no 0064) alongside the road 222

But let’s start first with geography: khalutsa sands region is located on the southern side of Israeli’s coastal plain and the north-western side of the Negev desert. It covers the beaches and the shore sub-regions delimited in the north by the Bsor River and the Sinai Peninsula. The area consists of about 80 km² of beautiful sand dunes along the border with Egypt, traversed today from NW to SE by the national road no 222 and neighboured by two other smaller sand areas: Agur sands and Shunra sands.

The Khalutsa region was of a particular point of interest since thousands of years ago when it belonged to the famous incense and spices trading routes between Mediterranean ports of (today) Gaza and their capital Petra on the Arabian Peninsula (today in Jordan) and from there to the far India. When the Romans tried to take control of these trading routes, the Nabataeans (ancient people controlling the routes) had to protect their trades and find secure ways for bringing the goods to Mediterranean ports. In order to avoid the Roman troupes, they’ve been forced to cross the very unfriendly desert of Negev and build there numerous fortresses and intermediate stops for their caravans. One of them is also Halutza, an archaeological site included today on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

Basic archaeological activities in Halutza revealed the immense importance of the city during the respective era. According to Jewish Virtual Library, this is the place where a carving mentioning the first known Nabataean king was discovered, dating back from the year 168 BC. Further excavations conducted at the site under supervision of a specialized team from Ben-Gurion University in Beer-Sheva, Israel, brought to light parts of a Byzantine kiln workshop, a Roman theatre (the only one discovered in the whole Negev desert) and a large church, all of them being found beneath a 2-4 m layer of sand.

Nowadays, the area south of the road 222 is completely deserted, with almost no vegetation at all. On the north, the Bsor region is a savannah-like area with large number of communities and the whole region serves as a training field for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Stopping the car for collecting another sample, we even met a highly ranked army officer who stopped his car too and asked us about what we are doing over there. “Collecting sand” – I said, and he looked at me with his ugliest expression ever. Coming from a man of his size, who carried a gun almost as big as myself, I wish I would have chosen another answer…

Entrances forbidden sign for IDF firing areas

Being so close to the border with Egypt and Gaza, and also training area for the army, the place is full of Israeli infantry, which makes the idea of crossing it just a quite interesting experience. This adds to the famous peace negociations at Camp David in 2000, when the Israeli former prime minister, Ehud Barack, offered the Palestinians the Khalutsa sand dunes in exchange for the Israeli settlements in West Bank. The offer was neglected by the Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat due to the questionable quality of soils and one year later, the new prime minister Ariel Sharon ordered the construction of new Israeli settlements in the area as counter-measure to an eventual repetition of dunes’ negotiations.

If you search through my collection after the word “Heide” you will get a list of about a dozen of sands with this name. So what is that and why I have so many samples from the same place? Well, Dresden Heathland (Dresdner Heide in German) is the name of a huge district in the NE of my hometown Dresden, completely covered by forest and representing almost one fifth (1/5) of the entire city’s territory. And yes, that’s really huge, considering that Dresden is the forth biggest city in Germany (after Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne) with a total area of 328 km?, out of which 57 km? represent only the forest Heide.

This brings a major contribution to the green image of the city, one of the greenest in Europe (63% of its area is covered by forests and green places; and we like that a lot).

Dresden Heide offers great hiking routes for fresh-air lovers and we too enjoy it much, the whole year long. But during some of our later walks I have discovered one more aspect, probably unnoticed by the majority of other hikers: despite the typical forest soil, some paths in the forest are totally made of… SAND!!! Without the sand collecting virus in blood maybe I wouldn’t have noticed that either but with my “search-and-collect” status permanently activated, it was just a matter of seconds until the first baggie got fetched out of the rucksack.

This great source of sands dates back over 600 millions years ago in the early Precambrian age when thick layers of sandy deposits covered the region up to 1,500 m depth. Due to immense pressure and temperatures, part of these deposits were being slowly solidified and metamorphosed into granitic rocks (mainly granodiorite and syenite). The intrusive solidification process (below ground) is very slow when compared to the (extrusive) eruptions of lava and it took over 320 millions years for the rocks to show up at the surface, forming the so called today Lausitzer Granodioritplatte (Lausetian granodiorite panel). During the late Ice Age (between 230.000 and 130.000 years ago), the new granodiorite formations were covered with sands brought by the waters from the nearby melting glacier, forming from place to place real sand dunes up to 60 m high (some of them industrially exploited today – see photo below).

But not only the sands were my object of activity in Heide. The soils formed under acidic conditions on the granite beds are infertile and poor for agriculture. In Heide, as typical for most coniferous forests, podsoils constitute the main type of soils encountered, especially on the western side. Due to massive rocks weathering over time, in southern and eastern side one can also find loamy soils and along the Priessnitz river (main river crossing the forest) and the northern side – soils very reach in organic matter.

Maerl sands are deposits formed by the shells of some specific red algae living mostly off the Brittany and Ireland coasts: along the Atlantic coast of Ireland, Scotland and Cornwall.

