page_title: Amber
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Amber / History
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Gouttes de résine (planche d'épicéa) English: Droplets of resin (Spruce)
context_page_description: Amber is fossilized tree resin that has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Much valued from antiquity to the present as a gemstone, amber is made into a variety of decorative objects. Amber is used in jewelry. It has also been used as a healing agent in folk medicine.
  There are five classes of amber, defined on the basis of their chemical constituents. Because it originates as a soft, sticky tree resin, amber sometimes contains animal and plant material as inclusions. Amber occurring in coal seams is also called resinite, and the term ambrite is applied to that found specifically within New Zealand coal seams.
context_section_description: Theophrastus discussed amber in the 4th century BC, as did Pytheas (c. 330 BC), whose work "On the Ocean" is lost, but was referenced by Pliny the Elder (23 to 79 AD), according to whose The Natural History (in what is also the earliest known mention of the name Germania):
  Pytheas says that the Gutones, a people of Germany, inhabit the shores of an estuary of the Ocean called Mentonomon, their territory extending a distance of six thousand stadia; that, at one day's sail from this territory, is the Isle of Abalus, upon the shores of which, amber is thrown up by the waves in spring, it being an excretion of the sea in a concrete form; as, also, that the inhabitants use this amber by way of fuel, and sell it to their neighbors, the Teutones.
  Earlier Pliny says that Pytheas refers to a large island - three days' sail from the Scythian coast and called Balcia by Xenophon of Lampsacus (author of a fanciful travel book in Greek) - as Basilia - a name generally equated with Abalus. Given the presence of amber, the island could have been Heligoland, Zealand, the shores of Bay of Gdansk, the Sambia Peninsula or the Curonian Lagoon, which were historically the richest sources of amber in northern Europe.
  It is assumed that there were well-established trade routes for amber connecting the Baltic with the Mediterranean (known as the "Amber Road"). Pliny states explicitly that the Germans exported amber to Pannonia, from where the Veneti distributed it onwards.
  The ancient Italic peoples of southern Italy used to work amber; the National Archaeological Museum of Siritide (Museo Archeologico Nazionale della Siritide) at Policoro in the province of Matera (Basilicata) displays important surviving examples.
  Amber used in antiquity as at Mycenae and in the prehistory of the Mediterranean comes from deposits of Sicily.
  
  Pliny also cites the opinion of Nicias (c. 470–413 BC), according to whom amber
  is a liquid produced by the rays of the sun; and that these rays, at the moment of the sun's setting, striking with the greatest force upon the surface of the soil, leave upon it an unctuous sweat, which is carried off by the tides of the Ocean, and thrown up upon the shores of Germany.
   Besides the fanciful explanations according to which amber is "produced by the Sun", Pliny cites opinions that are well aware of its origin in tree resin, citing the native Latin name of succinum (sūcinum, from sucus "juice"). In Book 37, section XI of Natural History, Pliny wrote:
  Amber is produced from a marrow discharged by trees belonging to the pine genus, like gum from the cherry, and resin from the ordinary pine. It is a liquid at first, which issues forth in considerable quantities, and is gradually hardened [...] Our forefathers, too, were of opinion that it is the juice of a tree, and for this reason gave it the name of "succinum" and one great proof that it is the produce of a tree of the pine genus, is the fact that it emits a pine-like smell when rubbed, and that it burns, when ignited, with the odour and appearance of torch-pine wood.
  He also states that amber is also found in Egypt and in India, and he even refers to the electrostatic properties of amber, by saying that "in Syria the women make the whorls of their spindles of this substance, and give it the name of harpax [from ἁρπάζω, "to drag"] from the circumstance that it attracts leaves towards it, chaff, and the light fringe of tissues".
  Pliny says that the German name of amber was glæsum, "for which reason the Romans, when Germanicus Caesar commanded the fleet in those parts, gave to one of these islands the name of Glæsaria, which by the barbarians was known as Austeravia". This is confirmed by the recorded Old High German word glas and by the Old English word glær for "amber" (compare glass).
  In Middle Low German, amber was known as berne-, barn-, börnstēn (with etymological roots related to "burn" and to "stone"). The Low German term became dominant also in High German by the 18th century, thus modern German Bernstein besides Dutch barnsteen.
  In the Baltic languages, the Lithuanian term
caption: Wood resin, the source of amber
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