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Fossilized resin from Baltic forests ended up on the breast ornament of Tutankhamun, dated to about 1333 to 1324 BC. Before that, the earliest organized amber trade ran on Sicilian amber, which Heinrich Schliemann found at Mycenae. From around 2000 BC Baltic amber pushed Sicilian supplies aside, and by 1000 BC it dominated even Iberia. It moved by down-the-line trade, swapped tribe to tribe for tools and metal, and reached the royal hypogeum of Qatna in Syria, the temple of Apollo at Delphi, and eventually the Silk Road via the Black Sea.

Amber felt warm and, rubbed on fur, picked up feathers and dust, so elites prized it as magical. Rome turned the network into a guarded road from Prussian ports such as Truso through Biskupin and the land of the Boii, origin of the name Bohemia, to Aquileia on the Adriatic. Amber was the smallest part of the cargo: furs, skins, honey and beeswax for legions and cities filled the wagons, while Roman glass, brass, gold, copper and tin went north. The route survives in the EV9 cycle path and Poland’s A1 Amber Highway.

• A first century BC depot at Partynice near Wrocław held about 1,240 to 1,760 kilograms of raw amber.
• That cache is the largest single archaeological find of amber in the world.
• Beeswax supplied candles and writing tablets across the empire.
• Southern metals traded for amber helped spark the Nordic Bronze Age.
• The EV9 runs from Gdańsk on the Baltic to Pula in Croatia.