Because it is primary composed of calcium and magnesium carbonate, but it contains also high amounts of magnesium, iron and other elements, maerl has been industrially collected since the 17th century in Ireland (dredged from the sea bottom and crushed to a fine powder) and used in soil amelioration applications (e.g. as fertilizer to rise the pH value of lime-poor soils). While the amounts harvested in the past were very high, they were extremely reduced in 1990s in Ireland due to ecological reasons (the algae just cannot keep the rhythm and the deposits became quickly depleted).

Although spread also on the Mediteranean coast, most of maerl deposits are concentrated on Brittany isles, being composed of three species of coralline algae: Lithothamnion corallioides, Lithothamnion glaciale and Phymatolithon calcareum. They are characterized by a hard part made by calcareous deposits contained in the cell walls and after repetead tidal action they form beautiful beds for local beaches.

In my collection I have 3 maerl sands so far from Ireland: 864 IE-GY, Scotland: 733 GB-HI (photo above), and Turkey: 556 TR-IB.

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Additional info on maerl:
De Grave et al. 2000: A Study of Selected Ma?rl Beds in Irish Waters and their Potential for Sustainable Extraction (PDF file, 3.28 MB).

Lying at just about 30 km away from my hometown Dresden, the Elbe Sandstone Mountains are an amazing touristic destination for this part of Germany. Their name (in German Elbsandsteingebirge) comes from the river Elbe breaking through sandstone peaks on its way from Czech Republic to the Northern Germany. The part of the mountains situated on German territory is called Sächsische Schweiz (Saxon Switzerland), a name given by two enthusiastic romantic painters fascinated by this magic landscape.

The formation of Elbe Sandstone Mountains started some million years ago, when a sea was covering the whole region. Sand and seashells transported from the neighbor Ore Mountains (Erzgebirge) successively deposited on the sea bottom and got exposed when the sea water vanished away. Continuously exposed to erosion, layers made of quartz sand and clay formed the peaks that can be seen today between Pirna (the town where I work) and after the border with Czech Republic.

At the first look the mountains have a grayish color given by the aggressive meteorological conditions but studying them closer, one can see a wonderful palette of beautiful colors, varying from very bright nuances to almost pitch black. In many places, the eroded rocks are surrounded by pure quartz sands just laying on the ground, almost inviting to be collected. And this is what I did each time we hiked along the old paths: one sample from here, another one from there, trying not to disturb the million years old spirit of the mountains. This resulted in a nice bunch of samples from various well known locations among the Elbsandsteingebirge lovers: Königstein, Pfafenstein, Lilienstein, Kaiserkrone etc.

By the time of writing this article, I had 20 different sand samples from Sächsische Schweiz in my collection but the number will certainly grow during the incoming period. By regional train, it takes only half an hour from my place to get there and we plan at least a trip per week. My aim is to succeed fully representing the whole sandstone area and this is one of the sub-projects of my Sand Atlas album.

The entry no 879 in my collection contains a famous sample among sand collectors: garnet sand. The garnet is a group of minerals used since the old times as gemstone, some popular species including Uvarovite, Pyrope, Grossulaite, Almandite, Andradite, Spessartite. The garnet is also renowned for displaying the greatest variety of color than any other mineral, occurring in any color (except blue).

The sample in my collection belongs to Almandite species, it is purple and originates from Emerald Creek, Idaho (USA). Beside another location in India, Emerald Creek is the only place in the world that produces significant amounts of star garnets. The name “star” comes from the four- or six-ray star shape observed when the mineral is faceted, being also the reason why the garnet Idaho areas have been mined even since 1880 (although commercial mining did not start until 1940s).

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Additional info on Idaho star garnet:
Garnet Area Brochure from Idaho Panhandle National Forests (PDF file, 261 KB)

One of my most interesting sand samples just came today from Anneke, a very kind Dutch collector, to whom I have just sent some of my last Israeli sands. The sample I am speaking about was recorded with no. 843 in my Atlas and it amazed me from the first view: the color is a beautiful light blue, with small white intrusions.

“Blue sand? That can’t possible…” you might say but this is somehow only partially true. The sample is actually composed by crashed sodalite, a semi-precious mineral whose name reflects its high sodium content (chemical formula: Na₈[Cl₂|Al₆Si₆O₂₄]), use mainly as ornamental stone.

Sodalite was first discovered in 1806 in Greenland but started being used as ornament with 1891, in Ontario, Canada. The color of my sample is royal blue, but sodalite may also be grey, yellow, green or pink, very often with white paches. The place where my sample comes from is northern Namibia, on the banks of Kunene river at the border with Angola. Other sodalite deposits can be found in Ontario and Quebec (Canada), Arkansas (USA), as well as in Afghanistan, Brazil, Romania, Portugal, Russia etc.

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Additional info on sodalite:
See the complete mineral fact sheet at Mindat database.