Most people, particularly if they read the same Psmiths blogpost as I did, know of China's famous Meat-Shaped Stone. Naturally the Chinese are as proud of it as anyone might be of such a food-resembling icon - or so you might think, because Gdansk's museum of amber gave no special status at all to a lump of the stuff that looks almost exactly like a large and crusty cob:
Perhaps most curious is that the loaf-shaped stone above receives no special recognition despite the fact that there is a pre-existing link between bread and stone in local Gdansk mythology, as I discovered in a cathedral scarcely five mile away:
