Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor

You’ve seen the photos of the famed terracotta warriors, but no one in over 2200 years has glimpsed inside the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. It’s a chamber where rivers of mercury trace the empire’s form beneath a ceiling starscape of precious stones. We know where it is, yet it remains just outside of our scientific reach. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore the first emperor’s life and afterlife. Plus Anney and Lauren from FoodStuff drop by to discuss their episode on lunar new year foods.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuffwork
dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick. In.
Today we're going to be doing a stuff to Blow
your Mind take on ancient tombs. One really fascinating, amazing,

(00:24):
interesting ancient tomb in particular. But I wanted to start
off by talking about ancient tombs in general because my
main point of contact with ancient tombs, I have to
be honest, is not through real archaeology, but is through
like movies and all the types of ancient tombs that
you get a curse by going into the kind of

(00:46):
ancient tomb that can serve as a suitable backdrop for
a swashbuckling adventure. Yes, that has guardians of some kind
that will like come to life and attack you with
with creatures that they command maybe or that well, you
know ancient axes, uh, and they've got some kind of
animal head or something like that. Or how about the
ones that make you sick, like they give you a disease,

(01:10):
or just generally are full of booby traps, like you know,
they're gonna have spikes rolling out at you, and don't
forget the curse. You've gotta have a good curse in there.
Did I not say a curse? I thought I did. Well,
you said sickness, right, Okay, well, I mean that could
be part of the curse. But yeah, we we have
all these sort of fantastic ideas of what these tombs
should be. And at the same time, I feel like
there's this trap we may fall into of just saying, oh, well,

(01:33):
of course, ancient people's created these megaprojects. They made pyramids
and large scale tombs, and they went to ridiculous links
to preserve the dead. And that's that's just what ancient
people did. And we we lose sight of the enormity
of the thing. Uh and, and we we don't necessarily
engage in the thinking of these people. What was going

(01:56):
through their minds. Why did all of this collective effort
go into the creation of artificial mountains and uh and
and models of the underworld. And in some cases, like
for instance, we've we've touched on this before, the ancient Egyptians,
you get the feeling of a spaceship. It is the
feeling of a of a vessel that is going to
take the physical remains of the dead king and his

(02:20):
objects or representations of those objects in some cases the
bodies of loved ones with them into the afterlife. Yeah.
And of course what's worth looking at as well is
not just what were they thinking that that is fascinating,
but also how did they do it? Sometimes these ancient
tombs are technological marvels. It's bizarre to think that people

(02:41):
would create funerary structures and storage for dead bodies. That was,
you know, the the pinnacle of technological achievement at the time,
like maybe even beyond buildings that people would actually live in. Yeah,
and we don't have as much to compare this to today.
Like I've been to Nicolas Cagees pyramid in New Orleans.
He's not in it yet, What are you talking about?

(03:04):
He has a pyramid shaped tomb prepared for himself in
a cemetery and messing with me. No, it's it's actually
it's legitimate. Yeah. So a cemetery in New Orleans and
has a pyramid. It's prepared for Pharaoh Cage when he
when he meets his demise, correct, and he's going to
go there and be interred. That's that's the plan. And

(03:27):
then when the flood comes. What he'll get washed out
and he's gonna be fine. Will be in the pyramid.
I assume they're it's it's They're gonna be provisions in there,
everything Nicolas Cage will need in the afterlife. Oh man,
can you just imagine canopic jars full of Nicolas Cage guts?
I am now, I am now. So in this episode,

(03:48):
we are going to venture into Chinese history. We are,
in fact going to look at one of the most
important figures in Chinese history, a little bit about his life,
but then also a fair bit about his death and
his preparations for death. Right. So the subject of today's
episode is the tomb of the first Chinese emperor, Chin Chihuong,

(04:10):
and Chin Chihuong is an interesting figure in history, but
I would venture that he has the coolest, weirdest, most
fascinating tomb of any person who ever lived. Would you agree?
I would. I would definitely agree. Now, granted, it's part
of it, I think, is you grow up knowing so
much about the Pyramids that you're you're kind of dull

(04:31):
to the Pyramids after a while. So it's difficult to
compare anything to those massive works. But this is incredible.
This is this is I feel at least on par
with those creations. Well, first, let's take a look at
who was Chin Chihuang right, and we should we should
take a moment to just sort of ground this in

(04:51):
Chinese history. Uh I realized Chinese dynastic succession can be
confusing for many people. But here the basics, and this
will get us up to the time period we need
for this episode. So, the first Chinese dynasty was the
Shah dynasty from seventy to six BC. It comes first,

(05:15):
but it's also largely mythological, with some early Bronze Age evidence.
And then comes the Shan dynasty, which was long considered
apocryphal as well, but historians now correlated with oracle bone writings.
And this period takes us up through roughly eleven twenty
three b C with the Jode dynasty. In China's first

(05:36):
millennium BC. This was a time of conflict, especially two
periods known as the Spring and Autumn that went to
seven two through one b c E and the Warring
States period which went four seventy five through two b
c E. Okay, but by the end of the Warring
States period we're into the third century b c. E.

(05:59):
And then at the end of the Wearing States period, uh,
the the Chin dynasty picks up. This is when the
Chin Kingdom conquers other Central Chinese states and becomes the
First Imperial dynasty under Chin chi Wong, the first Emperor
of the Chin, and technically he becomes the first emperor
at a very young age. He is he is he's

(06:20):
born into this conquered realm essentially, and it becomes the
young king of the First Empire. Now, not to pick
on him in particular, you just never think it's that
great an idea when somebody becomes an absolute ruler when
they're a teenager. Yeah, it um generally it's a red flag.
When you're reading history books, you're like, oh, this this
guy is starting young. He's either going to be great

(06:42):
or terrible. And well, I think this is the case
where you can realize that someone can be great and terrible.
That's that's that's that's kind of the thing that emperors do, right,
And of course he would be a pivotal figure here.
He would begin a line of rulers that would continue
until nineteen twelve. That being said, his particular dynasty would

(07:02):
be very short lived because in the first of many
peasant uprisings to echo through Chinese history, Lu Bong rose
up and conquered China to found the Han dynasty in
two oh six b C. Only fifteen years later after
his death. And uh, and this would last for some
four hundred years. This was the I mean, the Han

(07:23):
dynasty that would be tremendously important. It's why you call
the major ethnic group in China the Han people. Okay,
so Chin Chi Huang was incredibly powerful in his time,
but this very short rule, right, it's almost as if
you looking at it from historical perspective, he was he
like rocketed into history and just made a bee line

(07:46):
for his death basically, and we do have to stress too,
it's like he was not a thirteen year old warlord
per se. Uh. He was. He arrived upon the throne
thanks to the military prowess of his family, of his
father and grandfather in particular. Now, I said that about
the view of history moving toward his death, not because

(08:06):
all he did was die. He did a lot, but
because the main thing that we can now see the
remains of him is this massive monument to his dead body.
That's right now, of course, it wasn't the only thing
he accomplished in his life. Here are just a few
of the key points. We're not gonna do a complete
biography of the man, but in two fourteen b c.

