Conditions and process of amber formation

Amber has been regarded as a precious thing since ancient times and is also one of the seven treasures of Buddhism in China. Therefore, there are various opinions about the formation of amber among the people. The most famous one is that Li Shizhen recorded in the Compendium of Materia Medica in the Ming Dynasty: "The tiger eye fell to the ground and turned into a white stone." White stone refers to amber, which was also called "tiger spirit" by the ancients. That is to say, in Li Shizhen's eyes, the formation of amber is closely related to the tiger, which is a kind of tiger spirit.

With the development of science and the acceleration of information dissemination, almost everyone now knows that the formation of amber has nothing to do with tigers. It is actually a resin fossil. In fact, this fact was discovered in the Western Jin Dynasty. The formation of amber is described in detail in Zhang Hua's Natural History in the Western Jin Dynasty: "The pine and cypress resin entered the ground and turned into poria cocos for thousands of years, and poria cocos turned into amber." Of course, the cognition of "for poria cocos" is wrong.

Let's talk about the formation of amber in detail.

About 45-99 million years ago, there were many resin-rich plants on the earth, such as Pinaceae, Leguminosae and Taxodiaceae. The resin juice secreted by these plants will fall to the ground under the action of gravity, and then be buried underground with geological movement. After thousands of years of pressure and heat, it finally petrified and formed the amber we see today.

In the process of amber formation, amber often wraps all kinds of plants and animals. Wei, an idyllic poet in the Tang Dynasty, wrote a poem "Ode to Amber": "I used to be an old man, but this is a cold pine juice. Mosquitoes have fallen in and can be smashed for thousands of years. " It is described in the book that amber not only forms insects and plants, but also has scientific research value. Scientists can learn more about the past earth and decipher the origin of life by studying the inclusions in amber.

The above is an introduction to the formation of amber. If you still want to know, you can pay attention to the famous jade carving artist Zhihu and communicate with us directly.