In the ancient Cheddar Gorge of Somerset in England, there is a huge cavern. Since it was first discovered more than a century ago it has yielded many rare artifacts and bones from the ancient past, including even a complete seated skeleton, nine thousand years old. But in 1950 this place, named “Gough’s Cave” after the Victorian sea captain who found it, also yielded what is perhaps the oldest piece of traded gem-type material ever discovered. It is dark red and rather dirty, like a scuffed piece of translucent toffee, and it is almost the size of a dozen credit cards stacked together. It is a piece of amber and it was traded at least 12,500 years ago. It looks an unlikely treasure, but treasure it is because it is possibly the first indication we have today of a human fascination with amber that has lasted since prehistoric times.
At the time of its discovery there was no way to ascertain where the amber in Gough’s Cave had come from–whether from Britain (some rare pieces of native amber had been found on the Isle of Wight) or farther afield. However, fourteen years later a professor at Vassar College in New York came up with the answer. Using dental equipment designed for tooth fillings, he ground up a tiny fragment of the amber, and then observed how it absorbed infrared light. He determined that it was of Baltic origin and was therefore around forty million years old.
