February 8, 2025 • 39 mins
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore various historical interpretations of the diamond, from divine tears to both a potent medicine and a deadly poison. (part 4 of 4) (originally published 1/25/2024)
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I am Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday, so we are
heading into the vault for an older episode of Stuff
to Blow Your Mind. This is part four of our
series on the Diamond This originally aired January twenty fifth,
twenty twenty four. Hope you enjoy.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with the
fourth and final part in our series on diamonds. Now,
if you haven't heard the other three parts, you might
want to go back and listen to those first, though
I guess this series is probably okay if you do
them out of order. That we will refer to things
we've already talked about in previous episodes. Brief recap of
(01:01):
what we talked about in the parts that already aired.
We addressed in the first episode the widely held belief
that diamond fragments or diamond powder are poisonous if ingested,
and we talked about some alleged attempted diamond poisonings in history.
The short modern read on that is that it seems
(01:22):
like diamond powder is probably not actually reliably poisonous, but
just to be saved, we were still saying, you know,
I probably wouldn't need it. We talked a bit about
the conditions under which diamond's form. There's going to be
some more about that today. We talked about their physical
properties and a bit about their use in ancient cultures
in ancient India, China, and the Roman Empire. In the
(01:44):
last episode, we talked about some strange ancient beliefs recorded
in the writings of plenty of the Elder and some
other sources that in order to shatter a diamond, you
must first soften it in the blood of a he goat.
That's a good one. We also talked about the legend
found in multiple cultures that there is this so called
valley of Gems where diamonds litter the ground. But you
(02:08):
can't just go down there and get them because there
are I don't know, poisonous, venomous snakes or some kind
of monster or beast or something down There's some kind
of danger, so you've got to have clever ways of
getting the diamonds up to the cliffs above. Our favorite
method that we read about involved meat getting the meat.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
That's right, And so in today's episode we have a
couple of other avenues we want to discuss. Later on
in the podcast, I'm going to talk a little bit
about diamond body modification, so we'll get back into this
idea of diamonds and human bodies coming together. But before
we get to that, Joe, I understand you want to
return to something we touched on in the last episode.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Well, that's right. So in the last episode I did
a bit on the question of whether diamonds can burn,
can they be fuel in a fire? The answer is yes,
they are carbon based, and you can have a diamond fire,
though they take higher temperature, they have higher ignition temperatures,
and may require more oxygen supply than most normal fuels
(03:10):
you'd have, like wood or coal. But this raised the
question do diamonds actually come from coal?
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Now?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
As I said in the last episode, anecdotally, this seems
to be a common belief. Unfortunately, this is one of
those where I was reading about it before I actually
checked my pre existing knowledge, so I don't know if
I would have said that diamonds are formed out of
coal or not? Rob, was this a belief banging around
in your head?
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yes, but only because that scene in Superman three. You know, yeah, Okay,
Superman does it. Then I'm just assuming that he's correct,
and who's going to doubt the Man of Steel.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
I cannot argue with you there. So anecdotally, it does
seem to be a common belief, and it's easy to
see why people would think this. Diamonds and coal are
both types of compressed carbon dug up from underground, So
you might just assume that when a coal formation undergoes
intense heat and pressure, it gets pressed and compressed and
(04:06):
compressed until it turns into diamonds, and that's where diamonds
come from. And even some old books and authorities on
diamonds do seem to suggest they believe this, that diamonds
come from coal, but more recent sources argue that this
is not the case, at least not for most diamonds.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
I should point out that this is something I'm sure
came up for you as well, Joe, and your diamond
research is that diamonds. This is the subject of diamonds.
This is one other one of those areas where you
have a lot of websites, often associated with jewelers, that
are going after like search engine optimization, and so there's
a lot of like diamond content dump going on. You
(04:49):
see this with other businesses and areas as well. It
occasionally turns up that I kept encountering that in my
research sort of drove me out of the traditional search
mode into some of the like a Google scholar and
so forth. But there are a lot of websites out
there that are clearly the main idea is like, let's
(05:11):
just move up in the search for diamonds because we're
trying to sell them exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Yeah, some jewel retailer who've got the pages on the
website like interesting diamond facts or something, you know, and
it's like they're not citing sources. You can't rely on this,
so you gotta trudge through all that to get to
something real.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Some of it might be good, some of it might
be good, but yeah, a lot of it is not
sourced and so forth.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
But anyway, I guess that does now that we're talking
about sources. So I found a number of books on
geology and gems making the simple claim that no, diamonds
do not come from coal, but usually without any further explanation.
So I was looking for somebody to really explain, like,
how do we know they don't come from coal? And
the most extensive exploration of this that I turned up
(05:58):
was on the good old geology dot com website, which
I'm sure you've hit before, Rob, which does have solid
articles that are well cited and you know, listing sources
and all that. So it's one of these articles by
the geologist Hobart King, who I think is the author
of most of what's on geology dot com.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Or what does the King have to say about this?
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Well, King seems to be in line with the modern
consensus here that coal very rarely and possibly never plays
a role in the formation of diamonds. How can we
know this? One reason he cites, and I mentioned this
briefly in the last episode, is that most diamonds that
can be dated are older than most coal. So we
(06:42):
can actually test the age of diamonds through radiometric dating,
though it's a little bit complicated because of course we
can't use carbon dating on them. The half life of
carbon fourteen that you use to you test the decay
of that in order to use carbon dating that's too
short in time to accurately date materials that are on
(07:03):
the order of millions of years old or more. This
is why you can't use carbon dating for anything from
the age of the dinosaurs or anything like that. Carbon
dating is useful for carbon based remains that are on
the scale of like thousands of years or tens of
thousands of years old.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Yeah, and as we discussed, diamonds are much older.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Right, So if carbon dating isn't accurate for things as
old as diamonds and diamonds are made of carbon, how
can we test their age? Well, you can use different
radioactive decay series tests on things such as mineral inclusions
in diamonds, meaning occasionally you can find a diamond with
(07:43):
bits of other minerals that are trapped inside it or
trapped along with it. And when scientists do these tests,
these radioactive decay series tests on diamond inclusions, it seems
that most diamonds are more than a billion years old.
The common range I've seen is that the youngest diamonds
are just shy of a billion years old and the
(08:05):
oldest are more than three billion years old. And that
means that natural diamonds can be that the ones that
can be dated are pretty much all older than the
evolution of the first land plants. Plants first appeared in
the Cambrian era roughly five hundred million years ago, and
they didn't really flourish on land until later, with the
(08:27):
big coal forming period being more like three hundred million
years ago known as the Carboniferous period, which literally means
like the coal forming period. Since land plants are the
source of the carbon in most coal deposits, it is
unlikely that diamonds would have formed one to three billion
years ago out of a chain of metamorphosis that has
(08:49):
to start with the type of organism that didn't exist yet.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Wow, why isn't this in the diamond commercials?
Speaker 2 (08:58):
You'd think that would be an interesting selling point. Yeah, Like,
if this is a diamond that came out of the
Earth and wasn't like made in a lab or something,
it probably is billions of years old. Is from a
time when the only life on Earth was like single
celled organisms. So that's one reason for thinking diamonds are
generally not formed from coal. Another reason is that coal
(09:20):
seams and diamonds are found in completely different geological contexts.
