Amber

The word referred to what is now known as ambergris (ambre gris or "gray amber"), a solid waxy substance derived from the sperm whale.

[6] In the Romance languages, the sense of the word was extended to Baltic amber (fossil resin) from as early as the late 13th century.

[7] At first called white or yellow amber (ambre jaune), this meaning was adopted in English by the early 15th century.

[10][11] According to myth, when Phaëton son of Helios (the Sun) was killed, his mourning sisters became poplar trees, and their tears became elektron, amber.

[13] A number of regional and varietal names have been applied to ambers over the centuries, including Allingite, Beckerite, Gedanite, Kochenite, Krantzite, and Stantienite.

[14] Theophrastus discussed amber in the 4th century BCE, as did Pytheas (c. 330 BCE), whose work "On the Ocean" is lost, but was referenced by Pliny, according to whose Natural History:[15] 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.

Pliny also cites the opinion of Nicias (c. 470–413 BCE), according to whom amberis 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.

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.

[21] Early in the 19th century, the first reports of amber found in North America came from discoveries in New Jersey along Crosswicks Creek near Trenton, at Camden, and near Woodbury.

[2] Amber is heterogeneous in composition, but consists of several resinous bodies[clarify] more or less soluble in alcohol, ether and chloroform, associated with an insoluble bituminous substance.

Amber is a macromolecule formed by free radical polymerization[22] of several precursors in the labdane family, for example, communic acid, communol, and biformene.

As amber matures over the years, more polymerization takes place as well as isomerization reactions, crosslinking and cyclization.

Molecular polymerization,[22] resulting from high pressures and temperatures produced by overlying sediment, transforms the resin first into copal.

About 90% of the world's extractable amber is still located in that area, which was transferred to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic of the USSR in 1946, becoming the Kaliningrad Oblast.

Then nodules of blue earth have to be removed and an opaque crust must be cleaned off, which can be done in revolving barrels containing sand and water.

Contemporary mining of this deposit has attracted attention for unsafe working conditions and its role in funding internal conflict in the country.

[33] The pieces are carefully heated with exclusion of air and then compressed into a uniform mass by intense hydraulic pressure, the softened amber being forced through holes in a metal plate.

Known to the Iranians by the Pahlavi compound word kah-ruba (from kah "straw" plus rubay "attract, snatch", referring to its electrical properties[13]), which entered Arabic as kahraba' or kahraba (which later became the Arabic word for electricity, كهرباء kahrabā'), it too was called amber in Europe (Old French and Middle English ambre).

Found along the southern shore of the Baltic Sea, yellow amber reached the Middle East and western Europe via trade.

[46] Baltic amber yields on dry distillation succinic acid, the proportion varying from about 3% to 8%, and being greatest in the pale opaque or bony varieties.

[55] In Lebanon, more than 450 outcrops of Lower Cretaceous amber were discovered by Dany Azar,[56] a Lebanese paleontologist and entomologist.

Among these outcrops, 20 have yielded biological inclusions comprising the oldest representatives of several recent families of terrestrial arthropods.

Many remarkable insects and spiders were recently discovered in the amber of Jordan including the oldest zorapterans, clerid beetles, umenocoleid roaches, and achiliid planthoppers.

Baltic amber is found as irregular nodules in marine glauconitic sand, known as blue earth, occurring in Upper Eocene strata of Sambia in Prussia.

Heinrich Göppert named the common amber-yielding pine of the Baltic forests Pinites succiniter, but as the wood does not seem to differ from that of the existing genus it has been also called Pinus succinifera.

It is improbable that the production of amber was limited to a single species; and indeed a large number of conifers belonging to different genera are represented in the amber-flora.

Insects, spiders and even their webs, annelids, frogs,[58] crustaceans, bacteria and amoebae,[59] marine microfossils,[60] wood, flowers and fruit, hair, feathers[3] and other small organisms have been recovered in Cretaceous ambers (deposited c. 130 million years ago).

[61] The preservation of prehistoric organisms in amber forms a key plot point in Michael Crichton's 1990 novel Jurassic Park and the 1993 movie adaptation by Steven Spielberg.

[71] Amber and extracts were used from the time of Hippocrates in ancient Greece for a wide variety of treatments through the Middle Ages and up until the early twentieth century.

[77] In Arab Muslim tradition, popular scents include amber, jasmine, musk and oud (agarwood).