(08:27):
He indentured thousands, some three hundred thousand men I believe
uh laborers to link existing city walls into the one
Great Wall. On top of that, he oversaw vast public
works projects, such as the Stone Cattle Road that bridged
the central trade cities over the mountains. He also unified
currency measurements, and this is key in relation to our

(08:50):
other episode this week, written language, and all of this
helped to stitch together a cohesive state that exists to
this day. On top of that, and we'll get into
this in a bit, he also longed for immortality, and
of course he constructed one of the greatest tombs in
his in human history, containing over seven thousand soldiers, that

(09:10):
we refer to as the Terra Cotta Army near uh Cheyenne. However,
as John Key points out in his book China, a History,
which came out in two thousand nine, we have to
be careful not to overstate his influence, so his dynasty
would last barely a generation. And and everything would have
to be basically put back together again by the Han dynasty.

(09:33):
And plus his influence only covered his Key points out
core China, and that not entirely now. In his life,
the emperor came to know both the anxiety of one
who holds the highest level of power and the fears
of all who occupy immortal form. Key points out that
he may have been spooked by a couple of failed
assassination attempts. Yeah, and uh, and he was. He was

(09:56):
already master of quote all under heaven, so he decided
to become a master over death as well. This seems
like a very natural move that comes to warlords who
have conquered all their enemies, like once you have secured
your rule, the next thing you move on to is
the enemy. No one has yet defeated death itself. How

(10:17):
not to die? How not to end um? He ended
up removing himself from public sight. He sought the secret
of eternal life. Death was made a taboo subject, and
to speak it in his presence was punishable by death.
He summoned wizards and holy men from across the lands,
and spared no expense in creating the elixirs that they

(10:37):
prescribed him. Uh. Some argue that the mercury poisoning from
these elixirs might have actually hastened his demise. Oh, and
there will be more about that later on. Now, according
to the stories about Chin Chijuan's search for immortality, he
was truly committed to it. Like he sent expeditions right,
oh yeah, He dispatched expeditions in search of an island

(10:59):
of immortals known as the Islands of Paradise. And on
the third voyage, which which he went on himself, he
had a dream about a sea monster destroying his his fleet,
and as such he stook to took to carrying a
crossbow around with him at all times and the voice
yeah yeah, and and he the void ended up being
delayed because he ended up having to hunt this sea monster. Um.

(11:22):
And of course you can fill in the blanks with
what that might have been. Maybe it was a whale, uh,
a shark, who knows, But he ends up shooting it
dead with his crossbow and then dies himself days later. Now.
Key attributes these details to second millennium BC e Han
historian Sima Chin and says that fabrications wouldn't have been

(11:43):
beneath him, but it might have been added by someone else.
So in other words, this account of the emperor's obsessions,
it might not be accurate, like maybe he wasn't hunting
sea monsters with a crossbow. Uh, and maybe it's just
alluding to his obsessions. Well, yeah, I mean that. I
think that comes with pretty much anything from ancient history.
You always usually can't rely on it to be totally accurate,

(12:07):
but it will at least usually eliminate you as to
what ancient people thought. So even if this doesn't tell
us how the first Emperor of China died, it tells
us what his reputation was, and is that reputation was
one of an obsessed tyrant. He would he would go
on to be like the prototypical uh tyrant in Chinese

(12:29):
folk tales for generation of fun generation. But to follow
up on the descriptions left behind by Sima Chen, I
think we should go to the tomb. Yes, so Sima
Chen has this wonderful description which which Key quotes in
his book quote, they dug down to the third layer
of underground springs and poured in bronze to make the

(12:53):
outer coffin replicas of palaces, scenic towers, and the hundred officials,
as well as rare utensils and wondrous objects were brought
to fill the tomb. Craftsmen were ordered to set up
crossbows and arrows rigged so that they would immediately shoot
down anyone attempting to break in. Mercury was used to
fashion imitations of the Hundred Rivers, the Yellow River, and

(13:17):
the Young z and the seas constructed in such a
way that they seemed to flow. Above were representations of
all the heavenly bodies. Below the features of the earth.
Whale oil was used for lamps, which were calculated to
burn for a long time without going out. Amazing. That

(13:38):
is awesome. So first of all, I love the idea
of it being rigged with Indiana Jones style booby traps,
crossbows set up to shoot people who break in. And
it makes me wonder, is this ancient description of the
tomb of chin Chi huong Uh like the thing that
inspired all of the ancient booby traps tropes in our

(13:59):
archaeological interest stories. I know I wanted the same thing
because it's become such a trope in fiction and fantasy,
in dungeons and dragons that you would have, you know,
springloaded booby traps on your tombs. But outside of this,
I can't think of an actual, uh historical or or
alleged historical account of some sort of complex trap like this.

(14:20):
I know they were defensive measures in some of the
Egyptian tombs, but I'm not sure about crossbows. Yeah, I
mean I can think of mimetic traps so that they
will like tell you, hey, don't break in here, because
if you do, whatever insects might eat away your flesh
or something terrible is going to happen to you. You
have some sort of false false chambers, false tombs, uh,

(14:41):
misleading corridors, etcetera. But this is if you break in,
the crossbow will shoot you. Yeah. And maybe just the
idea of the crossbow is enough, right right, Maybe the
real trap there, Maybe it's also a memetic trap there,
it's just the reputation of having springloaded booby traps to
shoot you down. Yeah. And of course some of you
might be thinking, well how long would a spring loaded
cry sboat trap last? You can you can get a

(15:03):
little technical and start wondering, well, what is the what
kind of crossbow would you have to construct to last
the longest? To be viable? The longest is the defensive measure.
But at the same time, if history has shown us anything,
a tomb stands the greatest risk of grave robbing in
the period of time immediately following the internament. Not to

(15:24):
say that modern people don't sometimes come across and and
desecrate and disturb ancient tombs, but most of the time
they were rated long, long before any modern people got there.
The second thing I really love about this description is
the idea of the mercury waterways. So the idea is
that there was this map on the floor of the tomb,

(15:45):
there was a model of China, or at least of
the of the Chain Empire, and that it had rivers
and seas made of liquid mercury. That seems so amazing
and so impossible, but liquid mercury may actually have been
used on occasion in the ancient world for ritual or
decorative purposes like this. And I want to come back

(16:05):
to this idea later in the episode when we talk
about some of the chemical and physical analyzes of the tomb.
And so fabulous was this tomb that the Chin didn't
even mention. The army of terra Cotta warriors, the thing
that has captured the imaginations of not only the Chinese,
but but everyone in the world since these figures were
unearthed in the nineteen seventies. Yeah, totally, and we're gonna

(16:28):
get into that unearthing a little bit as well as
I think the most amazing fact in all of this,
and that is that we know where the actual tomb is.
It has been located, and it has not been breached.
It's difficult for me to believe that a mystery this
thrilling remains undiscovered in the modern world, and that maybe

(16:49):
we will decide not to disturb it and not to
find out the answers. Yes, it's it's like this weird
kind of zen exercise for for archaeologists and just for
the world in general. Here is this secret place that
has stood undisturbed for for millennia, and uh, and we're
not going to disturb it yet because we are not