Coal is found in a sedimentary rocks formed by the
deposition of layers of material on Earth's surface. These layers
of material eventually get buried, they get horizontally compressed, and
they harden into rock strata with the coal in traps
(09:42):
there in the sedimentary rocks. Meanwhile, diamonds are usually found
in vertical formations of igneous rocks. Igneous rocks are formed
by fire. These are rocks that are created when magma
cools and hardens into a solid. So coal and diamonds,
you're gonna find them in totally different geological settings. King
(10:04):
goes on to list the four known natural sources of
diamonds and he says that these are formation in the
Earth's mantle, formation in subduction zones, formation at impact sites,
and formation in space. Now, we talked in the last
episode about diamonds that are formed in space and occasionally
found in meteorites, and we also talked about diamonds that
(10:26):
are created by the incredible heat and pressure of space impacts. So,
for example, if you have like a ten kilometer asteroid
traveling at twenty kilometers per second, it enters Earth's atmosphere,
it hits or explodes, there's going to it does that
over an area with rocks bearing carbon, maybe rocks that
(10:47):
have graphite in them, which is a form of carbon
based mineral that's less dense than a diamond that impact,
and that the heat and pressure there could turn the
graphite in the rocks into diamonds. Now, King says, in
this case, technically the carbon could also come from coal.
So like the asteroid, maybe hits an area with exposed
(11:08):
or near surface coal seams. But most diamonds are not
formed by space impact, so that could happen, But most
of the diamonds you come across are not going to
be from this source. Instead, King says, basically, all the
diamonds that are commercially mined on Earth are the kind
that are created deep down in the forge of the
Earth's mantle. Now, we already mentioned a bit about diamond
(11:31):
formation in the mantle in a previous episode, but just
to refresh, Scientists generally believe that the conditions of heat
and pressure that you need in order to create a
diamond only occur in certain areas, usually at a depth
of about one hundred and fifty kilometers or greater from
the surface, which is well below the crust deep into
(11:52):
the mantle, and usually this would be around the interior
of continental plates. That is, of course way too deep
to mind. We do not have any minds that go
down one hundred and fifty kilometers underground, so we can
only mine diamonds that are brought closer to the surface somehow.
(12:12):
And as we mentioned in I think part two, maybe
we find these diamonds in and around these vertical pipes
of igneous rock known as kimber light or lamprote pipes.
And these are vertical columns of rock that were formed
long ago by incredibly explosive volcanic eruptions from deep in
the mantle. So magma from below flows up to the
(12:36):
surface rapidly, and sometimes it breaks off pieces of the mantle,
and these flows bring diamonds up to the surface with them.
And one sort of cool and creepy thing that King
mentions offhand is that no one in human history, as
far as we know, has ever witnessed the kind of
deep source volcanic eruption that brings diamonds to the surface.
(12:58):
These are known as kimber light eruptions. They are rare
compared to normal volcanic eruptions. They're very energetic and explosive,
and most of the ones we know about took place
long ago, so there are no historical records, like since
the dawn of writing, of anybody ever describing or seeing
one of these. And it seems like most of the
ones that have taken place took place long, long ago.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Again, why isn't this in the diamond commercials, Like doesn't
your love deserve a diamond forged or not forged but
brought to the surface towards the surface in a volcanic
eruption so terrifyingly powerful that we've never seen its like
in human history.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
You'd think that would be a selling point. You could
combine them, actually, you could have that. You could have
like the real science facts on one hand, and then
like we said in the other episode that you know
the value of the gym's legends, so like you you know,
you've got to show using the meat to retrieve the diamonds.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Yeah, yeah, like dig into all that the content is there,
use it.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
So we know that most diamonds that come from are
formed deep in the mantle, So why should we not
think coal is the source of the carbon in these diamonds.
Based on I did some quick research on this, it
seems to me that coal deposits are mostly in the
top three kilometers of the Earth's crust. And remember, diamonds
(14:17):
are formed one hundred and fifty or more kilometers down
within the mantle. So the coal would have to somehow
get from these locations in the top layer of the
crust down to like fifty times their normal depth or
more underneath a continental plate to supply the carbon to
make the diamonds, and that seems kind of unlikely, or
(14:38):
at least rare. King thinks a more likely origin for
the carbon in diamonds is just carbon that has been
present in Earth rocks since early in the planet's formation,
and there are sources of carbon that you can find
within the rocks of the Earth. Like I was reading
another article about these incredibly explosive Kimber light eruptions, and
(14:59):
one thing that seems to happen when these eruptions kick
off is that there is like an expansion of CO
two gas deep down in the mantle. Like CO two,
there's an area where there's a lot of carbon in
the mantle, and the CO two gas starts to come
out of solution, much like what happens when you pop
(15:20):
the top on a carbonated soda, it starts to come
out of solution and turn into a gas and want
to rise quickly to the surface, and this of course
is extremely explosive and violent. However, to come back in
the other direction and talk about an analogy to coal
being the source of diamond formation, an analogy that is
(15:40):
quite possible. King does acknowledge that very small diamonds are
sometimes formed in what are called subduction zones, and this
is where so you have different plates of the Earth's
crust meeting. You have maybe an oceanic plate that is
the part of the crust sitting underneath an ocean continental plate.
(16:01):
That's where you would have a continent, and they meet
at a sort of joint, and where they meet, the
oceanic plate is pushed down underneath the continental plate at
this joint where they meet. So in the case of subduction,
sedimentary rocks formed on the ocean floor can indeed be
shoved down into the mantle. And it does seem that
(16:24):
the carbon in these rocks may sometimes form diamonds in
extreme heat and pressure in this subduction zone. But the
rocks in question here would probably not be coal. But
King says instead other kinds of carbon bearing sediment based
rocks that form mostly on the ocean floor, things like
limestone and dolomite.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Now, as we get into the final stretch here, I
want to get back into this area of diamonds and
the human body coming together again. We discussed various past
beliefs about the dangers of ingesting diamonds, and this inspired
me to look a little closer at diamonds and the flesh,
(17:15):
and I wanted to start with one of the more
recent and by some perspectives, more extreme examples of diamond
at flesh unity. That is, of course, the forehead diamond
implant of American hip hop performer lil uzi Vert born
nineteen ninety five. Joe, are you familiar with the lil Uzivert.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Only a little bit? I think maybe the main thing
I know is from articles about the diamond implant.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Yeah, this definitely made a splash. I think there are
plenty of people who have not heard lil Uzivert's music,
but they are familiar with the story of the diamond implant.
I have not heard any of their music. My knowledge
of mainstream hip hop is like fifteen to twenty years behind.
I know some indie stuff here and there, but I
(18:05):
don't know most of the current trends and acts, but
it's hard to ignore this particular story. This all went
down in twenty twenty one. It got a lot of
media coverage. You might have heard something on late night
comedy shows about this. In the way that it was described,
I think the way I initially picked up on it too,
it sounded red. I kind of got the impression that
(18:27):
was something impulsive, you know, like here's a hip hop
artist and maybe on the spur of the moment, they're like,
I like that diamond, I want it in my forehead,
and then they did it, you know, kind of like
anybody else in the world might say, you know, get
a drunken tattoo or something like that.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
But no, you're gonna say this is a more thought
out diamond implant than that would suggest.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Yeah, I had no idea, but I was reading about
it on Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone has a really nice
ride up on it. This is by jeffs and it
gets into not only the case with Littl Luzivert, but
other hip hop stars who have had implants similar. But
(19:10):
the way it's described in this article, this all began
like in twenty seventeen, they had to purchase the reported
twenty four million dollar diamond, had to pay that off.
