Amber has accompanied people since ancient times, when it was used as a means of payment, for the production of decorations, jewelry and talismans. This clear and hard, organic mineral aroused admiration and was a symbol of prestige and wealth.
The oldest amber amulet comes from over 30,000 years ago. Amber belonged to the most desirable stones and collected in antiquity and the Middle Ages. For thousands of years it has been known in many parts of the world. Amber jewelry has been found in many tombs, e.g. in Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt. The appearance of amber in ancient Greece took place already in 1800 BC. It was noticed that the “holy stone” as amber was called, rubbed with cloth has attractive properties. For the Greeks, this phenomenon, surrounded by a nimbus of mystery, was considered magic. The name electricity comes from the Greek name of amber – electron.
The raw material thanks to the Amber Route from northern Poland arrived to Rome, where during the reign of Nero, amber and amber jewelry were extremely popular. There was a fashion for amber amulets, decorative elements, amber jewelry and other luxury items. From the descriptions of ancient Roman and Greek writers it transpires that amber was imported to Rome from the distant land of the Lugii and Vistula Veneti, situated by the Baltic Sea (then called the Northern Ocean). These were the areas of today’s Poland. Initially, the Romans exchanged their products for this precious stone through the people of the Danube, but in time they organized independent expeditions.
About 2000 years ago one of the first expeditions took place, and Pliny the Elder described it in the first century CE. The main hero of the expedition was a Roman sent by Emperor Nero outside the Empire to the unexplored Baltic coast to bring a new treasure. So it happened, the traveler brought large amounts of this precious stone.
This event encouraged many merchants to set off on the roads leading to the north. The course of these trade routes can be now reconstructed on the basis of archaeological findings, e.g. a warehouse in Wroclaw containing approx. 1500 kg of this precious stone from the first century before Christ. This road began in northern Italy, in Aquileia, then crossed the Alps, the Danube Valley, and then usually in the region of the Moravian Gate or Klodzka Valley entered the area of today’s Poland, from where it crossed Opole to Kalisz on Prosna, and then to the sea, somewhere between Gdansk and Konigsberg.