(17:09):
ready to do it. We are not capable, we're not
worthy to to open it up yet. And we'll get
into the reasons and the arguments around that. Uh, you
know later on in the episode. All Right, I think
we should take a quick break and then when we
come back, we will discuss some information about the tomb complex.
Thank alright, we're back. You know, if you want a

(17:32):
good overview of of the terracotta warriors, I do recommend
the How Stuff Works article on the topic that was
actually written by Christen Conger. So I'm going to run
through some of the stats that show up in that
article just to give you a good overview. The number
of years it took to complete uh the and I
put complete in quotation marks because it seems that some

(17:53):
areas were not quite completed, but a good thirty six
years were spent creating this necropolis. That's more than half
of the emperor's life. The number of labors around seven
hundred thousand were required. The size of the necropolis, We're
talking eight hundred twenty thousand square feet or seventy six

(18:15):
thousand square meters, a depth of one feet or thirty meters.
And the estimated number of terra Cotta warriors in the
House to Works article that's cited, it's seven thousand. I
keep seeing estimates of upwards of eight thousand. I think
that is the more recent estimate. And then the number
of weapons forty thousand. Worth pointing out that while the

(18:38):
terra cotta warriors in the in the tomb complex were
made of clay. They were armed with real weapons. That's right,
real weapons. So these are fake warriors armed to the
teeth with deadly, state of the art bronze killing implements.
And that include swords, spears, lances, axes, and crossbows, crossbows

(18:59):
with work king parts like the triggers and catches that
had to be made out of metal and and actually,
so they were arming people who could not fight with
real weapons that could be used to kill. And that's
fascinating to me, Like tens of thousands of bronze arrowheads
ready in these quivers of clay warriors. What does this mean?

(19:21):
Why not fake weapons for the clay soldiers. It is
mind boggling, isn't it, Because again, on one level, you
do you don't want to just dismiss something like this
as well. I guess ancient people did this. This is
just how they treated their their their emperors and their
rulers and their fair h This is a massive investment
of resources. It almost signals to me that whatever role

(19:44):
the emperor believed these terra cotta warriors would play, uh,
you know, if it was a protection role in the
afterlife or something like that, it implies a very literal
kind of thinking about that role. Is not as if
you need these uh, these warriors there for some kind
of symbolic meaning or as a sort of gesture to
the spirit world, you know, like to to get the

(20:05):
magic working. It seems like no, they literally needed weapons
that work and that they could fight with. Yeah. And
it's interesting too to think of it in terms of
the way that the the the necropolis was laid out,
where you had the sort of garrison terracotta troops to
the west, the actual tomb to the east, and then
the west is also the direction in which you had

(20:27):
essentially the perceived enemies of the emperor conquered people's etcetera.
Uh So, in a sense he was he was building
the unreal army to protect his remains from his enemies.
Now I should also point out on the topic of
the the armory, essentially, you know, all those weapons just
sitting there in the tomb, why wouldn't somebody come in

(20:49):
and take advantage of those? Well? They did. Uh. In fact,
in the third century BC, rebel leader Cheang you breached
the outer portions of the necropolis and there he stole weapons,
he smashed soldiers, and he set fires. But the primary
goal here was likely vengeance because use allies had suffered
terrible losses against the Chin forces. But I do want

(21:11):
to stress that this was this was a breaching of
the outer necropolis area and not the tomb itself. Right,
the inner tomb and the pyramid mound in the middle
of the Necropolis apparently remains undisturbed. Now, I was just
reading about research published in in the Journal of Archaeological
Method and Theory that found by analyzing the metal in

(21:34):
all these weapons of the Necropolis, particularly the arrowheads, that
they were not mass produced in a single assembly line process,
but that they were made through what's known as cellular
production or now in the in the modern car sense
of it, toyotasm, where independent and self sufficient teams produced
whole finished products. And and that's that kind of goes

(21:57):
in line with some stuff I've read about how the
terracotta warriors themselves were made, which were that they were,
you know, contracted out to these independently working master craftsmen
who had teams of sculptors and workers also working underneath them.
And then the master craftsmen were responsible to these foremen
who worked for the emperor to show that their work

(22:18):
was of good quality, and they'd have to like sign
their name on it in a secret place in case
it wasn't very good and they had to answer for
their crimes of shoddy warrior design. Interesting toyotasm I had
no idea. And here's one final note. The weight of
a terracotta warrior was generally around three pounds or a hundreds.
It's worth noting that the size of the actual warriors

(22:42):
vary depending upon the status of the individual. So your
foot soldier would be shorter than your general figure. Yeah,
and and a common thing pointed out about these is
that these are not mass produced, just like the other
stuff we were talking about, that it didn't come off
in a sim biline. They all appear to have these

(23:02):
little individual differences. Yeah, they're they are very now Sometimes
that the descriptions of the process that they do say
sort of assembly line or they seem to to reference that,
and certainly they were assembled. They're composed of parts. There
was a sort of methodical approach to this like these,
This was this was a mega project. There wasn't understanding

(23:25):
that we need to create an army of artificial troops.
But they didn't just have one stamp mold to create
each of these warriors. Based on what I've read that
they were apparently made out of clay stacking methods. I
think there might have been molds for like the general
head shape, but then the heads were further refined to
have more individual detail after they were stamped in a mold. Yes, yeah,

(23:48):
I believe so. But this brings us to to the
next question, who who was doing the stamping, Who who
built all of this? Who built the tomb? Well, who
built the warriors is probably a different question than who
did the like tomb construction and stuff, as far as
the tomb goes. I was looking at a study from
two thousands sixteen in Nature Scientific Reports by Ying ma
at All called Tracing the locality of Prisoners and Workers

(24:10):
at the Mausoleum of Chin Chihuong, first Emperor of China.
And so the study finds diverse contingents of workers by
looking at evidence from two different worker burial sites associated
with the mausoleum complex. I don't know if we've mentioned
yet that a lot of the workers appear to be
buried on site with their work. Yes, indeed, and this

(24:30):
is of course something we see in other ancient people's
as well. If you have a large workforce building your
secret tomb, well there's only one way to really make
sure secret, right right. So the two burial sites are
the lee Ye site with with account of a hundred
and forty six bodies and the shan Rens side with
a count of fourteen. So the workers buried at the

(24:52):
lee Ye site appear to be locals, people of the
chain population, whereas the workers buried at the shawn Ren
site appear to be prisoners who were forced to work
on the construction of the mausoleum. And there are differences
because the skeletons at the lee Ye site UH consumed
quote predominantly millet and or domestic animals fed millet, and

(25:13):
they were buried in a much more orderly way, sometimes
with like grave goods such as bronze swords or ceramic pottery. Meanwhile,
the workers at the chan Rene site UH, they appear
to be buried haphazardly in a mass grave. They're all
jumbled together. Some skeletons are still bound in iron shackles
around the legs, and this shows that of course they

(25:34):
were probably prisoners. Evidence shows that the Shanrene workers had
a much more mixed diet than the Lee workers, with
less domestic animal protein and possibly more wild game protein,
which seems to suggest they were you know, hunting to
supplement their diet. And the authors also claim evidence that
the Shanrenne laborers were likely taken from populations in southern China.

