Amber is Both an Object of Beauty and a Time Capsule of Ancient Flora and Fauna

 

Amber: Window to the Past – David A. Grimaldi (1996)

 

            Sunlight solidified.  That is how ancient man saw amber, initially discovered washed up on sea beds and beaches, reflecting the bright sun with its rich, often golden hues.  It must have seemed like such a magical material.  Sometimes completely transparent, sometimes opaque, this material came in a wide range of colors, from green to bright red, and possessed seemingly magical properties.  It felt warm to the touch, unlike other stones, and built-up static electricity. One of only two items used as gemstones that arise from natural, biological processes (the other being pearls), amber remains highly prized and very beautiful.  My fascination with amber has been lifelong, and because I am not fortunate enough to reside in an amber-rich location, I adore books such as this one by David A. Grimaldi, for they bring me not only a deep and considered history of the precious material itself, but also countless amazing photographs and reproductions from collections worldwide.  My jealousies abound.

            This wonderful book is divided into two sections, Amber in Nature, and Amber in Art.  The first chapter of the Amber in Nature section details exactly what is considered amber, its origins, and its properties.  True amber is very old.  Starting out as the resinous sap from a variety of trees (many of which are extinct), amber is created when this sap drips or falls to the ground and is covered by either water or oxygen-poor soil.  This allows the highly volatile chemicals found in the resins to either dissipate or break down while preserving the resin itself, sometimes for tens of millions of years.  Erosion and other factors work to bring up these deposits, oftentimes breaking off pieces and washing them away with the tide.  This is how early people found amber on beaches near ancient deposits.  In a world with very few transparent substances, it makes sense that amber was highly prized and divine.

            While prized for millennia for its gem-like qualities, in modern times the greatest value of amber lies in the inclusions found within.  Humans have always prized amber specimens with visible animals or plants trapped inside, often using these for jewelry or decoration.  Most did not know or understand how old the amber was, or the included animals and plants.  Scientists began to understand that the animals and plants in amber were sometimes tens of millions of years old, which led them to use the old amber collections for taxonomy purposes.  In even more recent times, the rise of scanning electron microscopy and other even better microscopes helped us see how much detail and preserved material was actually available within the amber itself.  Whereas most fossils found in rock strata are compressed, flattened through time and pressure, the fossils inside amber often retain their three-dimensional structure.  It has been found that the chemical composition of the amber not only sealed the specimens away from harmful oxygen, but the process of desiccation within the amber preserved many soft tissue organs, such as the brains, muscles and lungs of a hundred-million-year-old fly, all plainly visible under the microscope.  Amazing.  Even more insane is that individual mitochondria have been preserved.  These are some of the smallest constituents of any living animal’s cells.  I cannot imagine the glee and shock whenever a scientist first laid eyes on hundred-million-year-old mitochondria.  Those moments are truly singular, and are what scientist dreams are made of.

            Reading about the history of amber in art and decorative pieces was also enlightening.  While most amber is ancient, it is not an inert material.  Exposure to the atmosphere and bright lights can cause the usually shiny amber to be covered in cracks and crazed bits, rendering the outer “skin” of the amber opaque.  Because of this, many of the oldest art pieces do not glimmer or shine as they did originally.  If left alone, the amber would eventually crumble to dust.  Due to its fragility, amber was rarely used as a showpiece gemstone.  It did find much use in bead form, and as accent pieces for large, crafted items.  In fact, one of the most widespread uses for amber was in crafting rosary beads, meant to be touched one by one as prayers are recited.

            My fascination with amber has increased ten-fold due to this book.  It is a magnificent reference work and includes maps detailing the many places on Earth where amber is either found in situ or mined.  The closest location to me would be around El Paso, Texas, a 12-hour drive away.  Seeing as how I have family living there, I will someday go hunting for amber among the desert plants and animals.  If I am lucky my wife will come with me, although her loathing of dust may preclude such adventures.  Either way, this book entertained and enlightened me, and I highly recommend it to anyone seeking an expansive exploration of amber and its many uses.

(For a very informative website about Amber, click here: https://amber-fossils.com/ )

Art & Science Make the World Go Round

Crossing Over: Where Art and Science Meet – Stephen Jay Gould, Rosamond Wolff Purcell (2000)

            Art and Science, my two most favorite subjects of human intellectual experience, are always conflated in my brain.  Art IS science to me and science IS art, in that the exploration of idea in Art mirrors the exploration of fact in science, and in how the creative impulse of the human brain is equally critical to the scientific method as it is to artistic creation.  These are not two separate worlds, and Stephen Jay Gould makes sure to repeat this refrain.  In choosing to write essays based upon the intricate and scientifically-informed photographs of Rosamond Wolff Purcell, Mr. Gould lets his mind roam, drawing from both his experience in the sciences and his love of the arts, creating connections which are otherwise unnoticed.

            I love books like this.  Some of my favorite photographers work in the manner of Wolff Purcell.  She searches the sometimes-forgotten archives of museums and institutes for items to add to her imagery, creating beautiful photographs which function as a work of modern art while also drawing the critical intellect to explore the subject matter empirically, as a scientist would.  Mr. Gould uses the images chosen, one or two per essay, and then riffs upon what the artwork makes him think of.  Sometimes it is an exploration of the affinity humans have for bilateral figures over radially symmetrical figures, and at other times he describes the deluded and self-righteous work of the person whose collection is being photographed.  It is whatever comes to his fertile mind.  Many of these images contain fossils, and as a paleontologist, Stephen Jay Gould has an instant affinity with them.

            In one essay, following an image of a painting in mid-restoration showing a “correction” once made to reduce the painting’s lewdness but now removed to show the original offense, he describes the concept of “layering.”  This concept is evident in medicine, where most of the disease and infirmity occurs invisibly, under the skin.  So many medical breakthroughs have been solely methods by which to look under the skin, such as the X-Ray, CAT scans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, etc.  In an essay following a photo of an old disused fish fossil, Mr. Gould describes the concept of an “overlay.”  This is the idea that a thing (1) must be older than another thing (2) if the first thing overlies or modifies the second thing in a manner implying the original presence of thing (1) alone.  For example, you have a photo of yourself.  You spill some ketchup on it and it dries, then a while later, part of it gets torn right where the ketchup was, then even later, someone puts a piece of tape over it all to keep it from tearing further.  Someone presented with the final object could safely deduce that the tape was younger than the tear, which was younger than the ketchup, which was younger than the photograph.  Geology works very much in this manner to differentiate between sedimentary layers.

            This is actually the third such book in this series.  I am going to have to request the other ones through the Inter-Library Loan system here at the University of Houston’s M.D. Anderson Library.  They will make for some very thought-inducing reading!  Bad ass. 

(This book can be purchased here: Crossing Over  )