Amber Coast
The amber coast is a coastal strip northwest of Koenigsberg ( Kaliningrad ) in the Russian Oblast Kaliningrad, so called because of its large deposits of amber . Here amber is extracted in open-cast mining . Even Tacitus mentions in his Germania , the living on this coast people of Aesti , which dealt with amber, and documents the name glesum (Latinized Glaesum ).
Amber concentration
The high amber concentration on the Samland coast is due to the so-called blue earth , which is relatively close to the surface . This is a marine sediment that was formed in an extensive bay of the former Eocene Sea. Here was the delta of a river ( Eridanus ) coming out of the “Amber Forest” and carrying the fossil resin with it. In contemporary reports it is said that in some years, after violent autumn storms, so much amber was thrown on the beach that it was transported away in horse-drawn vehicles. In 1862 there were said to have been around 4,000 pounds of amber on the stretch of beach between Nodems and Palmnicken, and around 600 kg in 1911 north of Palmnicken. In the middle of the 19th century, the Oberbergrat Runge made calculations according to which the average annual yield on the actual amber coast should have been 400 hundredweight.
After the success of the amber dredging in the Curonian Lagoon, the company Stantien & Becker began in the last quarter of the 19th century to use state-of-the-art technology to extract amber on an industrial scale from the cliffs of the blue earth under the Samland mainland to promote in civil engineering. Previous dismantling attempts by other operators were always short-lived due to the lack of suitable technical aids. Since 1913, within sight of the Amber Coast near the town of Jantarny , the former Palmnicken, amber has been extracted in open-cast mining.
In an inventory based on official sources of the Prussian monarchy from 1829 it says: "The most beautiful amber is found in large cattle, which contains the white amber, the rarest and most expensive of all types, under a thin red bark".
Differences to the inland
Amber is also found locally in considerable quantities in the interior. For example, amber concentrations were discovered between Berlin and Stettin near the Barnim Nature Park and near Eberswalde during dam and canal construction work. The amber to be found in these areas today was transported in the Vistula Glacial (starting about 115,000 years ago, ending 12,000 years ago) through the glacier ice advancing from the northeast , after this more or less large clod of the "blue earth" emerged from the Had detached the underground of today's Samland. After the glaciers had melted, the clods or their remnants mixed with other debris and meltwater sands remained. The enormous meltwater flows carried a considerable part of the material taken up by the ice on the advance after the glaciers retreated. Some of it remained in these glacial valleys , but much of it also reached the Baltic Sea, which was gradually forming at the time, and - from further west located glacial valleys - into the North Sea. This is the reason why amber is washed up on the beaches of the North Sea and on the Baltic coast sections far away from the "blue earth" of the Samland when the weather is right.
It cannot be ruled out that the people of the Bronze Age already knew and used amber from these inland debris deposits, and that amber may even have been systematically mined locally by duck mining . However, due to the deposition conditions outlined above, only comparatively small amounts may have been involved. Essentially, the extraction of amber will have been largely limited to picking up pieces that have come to light on the surface.
Trade routes to the Amber Coast
Archaeologists suspect a trading center for amber near the border with present-day Poland, which is likely to have a direct relationship with one of the old trade routes.
The trade routes of amber, which is coveted as jewelry, incense and medicine, to the Mediterranean Sea have long been called the Amber Road . Its main branches led from the above-mentioned deposits through Austria to the Adriatic , a western branch from Hamburg to Marseille . Early market places emerged at transport hubs (for example near the Vistula and Danube ). In Lower Austria, around the turn of the times , the Romans paved these ancient traffic routes into weatherproof Roman roads .
Amber Coast of Hispaniola
The amber coastline (Costa de Ambar or "Costambar" for short) is also the name of the coastal section of the Dominican Republic west of Puerto Plata , where beach finds are possible and where Dominican amber is extracted from numerous mines .
literature
- Johann Christian Wutzke : Remarks about the Baltic Sea coast from Pillau to the Curonian Spit and about the mining of amber in Prussia . In: Prussische Provinzial-Blätter ; Volume 3, Koenigsberg 1830, pp. 440-449 and pp. 525-534 ; Volume 4, Königsberg 1830, pp. 59-66 and pp. 261-286 .
- Extraction of amber on the Samland coast . In: From nature . No. 51 and 53, NF, Leipzig 1861, pp. 808-815 and pp. 817-821.
- Hansasche: The journey through the Samland and to the Prussian amber coast . In: Pictures on the journey to the meeting of naturalists in Königsberg, in the fall of 1860 (Hans Tasche, ed.). Giessen 1861, pp. 78-127.
- William Pierson : electron or about the ancestors, the relatives and the names of the old Prussians. A contribution to the oldest history of the state of Prussia . Berlin 1869 ( full text ).
- Christel Hoffeins: The Amber Coast . Hall 2008; ISBN 978-3-932795-29-9 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b K. Andrée: Amber and its meaning in the natural sciences and humanities, art and applied arts, technology, industry and trade. Koenigsberg 1937.
- ^ F. Waldmann: The amber in antiquity - A historical-philological sketch. Fellin 1883.
- ^ CW Ferber: Contributions to the knowledge of the industrial and commercial state of the Prussian monarchy. From official sources. Berlin 1829, p. 212
- ↑ George O. Poinar, Jr .: Life in amber. Stanford 1992