Imagine you are a woman and it is your birthday. You have received all sorts of lovely gifts from your friends and family, with books, clothes and even jewellery in the mix. Your favourite gift though would have to be the beautiful amber bracelet which your husband gave you. You have always been fascinated by amber and the way which plant resin hardened to a fossil. Sometimes it even trapped little creatures inside – like a time capsule on a different age. Just amazing.
When I showed the children this amber bracelet, they thought it was beautiful, but they wondered what was particularly interesting about it. When I explained to them about amber they were fascinated. To think that this ‘stone’ could be a glimpse into a different time, a different place. As one child said “it’s like a time capsule to a different world!”
Amber is a translucent, fossilized resin which comes from a type of coniferous tree which is now extinct. It is usually a yellow or brown colour and has been used as part of jewellery for thousands of years. Amber is actually found worldwide, but the most famous and largest deposits are in Europe, particularly Russia and the Baltic Coast. Sometimes the amber is mined and removed from rocks, but it is also torn from the sea floor by the currents and waves and then washes up on beaches where it is collected.
Amber has been used by humans for many thousands of years, with amber discovered at several Neolithic sites which are far from the shores of the Baltic Sea, where much of this early amber originated. By the bronze age, it appears that there were long distance trading routes which transported amber to various different civilisations in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and even the Far East. These cultures used amber not just in creating ornamental jewellery, but as part of religious beliefs, creating amulets and sacred objects using the fossilised resin. In Egypt amber was even inserted under the skin of the hands of mummies as they believed that amber prevented the mummy from being destroyed or decaying. Today, amber continues to be popular in jewellery, but it is also used in cosmetics and even some natural ‘medicines’!