that makes it worse! gypsum is mined pretty much world wide, it's the major component of plaster.
alabaster statues are a hard form of gypsum, used for statues from prehistory in egypt and the middle east, iran, etc. thru modern times. heck, egypt even used it for mace heads. it was also used pretty much everywhere for the same reasons, easy to carve and fairly hard. germany is one of the top 22 producers
19th among the top 22 (UK is last there)