(25:57):
To quote from their abstract quote. This path learn of
decreased millet consumption is also characteristic of archaeological sites from
southern China and possible evidence the Shanarn prisoners originated from
this region, possibly the ancient Chew state located in modern
day Hubei Province and parts of Hunan and Anhui Provinces. Further,

(26:18):
this finding is in agreement with historical sources and is
supported by previous ancient DNA evidence that the mausoleum workers
had diverse origins, with many genetically related to southern Chinese groups.
So it looks like prisoners and and freer workers are
being brought together from different sources. Maybe the locals are
more likely to be the freer laborers, and prisoner labor

(26:42):
is brought in from conquered states elsewhere. All right, Well,
let's move on to the discovery or rediscovery of the
terra Cotta warriors, because as we mentioned already, there there
was some vandalism and destruction in the years and immediately
following chinshaih Wong's death, but then we forgot about it.
Then this place was just forgotten for a century upon

(27:05):
century up until nineteen seventy four, because up until then
it was difficult to say how much truth there wasn't
any of this legend, or how much legend there was
in the truth regarding the tomb of China's first sovereign emperor.
But this was the year seventy four that some well
diggers managed to dig down into the chambers of the
terra Cotta warriors, and then just national and international interests

(27:29):
sparks all around it. So, as previously mentioned, this portion
of the tomb showed signs of rating and destruction on
a few different occasions, as early as five years after
the emperor's in tournament. As we mentioned earlier, the tomb
itself is in the west and the pits are in
the east, as if protecting the emperor against his enemies. Right,
it's like an outpost. Almost all of the terra Cotta

(27:52):
warriors are It's like their centuries out there away from
the tomb itself, to prevent people from getting to it.
That's right. Now we have we have these various pits.
We have four main ones. Pit number one, as it's called,
contains the warriors seven thousand or eight thousand strong. You
have archers, you have foot soldiers. Then you have Pit two,

(28:12):
which contains chariots and cavalry. Pit three contains high ranking
officials and a war chariot. Pit four is an empty
area that was perhaps left unfinished. And then you have
various other pits. I've seen a figure of about like
six hundred containing additional mostly non military statues and relics, entertainers, animals.

(28:34):
This includes eleven acrobats and entertainers within an exceedingly high
level of detail, perhaps the earliest example in China of
human sculpture with like a real anatomical degree of realism.
But to stress yet again, though this is part of
the necropolis, This is not the tomb itself. Yeah, and
but at first this was the this was the only

(28:55):
portion that they were able to find. But then archaeologists
pinpointed the act little burial chamber about a kilometer away
from the warrior pits, and as of this recording, it
is still unbreached. Right. It's this giant, ancient pyramid mound
that's now covered in earth. We know there's a chamber
under there, and nobody's gone in. That's right. It's it's

(29:17):
essentially a man made mountain, though it's it's much weathered
by the ages at this point. Uh. But underneath there
you have you have a tomb. It's about the size
of a football field and it has this this double
wall construction. Now, Key who I mentioned earlier, He points
out that human sacrifice was still in fashion for funeral

(29:38):
rights at the time. UH. Consorts and concupines who had
borne no children were expected to join the emperor and death,
and then, as you mentioned, various labors and craftsmen UH
likely joined him in order to protect the tomb secrets.
Yet at the same time, clay effigies were increasingly favored
over live humans for funeral rights because as ultimately they

(30:00):
cost less, they cost less, they last longer, and they
can be mass produced to fill a tomb with numbers
that mere mass slaughter would struggle to equal. Yeah, I've
seen this explained in terms of essentially trying to preserve
the actual workforce of an empire. Yeah, like the soldiers.

(30:22):
Yeah yeah, like we realize you need some military support
in the afterlife. However, we do need to keep the
actual army intact, or the the real empire, the living
empire is going to fail. Then again, don't let this
distract you from what an amazing investment in sacrifice it
is to spend so much time, energy, money making all

(30:42):
of these funerary goods and and and structures. This is
an amazing investment. It is. It is amazing. Uh. I
don't know how how wise ultimately, but an amazing investment.
All Right, we're gonna take another break, and when we
come back, we are going to talk about the actual tomb.
We know about it, what what what our best scientific

(31:03):
tools are able to determine about it? And what's keeping
us from just going in there and seeing for ourselves
than alright, we're back now. Earlier we mentioned the description
of the tomb by the ancient Chinese historians Sima Chen.
So what were some features of Sima Chen's description? Well, uh,

(31:23):
he mentions that they dug down into a layer underground,
that they had a bronze outer coffin, they had replicas
of palaces, scenic towers, the hundred officials, rare utensils, and
wondrous objects that were all brought in to fill the tomb.
And then he talks about the crossbow booby traps that

(31:44):
are set to kill anybody who tries to loot the tomb.
And then he talks about mercury being used to create
this map of the ancient Cheen Empire, the map of
China with the waterways, rivers and seas filled literally with
Qui mercury. Now, we discussed earlier whether or not something

(32:05):
like that would be possible. I think we should get
into more detail about that kind of thing now. Well, surveys, scans,
and probes have established that the great cavity of the
chamber is still intact, so that means it hasn't collapsed
and it hasn't filled with water plus traces of mercury.
Unusually high levels of mercury. Yeah, which could very well

(32:26):
be due to that description or maybe to something else
regarding that mercury I mentioned. I was going to come
back to this. According to Archaeology magazine Report, archaeologists have
known for a while that some ancient meso American tombs
sometimes contain a powdery mineral or uh this or form

(32:46):
of mercury known as cinnabar. But since archaeologist with Mexico's
National Institute of Anthropology and History named Sergio Gomez has
found something even more amazing underneath these meso amery constructures
traces of liquid mercury in a series of chambers buried
underneath the third century feathered Serpent pyramid of Teotihakan. So

(33:12):
like Chin Chi Huong's supposed map of Chinese rivers, Gomez
thinks that the liquid mercury in the ancient chambers under
too Tiwakan was supposed to form a sort of map,
a quote, representation of the geography of the underworld, the
mythological realm where the dead reside. This silvery liquid was

(33:33):
probably used to depict lakes and rivers. Really interesting parallel there.
Except the idea here is that it would have been
not of a real geography, but an imagined one, and
liquid mercury would seem like the perfect waters for such
for such rivers, you know, because there is something inherently
magic seeming about liquid mercury. Oh yeah, yeah, I've got

(33:55):
to imagine somewhere out there, some really rich nerd has
a secret map of Middle Earth where all of the
water as liquid mercury. This is like a Facebook executive
in their secret hidden garage room. Yeah. And oh, you know,
I should point out to that this would have been
important fortuncially long because he his his birth year was
associated with water, and he always wore black, I've read

(34:19):
because that was the the the color associated with water. Interesting. Now,
in the case of the Mesoamerican map, I wonder if
if this is true, if gomez Is interpretation is correct,
I would have naturally thought, okay, maybe the quicksilver, the
liquid mercury is supposed to represent the kind of magical

