Do you remember the movie “Jurassic Park”? They created dinosaurs by extracting dinosaur DNA from blood sucked in by an insect trapped in amber. That’s pretty cool!
While it’s all science fiction, of course, there’s enough real science behind it to make it quite an intriguing scenario to think about. I remember shopping at a nature store when the film was first released and noticing the renewed excitement that people showed at the amber jewelry that contained insects.
Fossils of any kind are fascinating, of course, but the fossils contained in amber hold a special intrigue because they are often preserved in such exquisite three-dimensional detail. This also includes the soft tissues and details down to the cellular structure. These amber fossils are a window into the past that we just don’t get from other fossils, like an impression on a rock.
In reality, amber itself is a fossil, not just the insects and other living creatures that are kept inside. Amber is fossilized tree sap, also called tree resin. The exact process by which the tree’s sap hardens into a fossil remains a mystery and therefore cannot be replicated in a laboratory. This makes amber very special and highly sought after.
Amber is found throughout the world, but the two areas that contain the highest concentrations are by far the Baltic region of Eastern Europe and the Dominican Republic. Baltic amber has been commercially mined on a much larger scale and for much longer than Dominican amber. In fact, it wasn’t until the 1960s that the world began to pay much attention to Dominican amber. However, it was definitely known to the Taino Indians as early as 400 AD They used it as an ornament and has been found associated with their tombs. The amber deposits in the Dominican Republic were also known to Christopher Columbus and the Spanish colonizers since the late 1490s when the Taínos gifted them with an amber necklace when they first arrived. However, the Spanish have such a determined focus on gold that they basically forgot about amber.
In the 1960s, Germans began mining amber in the Dominican Republic and exporting raw amber pieces outside of the Dominican Republic for processing. In the late 1970s, the Dominican government began to take note of the value of amber as a national natural resource and passed a law that would not allow the export of this resource unless it had been worked by local Dominican artisans. This kept some of the income that this natural resource generated in the country.
Today, tourists visiting any region of the Dominican Republic can find Dominican amber jewelry and other fine pieces of amber for sale in open markets, beach stalls, traditional shops, and museums. In fact, it is one of the best-selling items in the Dominican market, which makes people often forget how difficult it is to get it.
Most of the best Dominican amber, the hardest, oldest and most inclusions, is found in the mountainous region of La Cumbre north of Santiago and south of Puerto Plata. It is located high in the mountains and is only accessible on foot or by donkey. It is also firmly embedded in layers of sandstone lignite and must be removed from the rock piece by piece and by hand. Therefore, it is quite difficult to extract it and it takes special skill and hard physical work to do it. So when you are shopping for Dominican amber jewelry, keep in mind how arduous the task of obtaining this beautiful gem is and you will understand why it can and should be priced higher than other jewelry.
Dominican amber is considered of higher quality than Baltic amber for two main reasons. First, Dominican amber is more translucent than Baltic amber, so you can see what’s embedded inside it more clearly. In fact, Baltic amber is usually quite dark in comparison and is full of artifacts that make visibility difficult. Second, Dominican amber has about 10 times more interesting inclusions, such as insects, than Baltic amber. We will explore these reasons in more detail below.
When you pick up a piece of Dominican amber, you have a precious piece of history in your hands, literally! Dominican amber comes from the sap of the Hymenaea protera tree, a tree that has become extinct but is related to the current carob tree. However, through DNA testing, this prehistoric extinct tree is believed to be more closely related to another species of Hymenaea found in Africa. In fact, all Hymenaea trees in the Caribbean are believed to have originated from a tough seed pod that floats from Africa in the southern equatorial current through the same route that hurricanes take. The trees from which Dominican amber was created are believed to have dominated the canopy of the ancient Caribbean rainforest 20 to 40 million years ago. These impressive trees reached heights of around 82 feet (25 meters).
Most Dominican amber comes in the same color tones that you would find in various types of honey: straw yellow, deeper gold, orange, and brown. However, Dominican amber also comes in other colors that are rarer and therefore more appreciated by collectors. Red amber is occasionally formed by oxidation of the surface and can be quite beautiful. Green amber is even rarer and the rarest of all is blue amber. Both green and blue amber fluoresce these colors in natural sunlight and are considered by most to be the most beautiful type of amber.
One of the things that makes Baltic amber so much more opaque than Dominican amber is that it is often filled with tiny air bubbles. This is the reason why ballitic amber is sometimes called “bone amber” as it can resemble the inside of a bone. In an effort to remove these bubbles and try to create a lighter and clearer piece of amber, Baltic amber is often treated with high pressure and temperature. This often leaves noticeable streaks all over the amber piece. Dominican amber does not need to be subjected to such stresses and is therefore more pristine and often more valuable.
Blue amber is almost exclusively found in the Dominican Republic, but you need to be careful to get the actual product when you buy it. A piece of jewelry made from blue amber, especially a piece that has a nice inclusion, is almost always much more expensive than a piece of golden amber. If you find a piece of blue amber that looks unrealistically cheap, buyer beware! Keep in mind that only about 220 pounds (100 kilograms) of blue amber are found per year, so the market should never be flooded with blue amber jewelry.
It should also be noted that all true Dominican amber fluoresces blue under UV light. In fact, this is a technique used to determine whether or not Dominican amber is real. Copal, a hardened but not completely amber tree sap, is sometimes deceptively sold as “amber,” but this imitation will not fluoresce under UV light.
Inclusions in jewelry of Dominican amber and other pieces of Dominican amber can greatly increase the value of each piece. Insect inclusions found in Dominican amber include flying ants, stingless bees, sweat bees, beetles, fungal gnats, sandflies, small crickets, moths, spiders, pseudoscorpions, parasitic wasps, mealybugs, grasshoppers, and single-celled organisms such as protozoa. You will also find leaves, flower petals, plant roots, unhatched eggs, spores, and pollen. In larger chunks, you will even find the rare amphibian, reptile, or mushroom! These pieces can be worth a fortune and are often kept as museum pieces.
In addition to jewelry, some collectors collect exceptionally beautiful pieces of amber. These may contain a rarer form of inclusion or an unusual color. All the inclusions have some scientific value, but some are so valuable to the scientific community that they are not allowed to be taken out of the country with the approval of the Dominican natural history museum.
Dominicans are becoming more and more aware of how valuable their amber resources are and therefore the value of this amber is increasing rapidly. Dominican amber is a true treasure and one of the advantages of traveling to the Dominican Republic is the opportunity to buy your favorite piece. Finding Dominican amber elsewhere is increasingly difficult.
