History
Amber is a vegetal fossilized resin. When this resin came out of a tree, many million years ago, frequently trapped in its path small pieces of vegetal and very small animals, which have been preserved within it until now. This resin was a sticky fluid which, when getting in touch with air, hardened and was transformed into amber with the passing of great lengths of time. Among all precious and semi-precious stones, amber is unique in having an organic origin, together with diamond, originated from graphite. In Europe, amber derives from the resin of a conifer, or pine Pinus succinifera, while in Chiapas (Mexico) and the Northern and Eastern Dominican Republic, is from a type of Hymenea (Carob tree).
The formation of Amber is by abnormal accumulation of resin many millions of years ago. In the beginning it was a sticky resin, which came out of the trunk or branches of some trees. This was the defense of the same tree against some insect (bark-gnawing beetle), bird (woodpecker), or fungi; sometimes the resin was coming out of a branch broken by the wind or by a lightning. That resin hardened getting in touch with air and amassed at the foot of a tree, among the fallen leaves. Later, rains blew the hardened resin to some river or the sea, where it formed - with clays and sands - thick layers of sediments.
Many million years later it transformed into amber.
