— You can only carve such lines with a diamond cutter!
— You’re mistaken, my friend. These slabs were eroded by soil acids, and people simply polished them…
— Can’t you imagine that the patterns were etched by the people using acid?
— Ha-ha-ha, you crack me up! Savages, children from almost the Stone Age, building a factory to produce acid!
Such, or something like it, were the conversations among scholars as they examined the stone slabs that served as currency for the inhabitants of the New Hebrides Islands.
But what was the reality? The patterns were indeed created using strong hydrochloric acid. And there was no need to construct a chemical plant with modern equipment for this. European scientists underestimated the ingenuity of the New Hebrideans, who utilized a natural “acid factory”—the small dolium snail.
…Guided by the skilled hand of its master, the snail crawled across the marble surface of the slab, burning the desired pattern into it.