How the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World Work

On July 7, 2007, the new seven wonders of the world were chosen by more than 100 million voters. But whatever happened to the original seven? Take a look at our HowStuffWorks article, 'How the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World Work,' to learn more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined today as always by trustee
staff writer Josh Curious like a cat Clark. Okay, how

(00:21):
are you your favorite moniker? You know, Candice, I was
just just under one year old the first time the
world almost ended. You want to hear about that. Sure,
So this guy named Marcus Garvey, who was a Jamaican
civil rights leader, entrepreneur and all this, who eventually became
a basically a prophet to Rastafarians, UH famously predicted that

(00:44):
when two sevens clash, chaos is going to ensue, right,
So everybody's kind of thinking about this, listening to reggae
hanging out right, And July seven, nineteen seventy seven, rolls around,
and everybody in Jamaica for freaks. Well hold the phone short,
two sets of seven it is, which is why they
were really really freaked. Yeah, it could have happened anytime

(01:06):
in nineteen seventy seven, I think most people thought. But
when July seventh rolled around, it was like, Yeah, Kingston
literally shut down. No one was out in the street.
Everybody was just kind of hanging back, letting the day pass.
See what happened. Um, nothing did happen, And even if
it had, I wouldn't have been aware because, like I said,
I was under one. But the next time some sevens

(01:27):
rolled around, I was much more aware, and that wasn't
much happier. Definitely was. But then people thought seven seven
O seven was was a really lucky number. Well, yeah,
it's like it's like hitting the jackpot as far as
dates go. So how do we celebrate. Well, I'll tell you.
Even Mongoria and Tony Parker got married and they're the
best reception. It was wonderful. I did. I did? That

(01:47):
was me and then then I still cha Anyway, Uh,
something else really monumental happened and that was that. The
New Seven Wonders Foundation announced the new seven Wonders of
the World. Yeah, which which are pretty good. Um. I
don't know if news the best word for him. I
know that's not yours, but the the the wonders of

(02:07):
the world that are on this list are actually pretty old,
like Machu Picchu in Peru, Statue of Christ Redeemer in Brazil. Yeah,
the one over Rio saying hey, hey, I'm looking out
for you guys, check me out. I'm up here. Um
cheetz Asa in Mexico. There you go, a great well
of China, the call seem at Rome and the taj Mahal.

(02:27):
There you go. I think that's seven, isn't it. I
don't know. It sounds like seven to me. Um, But
those are so they're all pretty old, but they're still
around and they are definitely wondrous. Yeah, and the list
is new. And if seven, seven or seven with a
bad day for anyone, it probably was Egypt. And Egypt's
Prime Minister even sort of you know, made a public
announcement before the new Seven Wonders Foundation even collected they

(02:52):
I think almost one hundred million votes cast for the
new list via telephone and internet. He said, essentially, don't
forget about Ufu. And the Great Pyramid of Coufu was
the greatest of the great pyramids. It's by far the largest. Um.
I'm still holding out for you Egypt. It's still the
original seven wonder on in my buck. But um, not

(03:12):
only is it still standing, it's the only one of
the original seven Wonders of the Ancient world still standing.
And furthermore, on that original list, it was the oldest
by far, by several hundred years, right, Yeah, and we're
talking about swirling sands and dust winds and blazing heat
in Egypt, and it has stood the test of time,

(03:33):
and yet it's not on the new list, it's a
runner up. Well, um, do you want to talk about
the ancient the ancient list? The original list that that
that Cufu was rightly on. Yeah, that we had Cufu.
We had the Mausoleum of Halicarnassis. You love that one,
don't you. I just like saying it, the Colossus of
Rhodes in the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Yeah, we had the

(03:56):
statue of Zeus and the Temple of Artemis at a Fesis,
And that's there's one more hanging gardens of Babylon, which actually,
ironically I heard might not have actually existed. Is that
factor fiction? You know? Anything I do? This is sort
of a tough question to answer because opposing camps of

(04:16):
scholars hold different points of view about it. And uh,
let me try to debunk this as straightforwardly as I can. First,
of all, gardens organic matter, it would have decomposed even
if they existed. So even if somewhere there's a pile
of rubble, which actually there is that some people reputedly
claim is the ruins of the hanging Guardens of Babylon.