(34:39):
water of another of another dimension. But it just as
you point out, I mean, it does very naturally kind
of simulate the idea of flowing. It's something that looks
like it's moving in a very still state even and
so Gomez has found lots of artifacts in these underground
chambers since two thousand three. The author of the Archaeology

(35:00):
magazine piece notes that the humidity of these underground chambers
might have helped to maintain the liquid properties of the mercury,
as well as preserving some of the contents of the
buried rooms like plant seeds and maybe even human skin.
But there's another article I want to talk about by
the science writer Philip Ball. He wrote this interesting piece
in Chemistry World in January called Flowing Rivers of Mercury,

(35:24):
which investigated this claim that the burial chamber of chin
Chi Huong contained. This map of known China at the
time with the rivers and lakes of mercury. So here
are a few things that Ball says in his article.
He points out, as you mentioned earlier, Robert, that in
the nineteen eighties Chinese researchers they did this soil testing right,
They tested the soil of the burial mound above the

(35:44):
unopened tomb to see how much mercury it had in it,
and the mercury distribution in the soil was very uneven.
So first of all, above the tomb there is as
you said, way more mercury than the surrounding soil. The
surrounding soil had an average of a about thirty parts
per billion of mercury. Meanwhile, quote the average above the

(36:05):
chamber was two hundred and fifty parts per billion, and
in some places rose to fifteen hundred parts per billion.
So that's a very significant difference. Uh And there was
another survey in two thousand three by by a different
team than the one from the nineteen eighties that found
the same thing. You'd have very high concentrations of mercury
both in the soil and in the vapors between the

(36:27):
grains of soil above the tomb. That's totally uncharacteristic of
the general soil in the area. But the different levels
of mercury at different parts of the tomb have led
some to hypothesize that it reflects an underlying arrangement of
mercury underneath, which could indicate a map. So the article
by Ball sites the archaeologist Chingbo Dwan of Northwest University

(36:51):
and Sean So. Dwan says, quote, there is no unusual
amount of mercury in the northwest corner of the tomb,
while the mercury level is highest in the northeast and
second highest in the south. And Ball points out that
the mercury hot spots on this map very roughly matched
the locations of the two great rivers of China, the
Yellow and the Young Sea, as they would have been

(37:13):
mapped with respect to shan Yang, the ancient Cheen capital city,
so Dwan claims that the distribution of the mercury soil
concentration over the tomb sort of matches the location of
actual waterways in the Chin Empire. But then on the
other hand, Yinglan Jiang, an archaeologist at the shan Shi
History Museum in Sean, he kind of doubts this, and

(37:35):
he tells Ball quote, the mercury will have volatilized into
nearby soils during this long time, so it would be
impossible to show up detailed information that we can connect
with particular rivers or lakes. And I think that kind
of makes sense, right, if you're talking about a chamber
filled with liquid mercury two thousand years ago, seems like
it would be kind of odd that it would really

(37:57):
be projecting a very like tight le detailed pattern on
the soil above it. It seems like you'd get a
lot of mixing, right, But since we haven't opened the tomb,
we don't know. This is still amru more more on that,
Remember how we mentioned that Chin chi Huang long for immortality.
We talked earlier about how he charged his alchemists and

(38:19):
wizards with coming up with an elixir of eternal youth
that would stave off death for him, and what could
stave off death in ancient China. Well, we already mentioned
the idea of mercury. One Chinese legend tells of this
man named Huangan who was able to live for ten
thousand years by eating cinnabar. Yes, cinnabar, we meant, not
sent a bun. Though though I've heard, I've heard you

(38:41):
can live for ten thousand years on an exclusive diet
of cinnabon, I'm not sure if that actually adds up.
Will preserve your colon for ten thousand years? Uh? Yeah,
Cinnabar is not something you want to eat. It is
mercury sulfide. Perhaps for this reason that the reason of
this this legend, Chin Chihuang was said to drink wine
and honey spiked with cinnabar, which ironically, as we said earlier,

(39:05):
probably helped bring him to an early grave and it
could have had a severe impact on his mental health. Um.
You look at some of the the symptoms of mercury
poisoning and you get things like mood swings, mental disturbances,
chasing sea monsters with the crossbow potentially yeah, or I
believe sometimes there it's reported that one of the symptoms
is a like a reclusive element and there, and we

(39:27):
already touched on him sort of removing himself from public
side at one point, probably out of fear of assassination. Uh. Now,
Chin Chi Huang was by far not the I don't
know if by far as the right modifier there. He
was definitely not the only figure in history to poison
himself with mercury, not not by a long shot. In fact,
I feel like we could come back and do an

(39:49):
entire episode just on the historical use of mercury and
the many cases of mercury poisoning that result. I mean,
in some cases due to consumption of mercury, but other
times just to just due to the use of mercury
and improper ventilation in areas where you're crafting things with it. Well,
I'm getting right into that now. So later in Chinese history,

(40:11):
for example, in the Song dynasty of the tent through
thirteenth centuries, bodies were sometimes soaked in mercury to prevent
them from rotting. This would be a preservation practice for
funeral services, but there's no apparent evidence of mercury being
used as a funeral preservative as early as Chin chi
Huong's tomb was built, so the researchers don't think that

(40:31):
has happened here. One more thing about the toxicity of mercury.
It was no easy or safe thing to get a
hold of liquid mercury in the ancient world, even though
they could do it. They could make liquid mercury, but
it wasn't a safe thing to do so. In the
ancient world, all liquid mercury was made from cinnabar, that is,
as we've said, mercury sulfide, and you'd extract the mercury

(40:54):
from it by roasting it in a hot oven with
access to air. This means the sulfur in the comp
dount is released and forms sulfur dioxide in the air,
and the pure mercury boils off as a vapor that
can be captured and condensed. Don't try this at home,
please don't do it. Ball rights that since mercury boils
at three fifty seven degrees celsius, chain era or kilns

(41:16):
could have easily reached the temperature to process in a
bar into mercury. But there's this big downside if you're
trying to do this in an unsealed container where the
workers are exposed to the fumes, the workers are going
to suffer a lot of harm. This is dangerous, nasty,
harmful work. And it wasn't until later in the Han
period that the chambers were closed and that the dangers

(41:38):
of mercury fumes were actually well understood. But all of
this danger from the mercury fumes does make me think
about the alleged booby traps in the tomb. The crossbows
set to fire automatically at looters and de filers. Could
toxic liquid mercury in a tomb also function as a
kind of chemical booby trap? I mean, it makes sense, right,

(42:01):
because even if there was a certain amount of consumption
of mercury that was taken as as a medicinal element,
they would have still been able to realize that many
medicinal elements, uh if taken in excess, can be potent poisons.
So Ball thinks it's unlikely that the mercury was a
deliberate design choice as a booby trap, because, as he says,

(42:22):
the toxicity of mercury fumes was not really well understood
until the Han period. But then again, you still have
to wonder, and as a side question, I think if
you were an ancient ruler and you wanted to lay
chemical booby traps in your tomb to sicken or kill
people who tried to lute it. What would be the
best chemical available to ancient people's to do this? What

