Amber has always been the object of human amazement.
What is it? Where does it come from? How old is it? What can it tell us? Previously, e.g. meant that amber was hardened urine from a lynx, wax from forest ants, hardened honey, that it was vomit from whales or that amber was proof that there must be a hidden world in the earth's interior. In 1550, one of the greatest mineralogists of the time, the German Georg Agricola, even put forward a theory that amber was solidified petroleum, which seeped up through the seabed. But several hundred years earlier, people were already on the right track.
The Roman Pliny the Elder, who lived from the year 23 BC. to 79 AD, believed based on the animals and plants he saw in the amber, that it must have been liquid before it had become solid. Based on how amber smells when rubbed quickly against fabric or ignited, he concluded that it must have once been resin from conifers.We know that Pliny the Elder was right, but today amber and the world hidden within it leave ample room for wonder and cause for new questions.