Then the implantation was handled by professional jewelers, and I
think they're referring to a consult by an expert piercer
or an expert in body modification. So it sounds like
(19:31):
it was rather an ordeal to get to the point
where the diamond was actually put in the forehead, but
it was successfully implanted, and now reportedly lil Uzivert didn't
keep the diamond implant. It came out during some crowdsurfing
at a concert, but then they put it back in
(19:52):
for a later concert, but then ultimately replaced it with
a piercing. They still have the diamond though, so the
way it was reported, a lot of late night shows
had some fun with this idea too, that the diamond
came out or was quote ripped out during a concert.
That maybe made it sound like it was stolen, but
that doesn't seem to be the case. I was also
impressed that and again this is just based on some
(20:14):
articles of looking up, but they said that that Vert
is a huge fan of the animated series Stephen Universe,
and this was an influence on the choice in getting
a pink forehead diamond. So I am familiar with Steven Universe.
Great show, so I would I got to say, great choice.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
I know nothing about that show except I know it
has big fans. So is there a character with a
diamond in their forehead on the show?
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Yeah, yeah, there there are some like there's some gemstone
powers going on in that show. It's it's good. It's
a it's a it's a family you know. Slash Kids
animated series on cartoon has some great, you know, feel
good energy to it. Highly recommend it nice. Now. While
Lilo's Evert probably got the most attention for their diamond implant,
(21:01):
they were not the first. The Rolling Stone article points
out that rapper Young Thug had a diamond tear drop
implanted on his face in twenty sixteen. I couldn't find
out much else about that one. Also, there is a
rapper by the name of Sauce Walka who had a
diamond facial implant, and another rapper, Little Pump, also had
or has a diamond facial implant. So this seems to
(21:24):
be a This is not a trend that's isolated to
a single individual. We have multiple individuals out there in
the world who have or have had this procedure. Now,
that Rolling Stone article includes some comments from Simon Bobev
speaking on behalf of the New York based jewelers Eleante
(21:45):
and Company that were involved with this particular forehead diamond,
the pink diamond of Liloozi Vert, and he says the
following quote. In the body modification world, they usually do
everything in stainless steel or surgical grade steel, but in
our case, we did everything with precious metals. We engineered
(22:05):
a specific mounting that clips and locks in place. There's
a whole mechanism involved. It's not a standard piercing, a
specific piece and part. We're both engineered with millimeter precision
to get this put on little loosey vert. So again,
I think an important takeaway from this is the diamond
is not set directly in the forehead. It's not certainly
(22:26):
not set in the skull or anything like that. When
it came out, a lot of people made jokes referring
to a scene in one of the Avengers films in
which like an Android character's jim stone is ripped out
of their forehead, and you know, it's not quite the same,
And then so it's ultimately mounted in metal, and then
(22:48):
that metal is implanted in the flesh, much like a
diamond is mounted in a ring, and like a diamond
is mounted in an ear ring, which of course is
then mounted in the flesh. Okay, so you know, obviously,
given the price tag on some of these diamonds, this
is all extravagant, though in the end, perhaps not all
(23:09):
that weirder than any other form of body modification, including
more mainstream forms that we take for granted and don't
even necessarily think of as body modification, like a standard
ear piercing is so mainstream that you don't necessarily think
of it as body modification. But again, coming back to
the idea of a diamond earring, in comparison, a diamond
(23:30):
mounted in a piece of metal jewelry that is then
secured to the human ear by one of several traditional methods,
but most often via a hole punched in the ear lobe.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Right, I mean that absolutely is body modification. I guess
for some reason, this phrase evokes associations of less common
body modifications.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Yeah, and of course a lot of that just has
to do with like what culture one is in. You know,
there's so many forms of piercing and body modification that
are thought of as new and counterculture today, and they
may very you know, they are generally perhaps counter to
the mainstream culture, at least at least in Western nations,
but they are often based on older traditions in other cultures,
(24:12):
you know, traditions that were more standard and would not
have been thought of his counterculture in those specific cultures.
So humans have engaged in ear piercing since very ancient times,
I mean the origins of the practice are ultimately lost
to the mists of prehistory. Let's see the Iceman, for instance,
lived who live between thirty three fifty and thirty one
(24:33):
oh five BCE. This is what we've talked about before,
with his well preserved body and articles on his body
that have provided a great deal of evidence about what
life was like or may have been like for individuals
during this time period. There is also evidence that he
had a pierced ear and an ear ring. We also
(24:54):
have Sumerian graves from Earth that give us evidence of
pierced ears from around twenty five hundred BCE. We have
Egyptian ear piercings. This pushes the evidence in this case
back to sixteen hundred BCE. We have Chinese examples that
go back to one thousand BCE. South American examples date
back to between eighteen hundred BC and three thousand BCE.
(25:17):
Plus just a lot of the literature of the ancient
world makes at least passing mention of the ear rings
of the air piercings. So there's a rich and varied
history here of poking a hole through part of the
ear lobe or parts of the ear lobe and inserting
things for decorative purposes. But of course we're not just
(25:38):
talking about piercings and earrings in general. Here, we're talking
about diamonds. We're talking about ultimately mounting a diamond in
your flesh. And when we get back into diamonds, you
can probably guess where some of the oldest evidence of
diamond ear rings is going to take us. It's of
course going to take us to India.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Right. So, as we discussed in previous episodes in the series,
it seems that in the ancient world, India was a
real high spot of diamond mining and diamond use in culture.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Yeah, yeah, and definitely a place where, yeah, they had
diamonds the longest and a place where diamonds were upgraded
to gym status earlier than you know than other places.
So yeah, and again to drive home, like for the
for the longest, like diamonds in the world came from India. Yeah,
so Jack Ogden in Diamonds in Early History of the
(26:24):
King of Gems, which we referenced in the earlier episodes
as well, he points out a couple of examples of
of of these old diamond ear rings. He includes in
his book an ear decoration from the tenth to eleventh
century CE. This is diamond and pink sapphire to be specific,
(26:45):
set in gold, and Ogden adds that it's probably an
ear ring, but similar artifacts from Java were actually vervals.
These are decorative rings that went on a hawk or
a pet bird's leg. Whoa so interesting ambiguity regarding some
of these things. But he also includes an example of
(27:05):
a golden ear ring from the first century BCE from
India classified as an early earring fragment. So suffice to
say that we've been combining diamonds with our anatomy for
more than two thousand years, But how long have we
been using them for our teeth? Because you know, I've
already mentioned musical performers, but also you have athletes, you
(27:25):
have other celebrities who sometimes show up with diamond implants
on their teeth, some sort of diamond dental work going
on grills and so forth. I was looking into this
a little bit. We talked about, like, you know, some
of these older ideas about, you know, don't put a
diamond in your mouth because like the venom of the
snakes from the Valley of Gems will will kill you,
(27:49):
and other ideas. Health Wise, the main concerns and there
don't seem to be a lot of like overt health
concerns with grills, for example, most of the health concerns
at all seem to relate to things like prolonged usage,
like these are not things that are seemingly designed to
just be worn day in day out. These are for
(28:09):
special occasions, These are for concerts, these are for media
appearances or what have you. And on top of that,
potential allergic reactions to base metals and if they're actually
used and said grill, and also just the responsibility of
keeping something that goes into your mouth clean and so forth.