(42:44):
what would work the best? What would last the longest,
maintain its potency or volatility over the years, be the
most bang for your buck for poisoning your tomb. That's
a great question because it seems like a number of
the the naturally occurring botanicalisms that they would know how
these would be things that you would you would probably

(43:05):
want to burn them perhaps, or or somehow create a
paste and spirit in the right place. Um, but these
are more subtle techniques than what we're talking here, Like
you wouldn't it would be difficult, I would think, to
create just an atmosphere of death in the room and
you would enable someone to walk in and just perish. Yeah,

(43:25):
it'd be interested. Here's one option. What if it's so
you've got a sealed off tomb and maybe you leave
something in there that maintains its potency because it will
stay basically dormant until it gets exposed to fresh air
from somebody opening the tomb up. Well, then that that
is a case where I could see the mercury becoming
a prime option. Yeah, maybe, I don't know. Let's see,

(43:47):
all you chemistry nerds out there, please let us know
what is the best way to chemically booby trap an
ancient tune. One last question about the liquid mercury. How
much liquid mercury could conceive able have been put in
the tomb? If you want to go to maximum allowable estimates? Well,
that Chinese archaeologist that Ball quotes Dwine, he put together

(44:09):
an estimate about of the maximum amount of mercury that
could have been produced by the refining process available at
the time during the Chain era, and his estimate is
about a hundred tons or about seven cubic meters or
seven thousand liters, which is about eighteen hundred and fifty gallons.

(44:29):
Is that a lot or a little? I don't know.
So I looked at I tried to I was like,
how can we map this to volumes? You can picture?
I tried to phrase it in terms of hot tubs.
So I looked up hot tubs. The first hot tub
I found in the Google search was built as a
seven person hot tub. It looks like a normal hot
tub and its water capacity is three d and eighty

(44:50):
gallons or fourteen hundred and fifty liters. That's roughly one
fifth of the mercury estimate. So if you're trying to
picture this ancient cheen maximum mercury processing pacity, think of
a little less than five hot tubs full of liquid mercury.
Of course, now I can't help it, imagine five actual
hot tubs of liquid mercury within this tomb, you know,

(45:11):
because where else would you want to hang out as
uh the undead ghost of an ancient emperor hot tub
suicide machine. Yeah. Uh, So I come back to the question,
is that a lot or a little? I guess that
depends on what you're trying to do with it. Like
if you're trying to fill the waterways of a football
field sized map of China, that might not be as

(45:33):
much as you'd want. But at the same time, five
hot tubs full of mercury that sounds like at least
enough to have some fun with. Yeah, I mean it's
more mercury than because I think back to being a kid.
My dad was a dentist and he would occasionally show
me a beat of mercury because it was. It was
used in amalgam fillings and it was, you know, remarkable
and magical to look at. But just to imagine like

(45:54):
even just a hot tub's worth of that that stuff,
it it boggles them mind. Disclaimer again, especially for our
younger listeners, we are not recommending you play around with
toxic liquid mercury. It can came out at all, yes,
but ultimately we're probably just aren't going to know exactly
what the deal with the mercury, what the deal with
the mercury with the tomb is unless we go in there.

(46:18):
But are we going to go in there? That's that's right.
I mean. Researchers have been carrying out remote sensing scans. Uh.
This includes panchromatic remote sensing, color and for red remote sensing,
and hyper spectral remote sensing, and they've been doing this
since around two thousand and two, five years after they started.
Researchers concluded that a a thirty meter high building is

(46:38):
buried in the vast mausoleum. The building, buried above the
main tomb, had four surrounding steer like walls with nine
steps each, and according to National Geographic and Archaeologists working
on the site told the Chinese press that the chamber,
this chamber above the tomb may have been built for
the soul of the emperor. Interesting, So let's get into

(47:00):
the basic case for excavation and the case against, because
that's where we often wind up. On one hand, you're like,
get in there. I want the mystery solved. Yeah. And
then you might think we'll just leave it alone too,
because it's a tomb, right, Uh, not that humans have
ever been shy about disturbing an ancient tomb. Because we
were talking about this a little off off, Mike. I

(47:22):
can't think of another grave site, and I'm talking anything
from a peasant to an emperor that we know of
that has not been disturbed it's anywhere near this old
Like this is an anomaly. Yeah, I can't think of one. Yeah,
I might be missing something. It's a difficult thing to
research because whenever you do various searches for um unexposed

(47:43):
tombs or undisturbed tombs, generally that is a story about
the disturbance of said tomb. Like we finally got it. Yes,
you are correct about that, but I mean it's funny
how like you do want to understand more, you want
to learn about what's in the tomb and everything. But
you have to recognized that there is even just from
a scientific standpoint of destructive element to unearthing. If you

(48:06):
look at the terra Cotta warriors themselves, if you've seen them,
they're not very colorful, right, They're just clay figures. They
all have this kind of grayish brown look to them, right,
But the terracotta warriors were originally painted. Yeah, they were
hand painted with black hair, green um and white outfits,
pink faces, black or brown eyes, and some of this

(48:29):
was lost due to fire or ransacking. But the initial
thousand and eighties seven soldiers unearthed, they were painted. They
were painted when they were unearthed, but not for long
after that. That's right. Exposure to air caused the paint
to turn an ox oxidized gray, and on top of that,
the shift in environmental conditions brought in moisture and mold,

(48:50):
and then when they wiped off the mold, the surface
dried out, causing the paint to curl and fall off. Right.
So even this act of unearthing these things to preserve
them so that the modern world can enjoy the beauty
of the terra Cotta warriors, it destroys them in the process,
not fully destroys them, but it destroys some aspect of
what they're like. And I don't know what the answer

(49:10):
to that is. Obviously, you've got this separate question of
you know, respecting the wishes of the ancients, and you know,
how much should we pay attention to their desire not
to be unearthed. But then also just in the scientific spirit,
if by unearthing a thing we know we're going to
cause damage to it, are we hurting our own ability
to understand it better in the future. Indeed, so many

(49:33):
of the just the concerns of archaeology itself are are
summed up with this site. So some of the cases
for excavation here just broadly are you can protect the
side against grave robbers, which we're a threat once and
could conceivably be a threat again. So maybe we should
get in there and protect the stuff before other people,

(49:53):
uh finally get fed up and go in there instead. Okay,
all right, So that's one idea. Another is you want
to protect the site against geologic threats such as seismic activity.
Granted it's held up so far, but who knows what
the future will bring? Right there? Could be an earthquake,
could collapse, could start leaking and fill with water. Yeah,
there could be some effects from from climate change that

(50:15):
might impact the site. Because one of the things to
keep in mind is we're talking about preserving the relics
that are in there. Well, they are preserved now, it's
just to what extent cannet preservation hold based on you know,
bc E technology. And then finally, of course we would
want to get in there to study and preserve important
historical artifacts because we don't know what's in there. We

(50:39):
don't all we have our our ancient texts and uh
and and and rough scans to go by. To really
answer these questions, we would have to enter it. And
as we've said, it's such a thrilling mystery. Yeah. But
then again, of course we should acknowledge the case against
going in uh that now we've mentioned all of the
damage that could be caused, but we should take a

