EARLY BEGINNINGS Asbestos has been known in various forms and used for different purposes since prehistoric times. In Finland, for example, pottery dating from 2500 B.C. has been found to incorporate asbestos (presumably anthophyllite) fibers, and Busmanoid pottery attributed to stone-age times (before the middle of the first century B.C.) has been found containing amphibole in the region ranging from southern Sudan to northern Kenya (70, 93). Finnish peasants are also reported to have used asbestos rock to pack crevices in their log huts from time immemorial. One of the earliest historical records tells of the use of asbestos wick in a gold lamp for the goddess Atbene in the fourth to fifth century B.C. At the turn of that century Theophrastus described the persistence of the wick after the oil was burned off, and Strabo and Plutarch continue the story (28, 44, 84). Herodotus, writing about 456 B.C., remarks on the use of an asbestos cloth for retaining the ashes of the dead during cremation, and Pliny in the first century A.D. calls it the funeral dress of kings. Such a shroud is reported to have been recovered from a pre-Augustinian tomb (23b, 44, 50). Plutarch described other articles into which the material was woven. One form of the Greek word oau@~os signified “unquenchable;” the perpetuity of the flame given by wicks containing asbestos would have justified the appelation. The concept of indestructibility seems to have been added to the connotation later. Some confusion has resulted from another formrjao/Iaoro~ of the same word that signified what today we would call slaked lime (95). The term “amiantos” and its variations, common in mediterranean countries, also has a confused etymology. Lithos amiantos is said to be the original term, as used by the Greeks to indicate a rock unstained, untainted, or undefiled, referring presumably to the cleansing of asbestos material by fire (19). It has been suggested, however, that the Karpasian flax referred to by Pausanius (second century A.D.) came from a village in Cyprus known as Amianto, which might be the town of Amiandos near which chrysotile has been found in recent times. In England, the term “amianthus” survived until the end of the 19th century, when the word “asbestos” took its place. In France today, “amiante” is used at least as frequently as “asbeste.” The property of being unconsumed and even purified by fire is emphasized in the account given by Marco Polo (ca. 1250 A.D.) of a cloth reputed to be of salamander skin, but actually consisting of “amianto” prepared from rock by a process that persisted well into the nineteenth century (50). Apparently a similar account given some 150 years earlier did not attract antiquarian interest (48). The story of Charlemagne’s tablecloth and the impression made on guests when he threw it into the fire has been many times recounted in recent literature (21, 50).