What is Baltic amber?

Gintaras (Lithuanian for amber) comes from "ginte" (meaning to protect). Amber is said to cure all manner of ailments from arthritis to epilepsy, impotence, Black Death, goitres and sore throats. Wear amber close to your skin to ward off evil spirits and protect from drowning.

Amber is any natural resin which oozed its way out of a tree and eventually fossilized at any time from recent times back to many million years ago. Amber is generally yellow or yellow brown and translucent, and it is pretty when polished. In its fresh form, resin has been known to collect insects or leaves in its sticky clutches, preserving them in visually perfect splendor for thousands of years. Resins which can become amber are found wherever certain kinds of trees oozing sap (a few conifers and angiosperms) are found--almost everywhere in the northern hemisphere of our planet.
Baltic amber (known as succinite) is a specific subset of amber that is found only in northern Europe: it accounts for some 80% of the known amber in the world. Between 35 and 50 million years ago, sap oozed out from a forest of conifers (probably either false larch or kauri) in the region now covered by the Baltic Sea, and eventually hardened into clear lumps. Shoved around northern Europe by glaciers and river channels, lumps of genuine Baltic amber can still be found today on the eastern coasts of England and Holland, throughout Poland, Scandinavia and northern Germany and much of western Russia and the Baltic states.

Baltic amber is fossil resin produced by pine trees, which grew in Northern Europe - from southern regions of the present day Scandinavia and nearby regions of the bed of the Baltic Sea. The climate became warmer and conifer trees started to exude big amounts of resin. Scientists say that amber is a fossil pine resin from this region that has achieved a stable state through oxidation. The word amber meant only one thing – the Baltic Amber. However, the process of how amber is formed traced more amber varieties in different parts of the world. Although more than 125 types of fossil resins are known in the world, these resins are not amber but its relatives. They are mostly found in Europe and America and each of them has its own name. But the Baltic amber is uniquely known for its quality and is most sought after.