But I didn't run across any concerns related specifically to
(28:30):
the presence of diamonds themselves. Now, it's worth noting that
while a lot of current of the current popularity of
elaborate grills has its roots seemingly in like nineteen eighties
(28:50):
hip hop culture, I think a lot of it coming
out of like New York. And there's of course a
strong connection here to dental procedures that replace teeth or
portions of teeth with precious metals and or jewelry. But
the use of gold dental appliances goes back centuries and
one of the most fascinating examples are the dental appliances
of the etruscans. These go back as far as six
(29:11):
thirty BCE. There's a really good article this was published
on Vice back in twenty fourteen, called the title The
Ancient History of Grills by Lauren Schwarzburg. I highly recommend
given this a read. It goes into a lot more
depth than I'm going to cover here, but just to
hit on some of the main points that the author
brings out that relate to what we're talking about. First
(29:34):
of all, there's a pervasive idea that grills originated in
ancient Egypt, and I think this is something you can
probably find like repeated on certain websites, Like we were saying,
but this was apparently due to an early twentieth century
archaeological find that consisted of two teeth, two human teeth,
actual teeth woven together with a gold wire and this
(29:54):
was dated to twenty five hundred BCE, and this was
in Giza. Early interprettions of this artifact were that this
wire work was done while the individual was still alive,
that this was some sort of a dental procedure. But
the more popular interpretation, the more recent interpretation, is that
these teeth probably came out, you know, fell out or
(30:15):
had to be pulled out, and were kept as a pendant,
you know, worn around the neck or something, and then
the individual was buried with them. So, as schwartz Bird
points out, there does not seem to be strong evidence
for ancient Egyptian gold or metal teeth.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Okay, So this would just be that the gold wire
is used to hold together the teeth that the person
is perhaps keeping after they've they've come out of their
mouth for whatever reason magical or otherwise.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Right. But indeed, as Schwartzburg points out, the etruscans of
ancient Italy from around eight hundred BCE to two hundred
BCE did have gold dental appliances teeth woven with delicate
golden wire, and apparently this would have been the domain
of high status women that apparently would actually have some
(31:02):
front teeth removed in order to make room for like
this gold band appliance that would be inserted with either
replacement or reused teeth. So to be clear, though, this
was not functional, This is not something that you could
they could have apparently eaten with, but it was decorative
and it was a status symbol.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
So you would be am I understanding this right then
this would mean you're sort of giving up some of
your mouth's eating power in order to have this decorative item.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Yeah. Yeah, So the author here cites Jeene McIntosh Turfa,
who wrote a book called The Golden Smile, The Etruscans
and the History of Dentistry cited in this article, and yeah,
apparently this it was a mark of freedom and power.
Like so this wasn't something I mean, you can get
into probably complex analysis of societal pressure for various beauty
(31:56):
trends and so forth, but for the most part, it
sounds like this was something that that the women in
question did because it established their status and it said, hey,
I don't need functional front teeth like I have. I
have cooks that will cook food for me that I
that I can eat regardless of what my the functionality
of my teeth. This is about, you know, showing that
(32:18):
that I have this heightened status. You know, I have wealth,
I have power, and I do not have to live
like common people.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Yeah, now we've We've mentioned Etruscans before because a lot
of there are a number of ideas that the Romans
ran with that they got from the Etruscans. I mean
the Romans, as we've discussed many times, they they were
not shy about taking technologies as well as beliefs and
fads from the cultures that they conquered and absorbed. But
the grills did not transfer and then they and they
(32:49):
did not remain a popular aspect of Etruscan culture under
the Romans, or they were and they were also not
absorbed into Roman culture either. Now in terms of putting
gin and teeth, and we see this today again with
diamond dental implants. I'm not going to run through all
the very you can find lists online of all the
various musical artists and celebrities who have diamonds and other
(33:14):
gems in their mouth of one designer another. But Schwarzberg
does point out that we have an example from Mayan
civilization during the Classic period three hundred and nine hundred CE.
Mayan royalty would often have these small holes drilled into
their upper teeth, and then they would have round pieces
(33:35):
of jade implanted into those teeth, again as a status symbol.
The article goes into again more depth, more ancient history,
but also a lot more recent history of dental augmentations
like this. The author does point out that in the
Philippines there were also traditions that go back I think
around the thirteen hundred CE, in which you would have
(33:57):
gold wrappings and gold pegs in teeth as another form
of dental augmentation, again to announce one's status more than
anything else. All Right, I have one final area to
touch on here on the fusion of the human body
with diamond and that concerns the proposition of diamond hip replacements.
(34:21):
So I ran across this. I was looking at articles
about this that date back to at least the late
nineteen nineties, and then a more recent paper published in
a twenty twenty two issue of ACS Applied Materials and
Interfaces that continues to discuss the possibility.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Of diamond hip replacements. So what would be the advantage
of using diamond in an artificial hip.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Well, traditional hip replacements tend to be made out of titanium.
And yes, titanium's great. It almost has that status of
fictional adamantium, at least in casual usage. Right. But the
idea here is that there are still limitations to titanium.
But you could enhance the titanium or some other traditional
(35:04):
metal by covering it with a kind of diamond coating
that would even better. Be even better. This would provide
lower friction, higher wear and corrosion resistance, as well as
an improved bonding surface to the bone, So you know,
in not only making it more durable, but also just
like letting it interface with bone a little easier. Hmm okay, yeah, So,
(35:30):
according to zellcas at All in the twenty twenty two
ACS paper, quote, despite the excellent biocompatibility and superior mechanical properties,
the major challenge of using diamond for implants such as
those used in hip arthroplasty is the limitation of microwave
plasma chemical vapor deposition or CVD techniques to synthesize diamond
(35:56):
on complex shaped objects. So what they're talking about this process,
this is a process that involves depositing a solid material
from a gaseous phase, and they go in to present
a new CBD technique to apply diamond coating. I'm not
going to get in at all the technical details of this,
some of it kind of washed over me, to be honest,
(36:16):
But like the general idea is that there seem to
be a lot of experts out there who think like
this could be the way that we enhance and improve
the functionality of hip replacements, these hip implants. But we're
just not quite there, it seems, when it comes to
figuring out the best way to apply said diamonds. HM.
(36:39):
And again, it don't if you're imagining like a sort
of blinged out human hip ry hip replacement, I don't
think that's quite what it would look like. We're again
talking more in the world of like you know, micro
and nanodiamonds that are suspended and so forth. It's like
a coating. But I think it's interesting how these ideas
kind of come back to some of the the ideas
(37:00):
we were discussing earlier. You know, diamonds implanted in the body,
but not as mere decoration in this case, but as
a functional coating for a metal implant. And it also
gets us close, maybe a little bit to that fictional
idea of Wolverine and his adamantium coated bones or diamond
patch and his presumably diamond based skeleton.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
If only ben Venudo Cellini could know that, we'd have
medical science talking about diamond based coatings for implants in
the human body. Yeah, after his soliloquy on how they
cut your guts apart?
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Yeah, yeah, And in this case, diamonds essentially put inside
the human body as a way to improve the functionality
of a medical implants.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
It's pretty amazing, all right. Should we cap our exploration
of diamonds there?
