Since ancient times, amber has been a spiritual creature in people's minds and a symbol of beauty and auspiciousness. 2,400 years ago, the ancient Greeks called amber the "gold of the north." In the Nero era of ancient Rome, it was fashionable for nobles to wear amber ornaments. During the Han Dynasty in my country, amber rings and necklaces became tributes to the Shangna court. During the Five Dynasties, the palace was built with white jade pillars and amber as the sun and moon on the ceiling. The dragon robes and flat crowns of emperors of the Song Dynasty were also decorated with amber to show their power. Skilled craftsmen in ancient times carved amber into Ruyi, mirror boxes, wine glasses, pillows and other objects. At the banquet, it was considered luxurious to use amber cups to hold wine, so Du Fu wrote a poem about "the wine cup in spring is thick and the amber is thin". There are many varieties of amber and they are extremely precious. "Tiangong Kaiwu" says: Cat's eye yellow and slightly reddish amber is the most valuable, worth five times the price of gold. Among the many kinds of amber, there are "stone amber" that is yellow and heavy as a rock; red and yellow, colorful "flower amber"; there are also spirit amber, wax amber, bright amber, fragrant amber, blood amber, coal amber, etc., which are dazzling. . Today, amber is used in many fields, such as extracting spices from amber; processing into succinic acid and paint; used as insulation materials in the electronics industry; and various exquisite handicrafts carved with amber, which are especially loved by Chinese and foreign consumers. Amber is also a good medicine for curing diseases. It is listed as top grade in "Famous Doctors" and has the effect of "calming the five internal organs, calming the soul, eliminating blood congestion, and clearing the five stranguria".
In the eyes of scientists, amber fossils are an ancient history book on the earth and a precious specimen for studying geological age and ancient ecological environment. The lifelike insects in amber fossils can "tell" people the scene of insect communities in the prehistoric forest and the evolution of insects over hundreds of millions of years.
Biologists from the University of California in the United States studied a small bug wrapped in a 400,000-year-old Baltic Sea amber fossil and found that not only did the bug not rot, but its tissue was as soft as ever. Under the microscope, the internal structure of the cells in the abdomen of the bug is intact. Experts from the California University of Science and Technology also successfully extracted the oldest DNA molecule from a weevil sealed in a 120-million-year-old amber fossil. It was this major discovery that inspired science fiction writers to create the science fiction film "Jurassic Park", which imagined the regeneration process of extinct dinosaurs.