Where amber comes from: beaches, mines and maps

Baltic amber is about 40 million years old, and every piece reaches us in one of two ways. The sea gives it up, or people dig it out of the ground.

The amber coast

The richest amber layer in the world lies under the Sambia Peninsula, in the south-eastern corner of the Baltic Sea. Part of it runs out under the seabed. Storms break pieces loose and carry them along the shore, from Poland through the Kaliningrad region to Lithuania.

1. Palanga, Lithuania: a seaside town with an amber museum, and home of Amber Alex.
2. Juodkrantė, on the Curonian Spit: in the 1800s, dredgers lifted tonnes of amber from the lagoon here, along with Stone Age amber figures.
3. Yantarny, Kaliningrad region: the largest amber mine in the world.
4. The Gulf of Gdańsk, Poland: beaches where amber often washes up after storms.

Washed up after storms

Amber is only a little heavier than seawater, so waves can lift it from the seabed. The best finds come after autumn and winter storms, when the wind blows towards the land. Amber arrives tangled in seaweed and driftwood, so collectors search the dark line of weed the waves leave behind.

Fishing for amber

For centuries, amber was fished. People waded into the cold surf with long-handled nets and scooped up seaweed with amber caught in it. Under the Teutonic Knights, all amber belonged to the rulers, and keeping a piece you found could be punished by hanging. Some amber fishers still go out with nets today.

Dug from the blue earth

Most amber today comes from the ground. At Yantarny, the amber lies in a layer of greenish-grey sand called blue earth, dozens of metres below the surface. Giant excavators strip away the soil above it.

Then jets of water wash the blue earth loose, and the amber is sieved out of the mud. This one mine produces most of the world's amber.

Amber around the world

Amber is found on every continent except Antarctica, but only a few places have enough of it, in good enough quality, for jewellery.

1. The Baltic coast: the largest deposits in the world.
2. Rivne region, Ukraine: Baltic-type amber buried in forest sand.
3. Dominican Republic: dug by hand from mountain tunnels, and famous for blue amber.
4. Chiapas, Mexico: also mined by hand, about 20 million years old.
5. Kachin, Myanmar: about 99 million years old, from the age of the dinosaurs.
6. Sumatra, Indonesia: young amber that can glow blue in sunlight.

Amber Alex has worked with Baltic amber in Palanga, on this coast, since 1993. See our natural amber stones, or read what makes Baltic amber so special and how it travelled the Amber Road to Rome.