Speaker 1 (37:51):
I believe. So, you know, it's possible some other stuff's
going to come up in listener mail, and in which case,
you know, write in tell us about it. We'd love
to hear from you. A lot of you have certainly
a more experience with diamonds than we do. You might
be aware of some other nuggets from diamond culture around
the world, from diamond mythologies around the world. We're always
(38:13):
game to learn more. As we close out here, just
a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily
a science podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
On Mondays we do listener mail, On Wednesdays we do
a short form episode, and on Fridays we set us
out most serious concerns to just talk about a weird
film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I am Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday, so we are
heading into the vault for an older episode of Stuff
to Blow Your Mind. This is part four of our
series on the Diamond This originally aired January twenty fifth,
twenty twenty four. Hope you enjoy.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with the
fourth and final part in our series on diamonds. Now,
if you haven't heard the other three parts, you might
want to go back and listen to those first, though
I guess this series is probably okay if you do
them out of order. That we will refer to things
we've already talked about in previous episodes. Brief recap of
(01:01):
what we talked about in the parts that already aired.
We addressed in the first episode the widely held belief
that diamond fragments or diamond powder are poisonous if ingested,
and we talked about some alleged attempted diamond poisonings in history.
The short modern read on that is that it seems
(01:22):
like diamond powder is probably not actually reliably poisonous, but
just to be saved, we were still saying, you know,
I probably wouldn't need it. We talked a bit about
the conditions under which diamond's form. There's going to be
some more about that today. We talked about their physical
properties and a bit about their use in ancient cultures
in ancient India, China, and the Roman Empire. In the
(01:44):
last episode, we talked about some strange ancient beliefs recorded
in the writings of plenty of the Elder and some
other sources that in order to shatter a diamond, you
must first soften it in the blood of a he goat.
That's a good one. We also talked about the legend
found in multiple cultures that there is this so called
valley of Gems where diamonds litter the ground. But you
(02:08):
can't just go down there and get them because there
are I don't know, poisonous, venomous snakes or some kind
of monster or beast or something down There's some kind
of danger, so you've got to have clever ways of
getting the diamonds up to the cliffs above. Our favorite
method that we read about involved meat getting the meat.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
That's right, And so in today's episode we have a
couple of other avenues we want to discuss. Later on
in the podcast, I'm going to talk a little bit
about diamond body modification, so we'll get back into this
idea of diamonds and human bodies coming together. But before
we get to that, Joe, I understand you want to
return to something we touched on in the last episode.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Well, that's right. So in the last episode I did
a bit on the question of whether diamonds can burn,
can they be fuel in a fire? The answer is yes,
they are carbon based, and you can have a diamond fire,
though they take higher temperature, they have higher ignition temperatures,
and may require more oxygen supply than most normal fuels
(03:10):
you'd have, like wood or coal. But this raised the
question do diamonds actually come from coal?
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Now?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
As I said in the last episode, anecdotally, this seems
to be a common belief. Unfortunately, this is one of
those where I was reading about it before I actually
checked my pre existing knowledge, so I don't know if
I would have said that diamonds are formed out of
coal or not? Rob, was this a belief banging around
in your head?
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yes, but only because that scene in Superman three. You know, yeah, Okay,
Superman does it. Then I'm just assuming that he's correct,
and who's going to doubt the Man of Steel.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
I cannot argue with you there. So anecdotally, it does
seem to be a common belief, and it's easy to
see why people would think this. Diamonds and coal are
both types of compressed carbon dug up from underground, So
you might just assume that when a coal formation undergoes
intense heat and pressure, it gets pressed and compressed and
(04:06):
compressed until it turns into diamonds, and that's where diamonds
come from. And even some old books and authorities on
diamonds do seem to suggest they believe this, that diamonds
come from coal, but more recent sources argue that this
is not the case, at least not for most diamonds.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
I should point out that this is something I'm sure
came up for you as well, Joe, and your diamond
research is that diamonds. This is the subject of diamonds.
This is one other one of those areas where you
have a lot of websites, often associated with jewelers, that
are going after like search engine optimization, and so there's
a lot of like diamond content dump going on. You
(04:49):
see this with other businesses and areas as well. It
occasionally turns up that I kept encountering that in my
research sort of drove me out of the traditional search
mode into some of the like a Google scholar and
so forth. But there are a lot of websites out
there that are clearly the main idea is like, let's
(05:11):
just move up in the search for diamonds because we're
trying to sell them exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Yeah, some jewel retailer who've got the pages on the
website like interesting diamond facts or something, you know, and
it's like they're not citing sources. You can't rely on this,
so you gotta trudge through all that to get to
something real.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Some of it might be good, some of it might
be good, but yeah, a lot of it is not
sourced and so forth.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
But anyway, I guess that does now that we're talking
about sources. So I found a number of books on
geology and gems making the simple claim that no, diamonds
do not come from coal, but usually without any further explanation.
So I was looking for somebody to really explain, like,
how do we know they don't come from coal? And
the most extensive exploration of this that I turned up
(05:58):
was on the good old geology dot com website, which
I'm sure you've hit before, Rob, which does have solid
articles that are well cited and you know, listing sources
and all that. So it's one of these articles by
the geologist Hobart King, who I think is the author
of most of what's on geology dot com.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Or what does the King have to say about this?
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Well, King seems to be in line with the modern
consensus here that coal very rarely and possibly never plays
a role in the formation of diamonds. How can we
know this? One reason he cites, and I mentioned this
briefly in the last episode, is that most diamonds that
can be dated are older than most coal. So we
(06:42):
can actually test the age of diamonds through radiometric dating,
though it's a little bit complicated because of course we
can't use carbon dating on them. The half life of
carbon fourteen that you use to you test the decay
of that in order to use carbon dating that's too
short in time to accurately date materials that are on
(07:03):
the order of millions of years old or more. This
is why you can't use carbon dating for anything from
the age of the dinosaurs or anything like that. Carbon
dating is useful for carbon based remains that are on
the scale of like thousands of years or tens of
thousands of years old.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Yeah, and as we discussed, diamonds are much older.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Right, So if carbon dating isn't accurate for things as
old as diamonds and diamonds are made of carbon, how
can we test their age? Well, you can use different
radioactive decay series tests on things such as mineral inclusions
in diamonds, meaning occasionally you can find a diamond with
(07:43):
bits of other minerals that are trapped inside it or
trapped along with it. And when scientists do these tests,
these radioactive decay series tests on diamond inclusions, it seems
that most diamonds are more than a billion years old.
The common range I've seen is that the youngest diamonds
are just shy of a billion years old and the
(08:05):
oldest are more than three billion years old. And that
means that natural diamonds can be that the ones that
can be dated are pretty much all older than the
evolution of the first land plants. Plants first appeared in
the Cambrian era roughly five hundred million years ago, and
they didn't really flourish on land until later, with the
(08:27):
big coal forming period being more like three hundred million
years ago known as the Carboniferous period, which literally means
like the coal forming period. Since land plants are the
source of the carbon in most coal deposits, it is
unlikely that diamonds would have formed one to three billion
years ago out of a chain of metamorphosis that has
(08:49):
to start with the type of organism that didn't exist yet.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Wow, why isn't this in the diamond commercials?
Speaker 2 (08:58):
You'd think that would be an interesting selling point. Yeah, Like,
if this is a diamond that came out of the
Earth and wasn't like made in a lab or something,
it probably is billions of years old. Is from a
time when the only life on Earth was like single
celled organisms. So that's one reason for thinking diamonds are
generally not formed from coal. Another reason is that coal
(09:20):
seams and diamonds are found in completely different geological contexts.