(51:00):
minute to linger on the idea of respect for the dead, right, Yeah,
I mean, sure he was a tyrant, but he was
an important tyrant. And and then there is a Chinese
stress on ancestors in respect for the ancestors, so I
think that might reasonably be playing a role as well.
Then again, do we have an inconsistent ethic on this
kind of thing because we've unearthed to the mass graves

(51:21):
of workers who works, you know, archaeologists have dug their
bodies up, and they've you know, they dig up all
other kinds of bodies. Are we making an exception in
this case because this is a rich and powerful and
historically significant person as opposed to a poor and not
especially historically significant, at least not individually person. Yeah, I

(51:46):
think I think you end up having some you know,
some complex opinions interploying with each other and trying to
figure out, you know, you know, why we're holding off.
But but more important than this idea of respect for
the dead or respect for an ancient ruler, just the
the hard scientific facts of disturbing the tomb. And that is,
for one hand, if we excavate there, it might destroy

(52:07):
the mausoleum itself. But then also we don't necessarily have
the right plans or the right technology in place to
protect the contents of this hermetically sealed tomb. Uh. And
we talked about the loss of the terra Cotta warriors paint. UH. Essentially,
we are not ready it's it's it's it's it's like

(52:27):
we could we could get there. Yes, you can travel
to the moon, but then can you breathe when you
get there? Can you return from the moon. It's that
sort of thing. We can, we can breach the tomb,
But if we're going to destroy that's not the hard part. Yeah,
that's that's not the hard part. But can we do
so in a way that can actually protect the contents? Well,
let's ask that, not rhetorically but practically. Does anybody have
a plan? Does anybody have a contingency for Okay, let's

(52:50):
say we decide to actually open up this tomb, what
would we do to the absolute best of our ability
to avoid causing damage to it and preserve all of
its everything that it can tell us about the past. Well,
my understanding is that there's a there's continuing work in
this area, with various experts coming up with plans and
proposals h for how uh the tomb might be explored.

(53:14):
A two thousand thirteen study from the American Chemical Society
presented some ground for work for what should be done
with quote immovable historic relics displayed in large open spaces
like this. Basically you have to recreate the environmental conditions
of the unexposed tomb, similar in ways to how some

(53:36):
recently discovered cave habitats, like natural cave habitats with bats
and animals in a certain moisture level to them, the
way we protect those with air locks rather than just
simply open them up and expose the cave environment to
the outside. So that this particular study said you would
need things like air curtains that blow across the space
to separate the environment from the outside environment and also

(53:59):
keep heat and pollution away from the pits. You'd also
need a layer of cool air in the pits themselves
to help a form a blanket of stagnant air around
the relics. So you get into this this interesting situation
where the world of the tomb is kind of an
alien environment, it's kind of a it's kind of a

(54:20):
lifeless environment, and you have to you have to maintain
that necrotic environment if you're going to explore it. So
you can end up with this it's like visiting another world, truly,
in almost in a way that was perhaps intended. This
is the world of the grave, this is the this
is the underworld, and you have to think twice about

(54:42):
simply walking into it, lest the u the creation itself vanished.
Yet a very on the theme you were talking about
at the beginning, the idea of the the ancient rulers
tomb as a spaceship to the afterlife versus a recreation
of the conditions of the afterlife. This sort of like
a third option, right, which is a literal creation of

(55:04):
the world of the dead. Yeah, disturb it at your
apparel because they are also crossbows down there and may
shoot you in the face. What's your over under on
the fact that the crossbows will actually shoot at people
who go in. I I find it incredibly unlikely, if
not impossible, that there would be live crossbow traps down there.
I wonder, what's the longest that a crossbow trap would

(55:26):
really remain like a you know, I have the have
the tension still in the string? I know, because even
if you want with a metal string, right, that would
only if you went with like a wire situation, that
would only last so long. Yeah, I don't know. I
don't know how long, but it seems like over time
the tension would relax or something. Well, maybe one day
we'll have the necessary technology to find out. I would
personally really mark out of if the first like robotic

(55:50):
probe that ventures into the tomb is shot by an
ancient crossbow, that would just be that would that would
really make my day a great day for science. Yes. Hey,
So in addition to our regular episode today, we thought
we would bring you all a special treat, which is
we were going to have a couple of our excellent

(56:11):
stuff media podcast host colleagues on our friends Annie and
Lauren from the podcast food Stuff. Annie and Lauren say
hi and introduce yourselves. Hello. I am Annie and I'm Lauren.
And yeah, we have a podcast called food Stuff that's
about the science and history and culture of food and
drink and etcetera. Yes, and wait, what's the etcetera? Things

(56:32):
that you eat that aren't food or drink. We just
did an episode about artificial flavors, so spot on. Yeah, right,
We've talked about some weird diets, including eating cotton balls,
so that's not really edible opinion. But people do that. Yeah,
people have done that. We it's not one of the
ones that we would recommend. Don't don't eat things that

(56:53):
aren't food. This sounds like like a Jenna diet from
dirty rock quickly because I remember was eating paper, but
she could eat as much as she wants. What's that
episode called that is Our Fad Diet Part two episode?
Because there were so many there were so many historical
fad diets. These people have been doing these ridiculous things

(57:13):
for hundreds and hundreds of years. Well, the Conqueror, Yeah,
what wast not cotton balls? No, his was basically liquor diet.
As much whiskey it should you as you would like,
and he did lose the weight, but he died falling
off his cords, possibly because he was drunk. Yeah. I

(57:35):
thought you were going to say, like he could eat
as many swords as he wants. It's a swords follower. Maybe. Yeah.
And uh, Robert and Joe, you two were on our
recent Lunar New Year episode. Oh yeah, yes, and we
was first guest segment. It's awesome. Yeah, yeah, thank you.
Yeah yeah. A little cross promotional magic here hopefully, but

(57:56):
but yeah, we're heading into Lunar New Year. What what
can listeners expect from your episode on Lunar New Year
food traditions? Uh, lots of lots of puns. Yeah, apparently
all all of the foods that are connected with the
lunar New Year are just wonderful puns. Oh, I remember

(58:16):
something about this, and when we talked about the food
tradition of the rice cake pudding, right, the glute glutenous
rice cake, that it had something to do with the
idea of advancement or achievement. It was like a play
on words. Yes, um, I believe it means higher, like
ascending higher. It sounds like a word that means that. Yes.

(58:37):
So we love puns and food stuff. It was right
up where ally all these edible food puns. Now that
the use of hominems here, this reminds me when I
was in China. I can't remember if Guangzhou or Ning,
but I went to a park and they had all
of these sculptures, each one having to deal with a
different hominem. Yeah. So it's it's very culturally entrenched. Uh,

(58:58):
this this playful use of war. Oh yeah, right. One
of my favorites is um fish. The word for fish
sounds similar to the word for prosperous, and so the
fish has to be positioned in a certain way and
you can't eat all of the fish because you want
to have some left over. Yeah, you want to continue
that prosperity. So it's abundance and prosperity. It's such a

(59:20):
popular item for the New Year's Day meal that there's
a greeting maybe eat fish every year. Huh. Yeah, you know.
It reminds me of a of a Chinese Christmas tradition
that is popped up that I was that that I
learned about just in the past few months, and that
is that the Chinese word for Christmas Eve sounds like

(59:41):
the Chinese word for apple, and therefore people have gotten
in the practice of giving apples on Christmas Eves, sometimes
with a little paper Santa Claus face on the front.
That is so delightful, I know, Oh my goodness. Yeah, yeah,
there's a bunch of them, like like a good business
is apparently a homonym for oysters, so you might eat oysters.
The word for shrimp sounds a lot like the word

(01:00:02):
for laughter, so you might eat shrimp. Right. And then
you can change whole whole phrases together. My one of
my favorite ones was if you if you have a
dish with dates, peanuts, dried longans, and lotus seeds. Uh,
it kind of forms the phrase too soon realize the
birth of noble suns. Wha, Yeah, there's unlucky foods for sure.

