I’d rather eat live monkey brain, and I don’t even know how to use chopsticks.
The mining of amber generally take the same form throughout the island. The amber can be found through land slips which occur on the steep mountain sides. The fossil resin occurs in lignitic beds which when located are dug out. If the amber extends deep into the side of the mountain shafts are dug by hand to follow the deposit.
In pictures the author has seen, the mines look perilously unsafe with miners operating sometimes 200 feet into the mountain itself and in some cases without the mine being sheared or reinforced.
Interesting...love the frog with too many legs...
A rather interesting frog was discovered in amber on the island during 1996 which shed light on how colonisation progressed through the West Indies. It was also noted in this particular specimen that several additional leg bones were present, more than the frog must have possessed. It is speculated by scientists that the frog and the additional legs could have been dropped by a bird who may have been using a branch or tree overhanging an embalming pool of resin which received the dropped frog and leg bones and over millions of years became amber.
Oh goodness gracious me...
http://samogitia.mch.mii.lt/LANKYTINOS_VIETOS/ambermus.en.htm
Amber was mentioned for the first time in the Assyrian cuneiforms in the 10th century B. C. Ancient myths and legends reflect man’s attemts to solve the mystery of the origin of amber. The Lithuanian legend about sea-goddess Jurate and a fisherman Kastytis is the first attempt of Lithuanians to explain the origin of amber. According to the legend amber pieces are fragments of goddess Jurate’s underwater castle struck by Perkunas (the Thunder god) and her tears.
http://www.virtualmuseum.us/lith/ignas/jurkas77.html
The Legend of Jurate and Kastytis
According to an ancient Lithuanian legend, the sea-goddess Jurate fell in love with a fisherman Kastytis. When the thunder-god Perkunas found out, he became very angry about Jurate’s love for a mere mortal. He struck down Jurate, shattered her undersea palace made of amber, and tied Kastytis to a huge underwater rock.
It is said that, when the winds whip up raging storms in the Baltic Sea, one can still hear Kastytis moaning and, afterwards, one can still find small pieces of Jurate’s amber palace washed out on the Baltic shore.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/srp/srp05.htm
According to a Lithuanian legend, known also to other Indo-European nations, the Thunder-God created the universe by the action of warmth—Perkunas wis iszperieje. The verb perieti (present form periu) means to produce by means of warmth, to hatch, to bear, being akin to the Latin pario, and the Russian parit’ 1.
In Lithuania Perkunas, as the God of Thunder, was worshipped with great reverence. His statue is said to have held in its hand “a precious stone like fire,” shaped “in the image of the lightning,” and before it constantly burnt an oak-wood fire. If the fire by any chance went out, it was rekindled by means of sparks struck from the stone.
...the following myth is related about the marriage of the Moon, a male deity in the Slavo-Lettic languages:—
The Moon wedded the Sun
In the first spring.
The Sun arose early
The Moon departed from her.
The Moon wandered alone,
Courted the Morning Star.
Perkunas greatly wroth
Cleft him with a sword.
“Wherefore dost thou depart from the Sun?
Wandering by night alone?
Courting the Morning Star?”
Full of sorrow [was his] heart...