Coal is found in a sedimentary rocks formed by the
deposition of layers of material on Earth's surface. These layers
of material eventually get buried, they get horizontally compressed, and
they harden into rock strata with the coal in traps
(09:42):
there in the sedimentary rocks. Meanwhile, diamonds are usually found
in vertical formations of igneous rocks. Igneous rocks are formed
by fire. These are rocks that are created when magma
cools and hardens into a solid. So coal and diamonds,
you're gonna find them in totally different geological settings. King
(10:04):
goes on to list the four known natural sources of
diamonds and he says that these are formation in the
Earth's mantle, formation in subduction zones, formation at impact sites,
and formation in space. Now, we talked in the last
episode about diamonds that are formed in space and occasionally
found in meteorites, and we also talked about diamonds that
(10:26):
are created by the incredible heat and pressure of space impacts. So,
for example, if you have like a ten kilometer asteroid
traveling at twenty kilometers per second, it enters Earth's atmosphere,
it hits or explodes, there's going to it does that
over an area with rocks bearing carbon, maybe rocks that
(10:47):
have graphite in them, which is a form of carbon
based mineral that's less dense than a diamond that impact,
and that the heat and pressure there could turn the
graphite in the rocks into diamonds. Now, King says, in
this case, technically the carbon could also come from coal.
So like the asteroid, maybe hits an area with exposed
(11:08):
or near surface coal seams. But most diamonds are not
formed by space impact, so that could happen, But most
of the diamonds you come across are not going to
be from this source. Instead, King says, basically, all the
diamonds that are commercially mined on Earth are the kind
that are created deep down in the forge of the
Earth's mantle. Now, we already mentioned a bit about diamond
(11:31):
formation in the mantle in a previous episode, but just
to refresh, Scientists generally believe that the conditions of heat
and pressure that you need in order to create a
diamond only occur in certain areas, usually at a depth
of about one hundred and fifty kilometers or greater from
the surface, which is well below the crust deep into
(11:52):
the mantle, and usually this would be around the interior
of continental plates. That is, of course way too deep
to mind. We do not have any minds that go
down one hundred and fifty kilometers underground, so we can
only mine diamonds that are brought closer to the surface somehow.
(12:12):
And as we mentioned in I think part two, maybe
we find these diamonds in and around these vertical pipes
of igneous rock known as kimber light or lamprote pipes.
And these are vertical columns of rock that were formed
long ago by incredibly explosive volcanic eruptions from deep in
the mantle. So magma from below flows up to the
(12:36):
surface rapidly, and sometimes it breaks off pieces of the mantle,
and these flows bring diamonds up to the surface with them.
And one sort of cool and creepy thing that King
mentions offhand is that no one in human history, as
far as we know, has ever witnessed the kind of
deep source volcanic eruption that brings diamonds to the surface.
(12:58):
These are known as kimber light eruptions. They are rare
compared to normal volcanic eruptions. They're very energetic and explosive,
and most of the ones we know about took place
long ago, so there are no historical records, like since
the dawn of writing, of anybody ever describing or seeing
one of these. And it seems like most of the
ones that have taken place took place long, long ago.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Again, why isn't this in the diamond commercials, Like doesn't
your love deserve a diamond forged or not forged but
brought to the surface towards the surface in a volcanic
eruption so terrifyingly powerful that we've never seen its like
in human history.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
You'd think that would be a selling point. You could
combine them, actually, you could have that. You could have
like the real science facts on one hand, and then
like we said in the other episode that you know
the value of the gym's legends, so like you you know,
you've got to show using the meat to retrieve the diamonds.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Yeah, yeah, like dig into all that the content is there,
use it.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
So we know that most diamonds that come from are
formed deep in the mantle, So why should we not
think coal is the source of the carbon in these diamonds.
Based on I did some quick research on this, it
seems to me that coal deposits are mostly in the
top three kilometers of the Earth's crust. And remember, diamonds
(14:17):
are formed one hundred and fifty or more kilometers down
within the mantle. So the coal would have to somehow
get from these locations in the top layer of the
crust down to like fifty times their normal depth or
more underneath a continental plate to supply the carbon to
make the diamonds, and that seems kind of unlikely, or
(14:38):
at least rare. King thinks a more likely origin for
the carbon in diamonds is just carbon that has been
present in Earth rocks since early in the planet's formation,
and there are sources of carbon that you can find
within the rocks of the Earth. Like I was reading
another article about these incredibly explosive Kimber light eruptions, and
(14:59):
one thing that seems to happen when these eruptions kick
off is that there is like an expansion of CO
two gas deep down in the mantle. Like CO two,
there's an area where there's a lot of carbon in
the mantle, and the CO two gas starts to come
out of solution, much like what happens when you pop
(15:20):
the top on a carbonated soda, it starts to come
out of solution and turn into a gas and want
to rise quickly to the surface, and this of course
is extremely explosive and violent. However, to come back in
the other direction and talk about an analogy to coal
being the source of diamond formation, an analogy that is
(15:40):
quite possible. King does acknowledge that very small diamonds are
sometimes formed in what are called subduction zones, and this
is where so you have different plates of the Earth's
crust meeting. You have maybe an oceanic plate that is
the part of the crust sitting underneath an ocean continental plate.
(16:01):
That's where you would have a continent, and they meet
at a sort of joint, and where they meet, the
oceanic plate is pushed down underneath the continental plate at
this joint where they meet. So in the case of subduction,
sedimentary rocks formed on the ocean floor can indeed be
shoved down into the mantle. And it does seem that
(16:24):
the carbon in these rocks may sometimes form diamonds in
extreme heat and pressure in this subduction zone. But the
rocks in question here would probably not be coal. But
King says instead other kinds of carbon bearing sediment based
rocks that form mostly on the ocean floor, things like
limestone and dolomite.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Now, as we get into the final stretch here, I
want to get back into this area of diamonds and
the human body coming together again. We discussed various past
beliefs about the dangers of ingesting diamonds, and this inspired
me to look a little closer at diamonds and the flesh,
(17:15):
and I wanted to start with one of the more
recent and by some perspectives, more extreme examples of diamond
at flesh unity. That is, of course, the forehead diamond
implant of American hip hop performer lil uzi Vert born
nineteen ninety five. Joe, are you familiar with the lil Uzivert.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Only a little bit? I think maybe the main thing
I know is from articles about the diamond implant.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Yeah, this definitely made a splash. I think there are
plenty of people who have not heard lil Uzivert's music,
but they are familiar with the story of the diamond implant.
I have not heard any of their music. My knowledge
of mainstream hip hop is like fifteen to twenty years behind.
I know some indie stuff here and there, but I
(18:05):
don't know most of the current trends and acts, but
it's hard to ignore this particular story. This all went
down in twenty twenty one. It got a lot of
media coverage. You might have heard something on late night
comedy shows about this. In the way that it was described,
I think the way I initially picked up on it too,
it sounded red. I kind of got the impression that
(18:27):
was something impulsive, you know, like here's a hip hop
artist and maybe on the spur of the moment, they're like,
I like that diamond, I want it in my forehead,
and then they did it, you know, kind of like
anybody else in the world might say, you know, get
a drunken tattoo or something like that.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
But no, you're gonna say this is a more thought
out diamond implant than that would suggest.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Yeah, I had no idea, but I was reading about
it on Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone has a really nice
ride up on it. This is by jeffs and it
gets into not only the case with Littl Luzivert, but
other hip hop stars who have had implants similar. But
(19:10):
the way it's described in this article, this all began
like in twenty seventeen, they had to purchase the reported
twenty four million dollar diamond, had to pay that off.
