article_snippet: For the stone, we must remember that even though colored glass might today be perceived as a 'fake' material of lower value, this was not necessarily so in the past," the team cautioned.
article_snippet: Even though glass production began around 5,000 years ago in the Levant glass production was still an exotic material in Viking Age Scandinavia.
article_snippet: Such contacts must have facilitated exchange of goods, culture, ideas, and news much more efficiently than indirect trade involving several merchants in-between," Such contacts concluded.
article_snippet: Modern relationship .