First, Laur visited the palaeontology lab of professors Carolin and Joachim T. Haug (the ‘Palaeo-Evo-Devo’ lab), where several researchers have been studying and publishing on the exceptional fossils inside Kachin and other ambers. The lab’s members introduced their everyday work, goals, and challenges. They explained how Kachin amber has opened up both new knowledge and controversy—about evolution and extinction, dinosaurs and larvae, and politics and ethics.
Second, Laur visited the Five Continents Museum (Museum Fünf Kontinente), which hosts more-than-a-century-old amber jewellery from the Burma–India borderlands. The museum curator Dr. Anne Hartig introduced the collection and its history. The makings and travels of this jewellery show how connected are the local Kachin, Tai (Shan), Naga, and other peoples. The Museum also holds many rare photos of Kachin and other peoples and lands in Burma and India in the early 1910s.