Then the implantation was handled by professional jewelers, and I
think they're referring to a consult by an expert piercer
or an expert in body modification. So it sounds like
(19:31):
it was rather an ordeal to get to the point
where the diamond was actually put in the forehead, but
it was successfully implanted, and now reportedly lil Uzivert didn't
keep the diamond implant. It came out during some crowdsurfing
at a concert, but then they put it back in
(19:52):
for a later concert, but then ultimately replaced it with
a piercing. They still have the diamond though, so the
way it was reported, a lot of late night shows
had some fun with this idea too, that the diamond
came out or was quote ripped out during a concert.
That maybe made it sound like it was stolen, but
that doesn't seem to be the case. I was also
impressed that and again this is just based on some
(20:14):
articles of looking up, but they said that that Vert
is a huge fan of the animated series Stephen Universe,
and this was an influence on the choice in getting
a pink forehead diamond. So I am familiar with Steven Universe.
Great show, so I would I got to say, great choice.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
I know nothing about that show except I know it
has big fans. So is there a character with a
diamond in their forehead on the show?
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Yeah, yeah, there there are some like there's some gemstone
powers going on in that show. It's it's good. It's
a it's a it's a family you know. Slash Kids
animated series on cartoon has some great, you know, feel
good energy to it. Highly recommend it nice. Now. While
Lilo's Evert probably got the most attention for their diamond implant,
(21:01):
they were not the first. The Rolling Stone article points
out that rapper Young Thug had a diamond tear drop
implanted on his face in twenty sixteen. I couldn't find
out much else about that one. Also, there is a
rapper by the name of Sauce Walka who had a
diamond facial implant, and another rapper, Little Pump, also had
or has a diamond facial implant. So this seems to
(21:24):
be a This is not a trend that's isolated to
a single individual. We have multiple individuals out there in
the world who have or have had this procedure. Now,
that Rolling Stone article includes some comments from Simon Bobev
speaking on behalf of the New York based jewelers Eleante
(21:45):
and Company that were involved with this particular forehead diamond,
the pink diamond of Liloozi Vert, and he says the
following quote. In the body modification world, they usually do
everything in stainless steel or surgical grade steel, but in
our case, we did everything with precious metals. We engineered
(22:05):
a specific mounting that clips and locks in place. There's
a whole mechanism involved. It's not a standard piercing, a
specific piece and part. We're both engineered with millimeter precision
to get this put on little loosey vert. So again,
I think an important takeaway from this is the diamond
is not set directly in the forehead. It's not certainly
(22:26):
not set in the skull or anything like that. When
it came out, a lot of people made jokes referring
to a scene in one of the Avengers films in
which like an Android character's jim stone is ripped out
of their forehead, and you know, it's not quite the same,
And then so it's ultimately mounted in metal, and then
(22:48):
that metal is implanted in the flesh, much like a
diamond is mounted in a ring, and like a diamond
is mounted in an ear ring, which of course is
then mounted in the flesh. Okay, so you know, obviously,
given the price tag on some of these diamonds, this
is all extravagant, though in the end, perhaps not all
(23:09):
that weirder than any other form of body modification, including
more mainstream forms that we take for granted and don't
even necessarily think of as body modification, like a standard
ear piercing is so mainstream that you don't necessarily think
of it as body modification. But again, coming back to
the idea of a diamond earring, in comparison, a diamond
(23:30):
mounted in a piece of metal jewelry that is then
secured to the human ear by one of several traditional methods,
but most often via a hole punched in the ear lobe.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Right, I mean that absolutely is body modification. I guess
for some reason, this phrase evokes associations of less common
body modifications.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Yeah, and of course a lot of that just has
to do with like what culture one is in. You know,
there's so many forms of piercing and body modification that
are thought of as new and counterculture today, and they
may very you know, they are generally perhaps counter to
the mainstream culture, at least at least in Western nations,
but they are often based on older traditions in other cultures,
(24:12):
you know, traditions that were more standard and would not
have been thought of his counterculture in those specific cultures.
So humans have engaged in ear piercing since very ancient times,
I mean the origins of the practice are ultimately lost
to the mists of prehistory. Let's see the Iceman, for instance,
lived who live between thirty three fifty and thirty one
(24:33):
oh five BCE. This is what we've talked about before,
with his well preserved body and articles on his body
that have provided a great deal of evidence about what
life was like or may have been like for individuals
during this time period. There is also evidence that he
had a pierced ear and an ear ring. We also
(24:54):
have Sumerian graves from Earth that give us evidence of
pierced ears from around twenty five hundred BCE. We have
Egyptian ear piercings. This pushes the evidence in this case
back to sixteen hundred BCE. We have Chinese examples that
go back to one thousand BCE. South American examples date
back to between eighteen hundred BC and three thousand BCE.
(25:17):
Plus just a lot of the literature of the ancient
world makes at least passing mention of the ear rings
of the air piercings. So there's a rich and varied
history here of poking a hole through part of the
ear lobe or parts of the ear lobe and inserting
things for decorative purposes. But of course we're not just
(25:38):
talking about piercings and earrings in general. Here, we're talking
about diamonds. We're talking about ultimately mounting a diamond in
your flesh. And when we get back into diamonds, you
can probably guess where some of the oldest evidence of
diamond ear rings is going to take us. It's of
course going to take us to India.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Right. So, as we discussed in previous episodes in the series,
it seems that in the ancient world, India was a
real high spot of diamond mining and diamond use in culture.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Yeah, yeah, and definitely a place where, yeah, they had
diamonds the longest and a place where diamonds were upgraded
to gym status earlier than you know than other places.
So yeah, and again to drive home, like for the
for the longest, like diamonds in the world came from India. Yeah,
so Jack Ogden in Diamonds in Early History of the
(26:24):
King of Gems, which we referenced in the earlier episodes
as well, he points out a couple of examples of
of of these old diamond ear rings. He includes in
his book an ear decoration from the tenth to eleventh
century CE. This is diamond and pink sapphire to be specific,
(26:45):
set in gold, and Ogden adds that it's probably an
ear ring, but similar artifacts from Java were actually vervals.
These are decorative rings that went on a hawk or
a pet bird's leg. Whoa so interesting ambiguity regarding some
of these things. But he also includes an example of
(27:05):
a golden ear ring from the first century BCE from
India classified as an early earring fragment. So suffice to
say that we've been combining diamonds with our anatomy for
more than two thousand years, But how long have we
been using them for our teeth? Because you know, I've
already mentioned musical performers, but also you have athletes, you
(27:25):
have other celebrities who sometimes show up with diamond implants
on their teeth, some sort of diamond dental work going
on grills and so forth. I was looking into this
a little bit. We talked about, like, you know, some
of these older ideas about, you know, don't put a
diamond in your mouth because like the venom of the
snakes from the Valley of Gems will will kill you,
(27:49):
and other ideas. Health Wise, the main concerns and there
don't seem to be a lot of like overt health
concerns with grills, for example, most of the health concerns
at all seem to relate to things like prolonged usage,
like these are not things that are seemingly designed to
just be worn day in day out. These are for
(28:09):
special occasions, These are for concerts, these are for media
appearances or what have you. And on top of that,
potential allergic reactions to base metals and if they're actually
used and said grill, and also just the responsibility of
keeping something that goes into your mouth clean and so forth.
