Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. So we
Speaker 2: venture down down into the vault for an older episode
Speaker 2: of the podcast. This one originally aired January eighteenth, twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four, and it's part two of our series on
Speaker 2: the diamond.
Speaker 1: All right, here we go.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey are you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind?
Speaker 1: My name is.
Speaker 2: Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back
Speaker 2: with part two in our series on Diamonds. Now. In
Speaker 2: the previous episode, we focused specifically on one strange question
Speaker 2: about diamonds, which was our diamonds in one form or
Speaker 2: another poisonous. This was the question that originally got me
Speaker 2: interested in the subject of diamonds and a brief recap.
Speaker 2: I came across it because of a passage in the
Speaker 2: absolutely bonkers autobiography of the sixteenth century Italian sculptor named
Speaker 2: Binvenudo Cellini, who told a story, among many other wild
Speaker 2: and probably heavily embellished tales, about his enemies trying to
Speaker 2: poison him with the powder of a pounded diamond while
Speaker 2: he was in prison. And then from there we examined
Speaker 2: some other sources from history, documenting the documenting and examining
Speaker 2: the belief that diamonds or diamond powder could be used
Speaker 2: as a lethal poison, and in the end it seemed
Speaker 2: that the actual evidence of diamonds being reliably poisonous when
Speaker 2: swallowed was sort of weak, but not weak enough that
Speaker 2: I'd just like down a pixie stick full of it. Basically,
Speaker 2: it seems there's sort of a dearth of high quality
Speaker 2: modern evidence one way or the other. Seems kind of
Speaker 2: doubtful that diamonds are poisonous, but not doubt full enough
Speaker 2: that I would advise eating them. I'd avoid it. But
Speaker 2: we are back today with part two to talk some
Speaker 2: more about diamonds.
Speaker 1: That's right, And as we mentioned in the last episode,
Speaker 1: we figured it would be essential to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about like what diamonds are and roll through some
Speaker 1: material you may be familiar with, you may may not,
Speaker 1: you may have forgotten about it, but you know where
Speaker 1: diamonds come from and what some of their major properties are. Right,
Speaker 1: We'll start with the obvious, and this is highly subjective,
Speaker 1: of course, but it's a popular view on diamonds, and
Speaker 1: that is they're beautiful. A diamond receives white light, breaks
Speaker 1: that white light like a prism, and then these resulting
Speaker 1: colors hit the various facets of the diamond. What's more,
Speaker 1: light that enters a faceted diamond, which you can do
Speaker 1: from all sides, may bounce around in there several times
Speaker 1: before shining back out again.
Speaker 2: You know, it actually was making me wonder why sparkling
Speaker 2: is sort of a general stand in for something that
Speaker 2: is beautiful or something that catches the attention.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, I think a part part of it
Speaker 1: is just that we've all really drunk the kool aid
Speaker 1: on how beautiful diamonds are, not only in our lifetimes
Speaker 1: but but over the over centuries and centuries of pro
Speaker 1: diamond propaganda. Because it is interesting to we'll get into
Speaker 1: this in a bit like trying to figure out when
Speaker 1: in history diamonds start becoming gems, Like there's a there's
Speaker 1: there's definitely definitely seems to be a point in ancient
Speaker 1: cultures where like a diamond's not a gem. It's useful
Speaker 1: for cutting gems, but it's not a gem, and then
Speaker 1: that shifts over time, so we'll get into that more
Speaker 1: in a bit, But in terms of light entering the
Speaker 1: diamond and what it does in there, here's another interesting fact.