(01:00:23):
In all New Year's traditions, there's stuff that you should
eat and some stuff that you shouldn't eat. Yeah, And
we did an episode on Western New year traditions and
our tradition lobster is terrible. Look because they like go backwards. Yeah,
they crawl willy nilly. They want to You want to
eat pigs because they root forward? Right, But a lunar
New Year's tradition, lobster is lucky and chicken chicken is

(01:00:46):
another thing. The crabs move sideways. Where do they stand
in all of this? Maybe they're neutral. Yeah, crabs are
strong negotiators. I've heard that about crabs. They get those
claws out. Okay, I'll take your seriously, crab. You also
might eat um long noodles for long life long nice.

(01:01:11):
That is a long noodle. Now. So I'm thinking about
the traditions I'm familiar with, and like American culture of
eating black eyed peas and collared greens and pork products
on New Year's. Uh, I wonder was that inspired by
eating certain foods in Chinese New Year's or is this
the thing? Lots of cultures do. It seems like all

(01:01:32):
over the world people have these kind of lucky foods
in it. I think that probably a lot of the
traditions come from when things are harvested for for for example,
with with pigs, pigs are usually slaughtered um right before
like like like right in the dead of winter. So
so you've got this fresh pork that if you you know,

(01:01:53):
so it's lucky. Yeah, there are a lot of fun ones. Um. Apparently,
single women will write their number on oranges because oranges
are also seen as lucky and throw them in the
river and hope that love is forthcoming. Excellent finds it

(01:02:15):
finds its way to their best possible match. Hello, I
hope you're interested in catfish because I am one. How
did you get this number? Catfishing me? There's a lot
of jokes that could be made there. Oh no, no,
I meant the river. I was being too literal. I'm sorry.
No no, no, I just took it direct works on
multiple level, it does, it does, all right? Well, hey,

(01:02:37):
well thanks for coming on the show here and chatting
a little bit about lunar New Year traditions. Let everybody
know that where they can find this episode of food
stuff and where they can find future episodes of food Stuff.
Oh goodness, well, you can download our show just any
anywhere that you listen to your podcasts. We also have
a slightly awkward you you are l for for y'all
at shows dot how Stuff works dot com slash food Stuff,

(01:02:59):
or you can find us on social media where just
just google food Stuff will pop right up. Yeah, you're fine,
Google people. Yeah. Probably, wherever you can find stuff to
blow your mind, you can find and stuff. We exist
in the same family. Now I've got to ask you. Obviously,
people should go look up your Lunar New Year episode,
and if they're interested in Chinese New Year and all
those traditions, they'll get that. But do you have a

(01:03:20):
couple of favorite episodes to recommend? If people want to
see you at your best, they've got one shot at
food Stuff. Which episode do they go to? Oh? Heck uh,
we we just we just recorded one on Ketchup that
I'm very fond of. Goes with everything. Oh doesn't it?
Well a little? It does not go on hot dogs. No,

(01:03:42):
that's true. Catch up on hot dogs is the devil's work.
But Ketchup goes so well on corn dogs. What is
it what is the difference. Sausages go with mustard, Sausages
do not go with ketchup. In my opinion, I'm a
very peaceful person. I never have violent thoughts or impulses,
but when I see people putting ketchup on a hot dog,
I want to kick them, like it's just wrong. But

(01:04:06):
super bowl like crop pot weenies, that's basically catch up
weenies and grape jelly. Right, Yeah, I don't go for
crop into it. That's a sauce though, that's at that
point it's not a condiment. It's a sauce, and okay,
I'll give that special considerations. Upgraded. Proper accompaniments to sausages
and hot dogs would be sauer kraut, would be mustard

(01:04:28):
in its many forms, could even be things like raw
onions or pickles. Pickle relish, not ketchup. What do you
stand on mayonnaise? I stand on that being kind of gross,
but maybe in an acceptable way. If nobody's looking and
he hates mayonnaise, I have four foods I don't like,
and that is one mayonnaise. What are two of the

(01:04:50):
other three? But not the third? So they can go
to your show to find out Dr Pepper is number
one rope like all that Prune Next Act or whatever
it is. I love dr I know, but people seem
to love it if I like, somebody played a trick
on me once where it she switched my drink with
Dr Pepper and I did immediate spittake everywhere. Really, so

(01:05:12):
it's for real serious and um water Cress, Watercress? What's
wrong with water Where would I liked it? I think
it's just it's not supposed to stand on its own though.
It's just well like if it's in a sand if
it's on a sandwich, I will notice and I'll be like, Nope,
I can't do this. It's very sad. I want to
like water Criss, but the other one we have done
an episode on it, so yeah, you'll have to check

(01:05:34):
it out. Maybe you're just wired differently on that because
I feel like water Cress should just fade into the background.
It's like a bit player in a scene. They shouldn't
draw your attention too much. But if it does, then yeah,
I can see where that could be a problem. You know,
what is it? It's just crunchy, tastes a little bit
like grass, a little bit a little bit peppery, sort
of To me, it tastes like soap, like very strongly

(01:05:56):
of so well maybe it's kind of like the cilantro,
like an act well genetic thing that's making you go
and relevant to UMT have to blow your mind audience.
I will say we do have an episode on garlic
as an entire vampire segment, and we have an episode
on tomatoes that has um mentions of werewolves. Excellent. So

(01:06:19):
those are two of my favorites. And personally I love
Pineapple episode. Oh yeah, it's good. It's a little bit depressing,
but I think that most of our great episodes are
a little bit depressing. Right, food is terrible imperialism, right, yeah,
we'll go listen to food stuff learn a little bit,
get depressed, laugh, love, learn, cry, eat, eat yeah, drink yeah,

(01:06:45):
thank you, Thank you so much for having us, Thanks
so much for coming on all right, so that you
have it, uh fun just mind blowing topic that ties
in nicely to our celebration of Chinese New Year. If
you would like to learn more about Stuff to Boil
your Mind, it's floor past episodes. Be sure to visit
Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where we
find all the old episodes as well as blog post, videos,

(01:07:07):
and links out to our various social media accounts. Thanks
as always to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and
Tory Harrison. And if you want to get in touch
with us to let us know feedback on this episode
or any other, to let us know topics you'd like
us to do in the future, or just to say hi,
you can email us at blow the Mind at how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands

(01:07:37):
of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com