But I didn't run across any concerns related specifically to
(28:30):
the presence of diamonds themselves. Now, it's worth noting that
while a lot of current of the current popularity of
elaborate grills has its roots seemingly in like nineteen eighties
(28:50):
hip hop culture, I think a lot of it coming
out of like New York. And there's of course a
strong connection here to dental procedures that replace teeth or
portions of teeth with precious metals and or jewelry. But
the use of gold dental appliances goes back centuries and
one of the most fascinating examples are the dental appliances
of the etruscans. These go back as far as six
(29:11):
thirty BCE. There's a really good article this was published
on Vice back in twenty fourteen, called the title The
Ancient History of Grills by Lauren Schwarzburg. I highly recommend
given this a read. It goes into a lot more
depth than I'm going to cover here, but just to
hit on some of the main points that the author
brings out that relate to what we're talking about. First
(29:34):
of all, there's a pervasive idea that grills originated in
ancient Egypt, and I think this is something you can
probably find like repeated on certain websites, Like we were saying,
but this was apparently due to an early twentieth century
archaeological find that consisted of two teeth, two human teeth,
actual teeth woven together with a gold wire and this
(29:54):
was dated to twenty five hundred BCE, and this was
in Giza. Early interprettions of this artifact were that this
wire work was done while the individual was still alive,
that this was some sort of a dental procedure. But
the more popular interpretation, the more recent interpretation, is that
these teeth probably came out, you know, fell out or
(30:15):
had to be pulled out, and were kept as a pendant,
you know, worn around the neck or something, and then
the individual was buried with them. So, as schwartz Bird
points out, there does not seem to be strong evidence
for ancient Egyptian gold or metal teeth.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Okay, So this would just be that the gold wire
is used to hold together the teeth that the person
is perhaps keeping after they've they've come out of their
mouth for whatever reason magical or otherwise.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Right. But indeed, as Schwartzburg points out, the etruscans of
ancient Italy from around eight hundred BCE to two hundred
BCE did have gold dental appliances teeth woven with delicate
golden wire, and apparently this would have been the domain
of high status women that apparently would actually have some
(31:02):
front teeth removed in order to make room for like
this gold band appliance that would be inserted with either
replacement or reused teeth. So to be clear, though, this
was not functional, This is not something that you could
they could have apparently eaten with, but it was decorative
and it was a status symbol.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
So you would be am I understanding this right then
this would mean you're sort of giving up some of
your mouth's eating power in order to have this decorative item.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Yeah. Yeah, So the author here cites Jeene McIntosh Turfa,
who wrote a book called The Golden Smile, The Etruscans
and the History of Dentistry cited in this article, and yeah,
apparently this it was a mark of freedom and power.
Like so this wasn't something I mean, you can get
into probably complex analysis of societal pressure for various beauty
(31:56):
trends and so forth, but for the most part, it
sounds like this was something that that the women in
question did because it established their status and it said, hey,
I don't need functional front teeth like I have. I
have cooks that will cook food for me that I
that I can eat regardless of what my the functionality
of my teeth. This is about, you know, showing that
(32:18):
that I have this heightened status. You know, I have wealth,
I have power, and I do not have to live
like common people.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Yeah, now we've We've mentioned Etruscans before because a lot
of there are a number of ideas that the Romans
ran with that they got from the Etruscans. I mean
the Romans, as we've discussed many times, they they were
not shy about taking technologies as well as beliefs and
fads from the cultures that they conquered and absorbed. But
the grills did not transfer and then they and they
(32:49):
did not remain a popular aspect of Etruscan culture under
the Romans, or they were and they were also not
absorbed into Roman culture either. Now in terms of putting
gin and teeth, and we see this today again with
diamond dental implants. I'm not going to run through all
the very you can find lists online of all the
various musical artists and celebrities who have diamonds and other
(33:14):
gems in their mouth of one designer another. But Schwarzberg
does point out that we have an example from Mayan
civilization during the Classic period three hundred and nine hundred CE.
Mayan royalty would often have these small holes drilled into
their upper teeth, and then they would have round pieces
(33:35):
of jade implanted into those teeth, again as a status symbol.
The article goes into again more depth, more ancient history,
but also a lot more recent history of dental augmentations
like this. The author does point out that in the
Philippines there were also traditions that go back I think
around the thirteen hundred CE, in which you would have
(33:57):
gold wrappings and gold pegs in teeth as another form
of dental augmentation, again to announce one's status more than
anything else. All Right, I have one final area to
touch on here on the fusion of the human body
with diamond and that concerns the proposition of diamond hip replacements.
(34:21):
So I ran across this. I was looking at articles
about this that date back to at least the late
nineteen nineties, and then a more recent paper published in
a twenty twenty two issue of ACS Applied Materials and
Interfaces that continues to discuss the possibility.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Of diamond hip replacements. So what would be the advantage
of using diamond in an artificial hip.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Well, traditional hip replacements tend to be made out of titanium.
And yes, titanium's great. It almost has that status of
fictional adamantium, at least in casual usage. Right. But the
idea here is that there are still limitations to titanium.
But you could enhance the titanium or some other traditional
(35:04):
metal by covering it with a kind of diamond coating
that would even better. Be even better. This would provide
lower friction, higher wear and corrosion resistance, as well as
an improved bonding surface to the bone, So you know,
in not only making it more durable, but also just
like letting it interface with bone a little easier. Hmm okay, yeah, So,
(35:30):
according to zellcas at All in the twenty twenty two
ACS paper, quote, despite the excellent biocompatibility and superior mechanical properties,
the major challenge of using diamond for implants such as
those used in hip arthroplasty is the limitation of microwave
plasma chemical vapor deposition or CVD techniques to synthesize diamond
(35:56):
on complex shaped objects. So what they're talking about this process,
this is a process that involves depositing a solid material
from a gaseous phase, and they go in to present
a new CBD technique to apply diamond coating. I'm not
going to get in at all the technical details of this,
some of it kind of washed over me, to be honest,
(36:16):
But like the general idea is that there seem to
be a lot of experts out there who think like
this could be the way that we enhance and improve
the functionality of hip replacements, these hip implants. But we're
just not quite there, it seems, when it comes to
figuring out the best way to apply said diamonds. HM.
(36:39):
And again, it don't if you're imagining like a sort
of blinged out human hip ry hip replacement, I don't
think that's quite what it would look like. We're again
talking more in the world of like you know, micro
and nanodiamonds that are suspended and so forth. It's like
a coating. But I think it's interesting how these ideas
kind of come back to some of the the ideas
(37:00):
we were discussing earlier. You know, diamonds implanted in the body,
but not as mere decoration in this case, but as
a functional coating for a metal implant. And it also
gets us close, maybe a little bit to that fictional
idea of Wolverine and his adamantium coated bones or diamond
patch and his presumably diamond based skeleton.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
If only ben Venudo Cellini could know that, we'd have
medical science talking about diamond based coatings for implants in
the human body. Yeah, after his soliloquy on how they
cut your guts apart?
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Yeah, yeah, And in this case, diamonds essentially put inside
the human body as a way to improve the functionality
of a medical implants.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
It's pretty amazing, all right. Should we cap our exploration
of diamonds there?
Speaker 1 (37:51):
I believe. So, you know, it's possible some other stuff's
going to come up in listener mail, and in which case,
you know, write in tell us about it. We'd love
to hear from you. A lot of you have certainly
a more experience with diamonds than we do. You might
be aware of some other nuggets from diamond culture around
the world, from diamond mythologies around the world. We're always
(38:13):
game to learn more. As we close out here, just
a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily
a science podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
On Mondays we do listener mail, On Wednesdays we do
a short form episode, and on Fridays we set us
out most serious concerns to just talk about a weird
film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
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