The question of the location of the edge of the earth on a planet shaped like a flattened ball is non-trivial. The most entitled to this status are probably the outlying areas in eastern Eurasia. This is where the Manchu dynasty of China's Qing dynasty expanded northward at the end of the 17th century. Russia, in turn, was also interested in developing the Transbaikal Region. The Nerchinsk Treaty of 1689 was the first document on the borders between the two empires.
The negotiations lasted 16 days. The main problem was the ownership of the Uda River valley to the south of the Stanovoy Ridge, which was then the conventional border between the two states. The Russians sensed the Manchus' interest in this place and didn't give in, although there was not even a map of the disputed area. As a result, the "edge of the earth" remained a no man's land for almost 200 years.
The symbol of the place is the rock Irnimit (after the names of the rivers Ir and Nimi, tributaries of the Uda) or "blue jasper". This ornamental stone with a complex palette of orange-red, light-gray or lilac-gray color with areas of blue or blue tones is found only in Russia. It turns out that our country was engaged in a complicated diplomatic dispute for it without being aware of it.
The only irnimite deposit in the world was developed for only 6 years, from 1986 to 1991. The expedition "Dalkvartsamotsvetovy" extracted there 100 tons of blue jasper with predicted resources of about 5.2 thousand tons. In the post-Soviet Russia, the deposit of this stone, inexpensive in terms of jewelry and too costly to be used for decoration purposes, was deemed unprofitable. This was an unforgivably short story, considering the complicated centuries-long route to the discovery of the deposit of the exclusive quartzite.
In 1849, Nicholas I sent a secret expedition to survey the Russian-Chinese border. It was led by military topographers; geological surveys were not even a collateral objective. However, disagreements with the East Siberian governor Muravyov led to the suspension of the expedition and involuntary expansion of its interests.
Delivery of the courier service to and from St. Petersburg could take several months. Because of the forced delay, several mining engineers separated from the main staff of the expedition to conduct geological research. They did not discover Irnimit at that time, but made a geognostic description of the area and proved that the Stanovoi Ridge is connected to the Bureinskii Ridge. This fact made it possible to subsequently move the Russian border further south.
"Where once the Russian flag has been raised, it must no longer be lowered," decreed Nicholas I, and diplomatic work began to secure the border along the Amur. In 1858 it was a success.
In 1924, the famous Russian and Soviet mineralogist Alexander Fersman published a hypothesis that jasper of all colors except blue and blue can be found in the world. This statement was considered indisputable, until in 1962, geologists Farquartzsamotsvetov found in Tuguro-Chumikansky district of Khabarovsk Krai jasper blue color. It turned out that the unusual coloring of the rock provides the presence of alkaline amphibole with iron and manganese oxides and hydroxides. In 1966, the deposit was discovered, and the name of the stone, irnimite, appeared even later.
There is evidence that the Evenks, the indigenous inhabitants of the Amur region, knew blue jasper many centuries before the official discovery of irnimite. They believed the stone attracted prosperity. Incidentally, the report of the Transbaikal Expedition on the disputed territory says: the Tungus (the former name of the Evenks) move freely here and consider themselves subjects of the Russian Empire, not China, despite the presence of separate Chinese border posts not guarded by anyone. Perhaps this was the decisive argument in favor of making the "edge of the land" a Russian, Khabarovsk Krai.