Speaker 1: This is one that I was reading about in an
Speaker 1: excellent Nova article titled The Science Behind the Sparkle by
Speaker 1: Robert Hazen. A diamond actually slows down light inside of
Speaker 1: itself and does so like no other known colorless substance,
Speaker 1: so compared to things like ice and water, for example,
Speaker 1: the author here writes that a diamond slows light down
Speaker 1: to less than eighty thousand miles per second, and that's
Speaker 1: more than one hundred thousand miles per second slower than
Speaker 1: in air. The slow down, Hazan rites, is complex and
Speaker 1: has to do with electron interactions and the substance it's
Speaker 1: traveling through, and it occurs with any matter, including air
Speaker 1: and glass. And to put it all in context, the
Speaker 1: speed of light in a vacuum is of course one
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty six thousand miles per second. So anyway,
Speaker 1: you can crunch the numbers, and I think crunching numbers
Speaker 1: makes it actually feel a little more special when you
Speaker 1: observed the sparkle here. But yeah, they do sparkle with
Speaker 1: an almost otherworldly brilliance. There's a surreal dance of colors.
Speaker 1: And even if you don't desire diamonds for yourself, again,
Speaker 1: the desire for them is just so entrenched in our
Speaker 1: culture that it's a part of our language. You know,
Speaker 1: you're just referencing, like talking about something sparkle, even if
Speaker 1: it's not a diamond. You're talking about something else, but
Speaker 1: you're talking about it as if it were a diamond.
Speaker 1: We talk about things like diamonds in the rough and
Speaker 1: so forth. Now here's another thing you definitely already know
Speaker 1: about diamonds. They're not only beautiful, they're very hard. Diamonds
Speaker 1: are the hardest naturally occurring substance that we know of,
Speaker 1: so hard in fact, that they have numerous industrial applications.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. And so one thing that has confused
Speaker 2: me in the past is like the different terminology we
Speaker 2: use for the strength or resilience of materials. Because if
Speaker 2: we of course used terms like hard and tough and
Speaker 2: all that in an informal way where they all kind
Speaker 2: of mean the same thing, but they also have some
Speaker 2: more specific kind of scientific definitions or definitions in industrial uses.
Speaker 2: And it's I think illuminating to look at the difference.
Speaker 2: So what is toughness versus hardness? As usually understood, toughness
Speaker 2: is the ability of a material to absorb energy without
Speaker 2: breaking or fracturing, whereas hardness is the ability of a
Speaker 2: material to resist what's called plastic deformation, in other words,
Speaker 2: to resist local changes to its shape from friction. So
Speaker 2: to imagine concrete examples, these changes could be things like cutting, denting,
Speaker 2: or scratching. So the harder a material is, the more
Speaker 2: difficult it is to make a scratch or a dent
Speaker 2: in its surface. Hard materials don't scratch easily. In fact,
Speaker 2: they scratch other things, and you can usually tell which
Speaker 2: material is harder by rubbing them together and seeing which
Speaker 2: one scratches the other. Meanwhile, to come back to toughness,
Speaker 2: brittleness is the opposite of toughness. The tougher material is,
Speaker 2: the more energy it can absorb before it cracks. So
Speaker 2: rubber is not hard, but it is tough. You might
Speaker 2: be able to scratch it easily with a knife, but
Speaker 2: you can also hit it really hard and it won't fracture. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: like you said, rob a diamond is the harder and
Speaker 2: naturally occurring substance on Earth, so you can't scratch its
Speaker 2: surface with a knife or any other normal material apart
Speaker 2: from another diamond. It is going to be really, really
Speaker 2: difficult to make a scratch or a cut in a diamond.
Speaker 2: We need special apparatus for doing so. But while it's
Speaker 2: the hardest natural material on Earth, it is not the toughest.
Speaker 2: In fact, believe it or not, you can break a
Speaker 2: diamond with a regular steel hammer and anvil. In fact,
Speaker 2: before we I just wanted to gut check myself on
Speaker 2: this and be like, okay, well, assuming you can do that,
Speaker 2: I want to see it. I bet there are videos
Speaker 2: of people doing it, like on YouTube, and yep, you
Speaker 2: can look them up. People put a diamond on an
Speaker 2: anvil and smash it with a hammer. It breaks to pieces.
Speaker 2: It's not necessarily easy to do, but with the regular
Speaker 2: steel tools and enough force you can do it.
Speaker 1: That's right. And we'll get into some specific examples of
Speaker 1: diamonds being shattered as we proceed here. So yeah, they
Speaker 1: are not indestructible, even though at times our linguistic treatment
Speaker 1: of diamond and related terms ends up bleeding into that area.
