Graceful baltic amber earrings.
Cultures which are known to have actively traded in amber included Unetice, Otomani, Wessex, Globular Amphora, and, of course, Roman. Historic and prehistoric hoards of raw and worked amber are known from Biskupin and Mycenae and throughout Scandinavia.
The earliest evidence that amber was known about, mined, and worked with in the Baltic Sea/Gdansk area dates from between 8000 – 4000 B. C. The Truso Settlement preserved evidence of the oldest amber artistic products and traces of the lost culture of these Old-Prussian, Polish and Scandinavian artisans. The first amber guild was established in Gdansk in 1441. Celtic tribes spread over vast geographic regions throughout Europe reaching Italy and the Balkans on the Adriatic coast. Celtic merchants revived the old amber routes and forged new ones linking Italy and Iliria to the „Amber Coast” of the Southern Baltic Sea. By the first century AD, Roman demand for amber was so great that it drove the creation of „Amber Routes” from the Mediterranean to various points along the Baltic coast. Amber’s specific gravity is slightly over 1 and it floats in saltwater, therefore amber earrings becomes concentrated in estuarine or marine deposits, moved some distance from the original site.
Wet sediments of clay and sand preserve the resin well because they are devoid of oxygen. Barabara Kosmowska-Ceranowicz has identified an ancient river course which she has named the ‘Eridanus’ and also an ancient delta at the mouth of the ‘Eridanus’, which has been called the ‘Chlapowo-Sambian’ delta.
The route of these ancient rivers is detailed in the following map.An This conviction has been recently confirmed by Albert Bogdasarov, a Byelorussian mineralogist who recommends the wearing of amber necklace, especially by children, in areas of intense radiation caused by the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster. of this sort was one of the most important ways that people of the early Bronze Age could display their power and influence. Grimaldi in his latest book ‘Amber – Window to the Past’ refers to current research (not specified) which may at last resolve this mystery. An important and relevant observation is that the ecological systems which are supported by the Pseudolarix trees in China appear to reflect those presumed and extrapolated from the inclusions discovered in Baltic amber. Resins which can become amber are found wherever certain kinds of trees oozing sap (a few conifers and angiosperms) are found–almost everywhere in the northern hemisphere of our planet.
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