On Amber

One of the reasons we know that the Slavs/Suavs could not have lived on the shore of the Suavian Sea and been the Veneti is because Rome traded amber with the Germans and the Slavs do not have their own word for amber, bursztyn being a corruption of the Germanic Bernstein.  Even the Slavic word for an island is supposedly a word for a river island only – the word being ostrov. 

This is, as all those who are not certain of their arguments like to stress, “undoubtedly true.” 

Pliny the Elder Natural History – Book 37, Chapter 11

“Next in rank among the objects of luxury, we have amber; an article which, for the present, however, is in request among women only…”  [lists various theories on amber’s origin] “…There can be no doubt that amber is a product of the islands of the Northern Ocean, and that it is the substance by the Germans called “glæsum;” for which reason the Romans, when Germanicus Cæsar commanded the fleet in those parts [at Wolin?], gave to one of these islands the name of Glæsaria, which by the barbarians was known as Austeravia [pron. Ostrovia?]. … Amber is imported by the Germans into Pannonia, more particularly; from whence the Veneti, by the Greeks called Eneti, first brought it into general notice, a people in the vicinity of Pannonia, and dwelling on the shores of the Adriatic Sea…  From Carnuntum in Pannonia, to the coasts of Germany from which the amber is brought, is a distance of about six hundred miles, a fact which has been only very recently ascertained.”

Germanic Words 

*glaza is, supposedly, a Germanic word meaning “amber, resin” (presumably off of something like glare).  And, of course, there is the above passage.  There it says that Germans trade glæsum.  True enough.  But isn’t it strange that:

• there is a specific word for stone in Germanic, i.e., stone/stein, of course;

• there is a specific German word for amber called Bernstein (burning stone) glass means, well, glass in Germanic languages and just that;

• Germans also used to call stone, hammer; 

• The general Slavic word for stone – kamin – is thought to be a Baltic borrowing from *okmien–; lit. akmuo, or grec. akmōn;

• so bottom line is that Germans have, supposedly, at least three words for stones (Stein, Glass, Hammer and one specifically for amber, Bernstein) and Slavs have none;

• Inevitable conclusion: Slavs came from an area which had no stones.  Given that the Earth is made (on the outside, of course) of rock, it, must be the case that the Slavs came either from the inner core (the “Morlock” Hypothesis) or came from gaseous clouds in outer space (the “Mutara Nebula” Hypothesis);

(BTW Latin word was electrum and the current word amber is supposedly Arabic);

Of course, there is the Slavic word  glaz (pronounced “guaz”) which means a boulder or rock (e.g., in Polish but also in other Slavic languages).  The word is seen as borrowed from Germanic in the course of the amber trade – except, as, Professor Saskia Pronk-Tiethoff notes, there is no evidence that Slavs played any role in amber trading along the amber route.  So Pronk-Tiethoff worries that “the semantic connection between the Germanic and Slavic forms is not straightforward…. [its reflexes] in Slavic vary greatly in meaning and give the impression of being a relic rather than a relatively recent loanword.”  She continues by adding that “[t]he word has nowadays largely been regarded as an inherited word, although the etymology is not entirely clear.”;

(One should also note that the eye is called glaz (глаз) in Russian – glassy perhaps although it’s small and round one can note we think)

A sad song but maybe someone will, in the future, figure it all out.

“it is the substance by the Germans called “glæsum;” for which reason the Romans, when Germanicus Cæsar commanded the fleet in those parts, gave to one of these islands the name of Glæsaria, which by the barbarians was known as Austeravia.”

We should note that the above passage from Pliny comes from a chapter Pliny titled “Amber the Many Falsehoods That Have Been Told About It.”

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