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Amber is a warm & golden colored organic gem that is called yantar in the Rus. Amber was thought to be the tears of the gods, therefore it has secret & para-natural forces. Actually it is fossilized resin from ancient forests. Ancient tree resins frequently trapped debris such as mosquitoes & other insects that have created fascinating pre-historic windows of the ancient past.
Yantar is known to mineralogists as succinite, Yantar's soft & attractive hues have lured & captured the admiration of gem & jewelry fans for literally hundreds, actually thousands of years. It is a precious gem but not a stone, that was recommended for treating various diseases; anxiety, frustration, sleeplessness, muscle cramps, headaches, dizziness, colds, bronchitis, asthma, skin conditions, (open ulcers & suppurations), eczema, psoriasis, cardio-vascular diseases & female complaints, menstral cramps, bloating, PMS, hysteria & many others. The movie Jurassic Park, created an interest in this "time-capsule gem" that has sky-rocketed & continues to climb in popularity as time goes by. Sometime between 140 to 65 millions years ago, somewhere on along the coast of what is now the Baltic Sea, drops of tree resin rolled down the trunks of gigantic, prehistoric trees. Immense rainfalls washed them down to the river. Within its waters, the resin tears traveled to shore & settled at the bottom of an ancient bay. In time the resin fossilized & although it hardened, its structure survived intact to our time in an unchanged form as a warm golden gem we call, yantar/amber. Although the translucent deep yellow form is the most common, amber is actually found in a wide variety of colors, from almost black, through deep greens, to rare opaque white & ivory shades. Often seeds, pollen grains, leaves, feathers, insects, flower petals, fish scales & even bits of tiny animals are discovered embedded within the resin for millions of years & are readily visible. Amber jewelry has been crafted for at least 13,000 years that we can historically document & probably much longer than that. Around 1600 BC amber became treasured in ancient Greece. Homer wrote in the Odyssey about amber as one of the most precious materials. Greeks called yantar/amber "elektron" which means, "derived from the Sun." It is believed that amber was made from tears of a nymph. Since the Greeks first observed & recorded the electrostatic properties of amber, centuries later, the Greek name of yantar, "elektron" became a root word for electricity.
The copyright of the article Rus: Culture of Yantar in Russian Culture is owned by Dr. Donald R. Houston. Permission to republish Rus: Culture of Yantar in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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