(04:37):
We wouldn't have evidence of the gardens because the plants
and flowers would have long withered. Yeah. Well, the other
thing is the people who actually compose this list of
ancient wonders. We're not sure who the author really is. Yeah,
there's there's three guys who are in the running, Calimachus,
uh Philo, and Herodotus. And what all three were his

(04:59):
still Koreans, travel writers. What were they? Yeah, that's right,
they had you know, they had day jobs to some
of them, I think we're we're military men or welders.
But essentially they went around their corner of the world,
which stretched, you know, sort of from the Middle East
to Egypt to Turkey to Greece. And these wonders were
called the amatta, which translates as things to be seen,

(05:24):
must see monuments. And the funny thing about the hanging
Gardens of Babylon is that there are no records anywhere
that it really existed outside of this list. And the
man who is supposed to have built them, as Nebuchadnezzar,
and supposedly, as the legend goes, he built them for
his wife, Amatists, who was a princess from Iran, and
she grew up near the Caspian Sea, so she was

(05:47):
used to seeing a lot of green when she looked
at her window. Not in not not where Nebuch, No,
not in Iraq. That would have been a pretty dry region.
He didn't want her to feel homesick, so he built
the gardens. But here's where that part of the legend
gets tricky. Nobucad knows. It was a pretty proud man,
to say the least, and he recorded all of his
accomplishments and an ancient form of record keeping called cuneiform.

(06:10):
And there's no mention anywhere in his records about the palace. Yeah,
which seems a little fishy. Yeah, So other scholars say
perhaps it was a ruler from Ninevah or Assyria who
built them. But here's another part that makes the hanging
gardens battle on so unbelievable, and that is, how on
earth would you have watered gardens that hung as high
as some people say five stories into the air and

(06:33):
the dry rock desert. Yeah, because I mean you'd think,
well you could they just have rain do it right,
But apparently not, because as you said, it's desert, it's desert.
So some scholars proposed that there was an irrigation system,
pretty sophisticated, built by drawing water from the Euphrates River
and essentially piping it into a giant holding tank, and
then something called I should diff which in my mind

(06:56):
I imagine looks like sort of a hand cranked water
wheel would have lifted the water water to the different strata.
That's what I'm thinking in my head. Um it would
have looked like that's how it could have worked. And
today there's a new sort of innovative gardening in place
called hydroponics, and this is being used around the world

(07:16):
in different places. Disney's Epcot Center actually is one of
the foremost purveyors of hydroponic gardens. It's not wild, but
they can do amazing things like take a seed and
have it grow into a giant head of lettuce within
four weeks. And it doesn't use soil, right, No, no
soil at all, just a very nutrient rich solution and

(07:36):
they grow in the air like the gardens would have.
And so this is a great solution for gardening and
cities are in very hot climates. So is there evidence
that the ancients were aware of hydroponics? A is a
tool that grow crops. They could have been the forebears
of the process. They could have invented it without even
realizing it. So, um, rising buckets or hydroponics. Huh, there

(07:56):
you have it. So the weird thing about the palace,
if it really did exist, is that it started a
prophecy among Babylonian rulers and Nebuchadnezzar again I mentioned he
was a pretty proud man. Supposedly, on his other palaces,
he built them with bricks ascribed with the sentiment Nebuchadnezzar,
King of Babylon from seeds c. And when Babylon came

(08:18):
crashing down, someone else, many many centuries later, took out
the crown, and I think you knew who I'm talking about. Yeah,
pretty contentious subject. But supposedly he wanted to rebuild his
palace on the site where Babylon would have stood, and
he inscribed bricks with a very similar sentiment about himself.

(08:40):
And today, uh, the US is actually looking to turn
that palace into a casino, because, as we all know,
Saddama is no longer with us. Wow, well, Babylon's decadence continues.
There you have it. You can read even more about
the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and whether or not they existed,
as well as the other six sent wonder Brethren and

(09:01):
how the Seven Wonders your being chient world work on
how stuff Works for more on this and thousands of
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