Amber (succinite / retinite) is a fossil resin. The resin flowed out the bark, probably after previous injury, dried up and hardened. There were different flow forms like e.g. drops, mass flows and "drop-on-drop-flow" called "shlaubs" (Schlauben). The later has more fossil inclusions, because it resulted from thrust-wise resin flow. The sticky surface caught the animals and the next resin flow covered them.

According to scientists, the oldest amber originates from the carbon time and has an age of approximately 345 million years (Upper Carboniferous) The oldest known amber containing insects comes from the Lower Cretaceous (approx. 146 million years ago).

Baltic amber and Dominican amber are "young", compared with it. The resins of these areas have extruded from trees (during the tertiary age Oligocene / Eocene 25-50 million years). Copal is a still younger resin which also is found in many places like Colombia and the Dominican Republic, but its behavior is different from that of the "genuine" (old) amber.

In the Baltic resin supplier was pinus succinifera, and/or other conifers of the Araucaria Family (Araucariaceae). The amber-resin producing trees of the Caribbean area were the algarroba species.

Leaf, seeds and flowers

Amber can be found on all continents of the earth, with exception of the pole regions, mainly at the east coast of the USA, Canada, Burma, Mexico, Lebanon, Borneo, Romania and Sicily and other places. But most of these offer by far a smaller yield than the Baltic region and the Dominican Republic. Therefore, most of the amber which is used in the commercial production of jewellery comes from the Baltic region or the Dominican republic. The Baltic area has the most productive and widely known occurrence in Europe.

The amber occurrences in the Dominican Republic is not as old as the Baltic, but has much more fossil inclusions of plants and small animals and for this reason is highly appreciated by scientists and collectors alike. At few places in the Dominican Republic a kind of amber can be found that has a blue glow even in daylight. UV light strengthens this effect.

Amber is considered a gem stone. Amber has been traded since earliest times and was considered a mystic and religious material. Over the "amber routes" it was distributed throughout Europe and all of the known ancient world. Already the Phoenicians traded amber as a prime commodity with the ancient Baltic peoples. Since about 3000 B.C., Baltic amber was exchanged for goods from southern Europe and there were even ‘highways’ or trade routes crossing Europe and leading into the Far East.

In Central America, the Olmec civilization also was mining amber around 3000 B.C. There are legends in Mexico that mention the use of amber in adorning, consuming and using it for stress reduction as a natural remedy.

For thousands of years amber was regarded as a precious substance, and for its mysterious origin considered as a divine protection from harm to the bearer of amber jewelry. As such, it also became to be used as an ingredient in medicines and for religious purposes by "pagans" and "Christians". Around 58 A.D., the Roman Emperor Nero sent a Roman knight on a search for this "Gold of the North" and brought hundreds of pounds of amber to Rome.

In later days, from 1283 on the Teutonic Knights, after returning from the crusades, became absolute rulers of Prussia and the Baltic sources of amber, as well as the manufacture of objects made of amber, punishing transgressors with death by hanging. For the next 500 years, amber was used again for mainly a religious purpose: To produce rosary beads for Moslems and Catholics.

When they arrived in 1492 at the Caribbean island of "La Hispaniola", Columbus and his men were not interested in amber, but in gold and for this reason the existence of amber from the Dominican Republic was little known for a long time. But history tells us that Columbus received from a young Taino prince a pair of shoes decorated with Caribbean amber, in exchange for a strand of Baltic amber beads that he had offered.