pearls were produced by the secretion of a "viscous humor" within the oyster.  More scientific opinions positing that pearls were undeveloped eggs, a sign of disease, or entombed parasites were advanced as early as the second century B.C.E. and became a subject of scientific fervor in eighteenth-century Germany.

As we now understand it, pearl formation is a simple extension of shell formation in which the shell-forming tissue coats a foreign object that can­not be dislodged or, if a small fragment of this tissue is displaced into the soft body, secretes shell matter internally.

Today's science of perliculture takes advantage of this process by intentionally implanting an object to be coated within the mollusk's body and nurturing it in controlled conditions while the mollusk produces a cultured pearl. The formation of a natural pearly also called  fine pearl, differs only in that the foreign object intrudes accidentally.

In this sense, any pearl formed by a living mollusk, whether natural or cultured, is "real." Today, virtually all "real" pearls on the market, except pre-twentieth-century pearls from antique or estate sources and certain specialty pearls, are cultured pearls.

Although modern pearls are most often associated with Japan or the South Seas, our great grandparents' generation thought quite differently. Until early in the twentieth century, most of the world's marine pearls came from the Indian Ocean, specifically the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Mannar between Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) and India. These regions dominated the international pearl trade for more than forty centuries, yielding the famous pearls belonging to Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, and Marco Polo.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, the total world production of pearls from natural or "wild" beds of saltwater pearl oysters and freshwater pearl mussels amounted in the currency of that period to about $8.1 million. Well over half of this wealth came from one region-the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Mannar.

The dominance of the Indian Ocean in pearl production has been broken only twice. Most recently and most immutably, Japan came to the forefront in the I920s; when pearls produced by artificial culturing techniques became accepted as "real" and began to sell steadily. This not only spelled the end of commercial pearl diving everywhere, but also made pearls more readily available to the general populace. The Japanese advance was so successful that natural pearls are now a curiosity, and jewelers everywhere depend on pearls cultured by Japanese-perfected methods in the South Pacific, Australia, China, Mexico, the United States, and Japan itself.

But few are aware of the first time that the two gulfs ceased to dominate the world pearl trade. Around 1500 C.E., great quantities of pearls from the Americas began to flood the European market. Taken from the pearl beds of the Caribbean and Panama, they arrived by the bushel. Monarchs and nobles wore them by the hundreds, to such an extent that modern historians of costume and decorative arts have called this period the Great Age of Pearls. Equally unknown to most readers may be the founder of this feast-the figure Christopher Columbus-Italian explorer financed by Spain, who, in seeking a quicker route to India and the Orient, sailed westward into the Caribbean and the New World. This opulence of New World pearls was, however, short-lived, lasting only about a century and a half.

By the mid-seventeenth century, the pearl-bearing oysters of the southern Caribbean and Panama were close to extinct, and the river of pearls carried from the Spanish Main dwindled to a trickle. Following this decline, the traditional pearl producers of the Persian Gulf and India-Sri Lanka quietly reclaimed their old mar­kets, retaining their supremacy until the advent of Japanese cultured pearls.

At the beginning of the third millennium, pearls continue to be popular. Royalty, movie stars, society matrons, businesswomen, and young girls all wear pearls. What is the explanation for this enduring attachment? We live in a scientific age where most people are at least vaguely familiar with how pearls are formed by pearl oysters and pearl mussels. Yet this understanding has not lessened but rather enhanced the appeal of pearls, emphasizing the unique nature of this gem.

Undoubtedly, pearls are prized as intrinsically beautiful objects because of their luster, color, shape, and silky surface. However, it is the historical associations of pearls with purity, refinement, religious virtue, glamour, and wealth that prevail in our thinking of pearls as the queen of gems.

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