Amber is fossilized tree resin. GIA classes it as an organic gem, not a mineral. In Chinese it is called hupo (琥珀).
A time capsule in resin
Millions of years ago, sticky resin oozing from trees trapped ants, bees and termites, along with leaves and pine needles. GIA says about 1,000 extinct animal species have been identified in amber, and the oldest amber dates back roughly 320 million years. Resin must be over a million years old to count as amber. Younger fossil resin is called copal.
The Baltic coast is still an important source, though sources differ on its age. Britannica places Baltic amber in sands 40 to 60 million years old, while a recent review in a Royal Society of Edinburgh journal dates the Blue Earth, the main amber layer on Russia's Samland Peninsula, to about 35 to 36 million years. GIA says Burmese amber may preserve life from 80 to 100 million years ago.
Mila, the "beeswax" amber
The Chinese gem trade calls semi-translucent to opaque amber with a greasy luster mila (蜜蜡), or "beeswax." GIA says it makes up about 60 percent of natural amber production worldwide. Countless tiny gas bubbles give it its milky look. A market saying, "millennium amber, million years beeswax," leads many Chinese buyers to believe mila takes longer to form. GIA calls that a mistake.
Tiger's soul and the seven treasures
Li Shizhen's 16th-century herbal Bencao gangmu says that when a tiger dies, its spirit sinks into the earth and turns to stone. Amber looks like that stone, so it is called hupo, "tiger's soul." The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria notes that this link to the fierce animal made amber a symbol of courage.
In the Infinite Life Sutra, amber is one of the seven treasures that form the ground of Amitabha Buddha's land, with gold, silver, liuli, coral, giant clam shell and agate. The lists differ between sutras. The Lotus Sutra's seven, as the Soka Gakkai Dictionary of Buddhism gives them, leave amber out.
Amber on prayer beads
The Rubin Museum holds 19th-century Tibetan prayer beads of amber with carnelian and ivory. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a Tibetan necklace of amber, jade and silver, and a Qing court necklace, or chaozhu (朝珠), of amber and jadeite. The Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art says the chaozhu was based on Buddhist prayer beads that Tibetan lamas sent to the Manchu court as gifts. Our guide to why a mala has 108 beads explains the count.
Caring for amber, and a note on babies
Amber is soft, at 2 to 2.5 on the Mohs scale, with poor toughness. GIA warns that it burns at fairly low temperatures and can darken after long exposure to light. Clean it only with warm water and a mild soap, and keep it out of ultrasonic cleaners. In December 2018 the US Food and Drug Administration warned against teething necklaces and bracelets for babies, after reports of choking and the death of an 18-month-old strangled by an amber necklace during a nap. The American Academy of Pediatrics advises that infants wear no jewelry at all.