Speaker 1: And in fact I have a pretty I think amusing
Speaker 1: comic book example of that here in a.
Speaker 2: Bit oh nice, But just to reinforce the shorthand on
Speaker 2: toughness versus hardness, a hard material it's going to be
Speaker 2: difficult to cut, dent or scratch. A tough material, it's
Speaker 2: going to be difficult to break.
Speaker 1: Now, here's another thing about diamonds that I think everyone
Speaker 1: either you know this or you've heard it before, or
Speaker 1: you're going to say, oh, yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I remember, okay, we're all carbon based organisms. Here a
Speaker 1: billion year old carbon, if you will. And another interesting
Speaker 1: thing to remember about diamonds is that a diamond is
Speaker 1: actually pure carbon. What we know of as a diamond
Speaker 1: is actually a crystalline form of carbon, a fact that
Speaker 1: was discovered for the first time in seventeen seventy two
Speaker 1: by French chemist Anthony Labossie, an individual who made numerous
Speaker 1: contributions to the advance ansmen of chemical and biological sciences
Speaker 1: before he was executed at the age of fifty on
Speaker 1: charges of tax fraud and tobacco adulteration. That's adding water
Speaker 1: to tobacco before sale. By the way, I had to
Speaker 1: look that up. I was like, what was this guy
Speaker 1: allegedly doing to his to tobacco. These were charges that
Speaker 1: he was exonerated of a year and a half later,
Speaker 1: but by that point he was of course already dead.
Speaker 2: Adding water to tobacco, I would think of normally watering
Speaker 2: down a liquid to adulterate it. I could maybe tobacco
Speaker 2: gets soggy, so you can like bulk up the weight
Speaker 2: by getting water in it.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I guess, so holding the thumb on
Speaker 1: the scales one way or another.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you're saying they found that he didn't do
Speaker 2: it after they killed him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, after and pretty soon after they were like,
Speaker 1: actually are bad on that one. A lot has was
Speaker 1: written and has been written about how this was maybe
Speaker 1: not a great move, because even in his short life
Speaker 1: that was obviously cut short by execution, he did a
Speaker 1: number of contributions to the advancement of science. Now, speaking
Speaker 1: of liquids, though, I have to throw in in one
Speaker 1: of our primary sources for this series, diamonds in Early
Speaker 1: History of the King of Gems by Jack Ogden. Ogden
Speaker 1: points out that during the Renaissance, various philosophers believe that
Speaker 1: diamonds must be some form of congealed juice or quote,
Speaker 1: most pure juice juice of what I was a little
Speaker 1: unclear on that juice of carbon. Juice of carbon. That
Speaker 1: gets us to where did diamonds come from. Naturally occurring
Speaker 1: diamonds are formed under intense pressure and temperature deep within
Speaker 1: the Earth and then brought to the surface via volcanic action.
Speaker 1: And diamonds are found in three types of deposits. First
Speaker 1: of all, you have kimber like pipes. These are formed
Speaker 1: by intrusions of magma into the Earth's crust, bringing in diamonds,
Speaker 1: among other things, from the Earth's mantle. The pipes themselves
Speaker 1: tend to be only one hundred million years old, while
Speaker 1: the diamonds they bring up may be anywhere between like
Speaker 1: one and three point three billion years old. And then
Speaker 1: you also have alluvial gravels and glacial tills. So in
Speaker 1: these diamonds are released by either fluvial or river based
Speaker 1: or glacial erosion of the kimberlight matrix, and then they're
Speaker 1: redeposited in rivers or in a glacial till. This is
Speaker 1: the sediment moved by a glacier as it moves over
Speaker 1: the course of time.
Speaker 2: Right, So we need these mechanisms to explain diamonds being
Speaker 2: brought near to the surface of the Earth because they
Speaker 2: have to be formed way deep down in the Earth's mantle.
Speaker 1: Or they used to be before Superman, of course, But
Speaker 1: more truthfully, since around the nineteen fifties, we have been
Speaker 1: able to make synthetic diamonds that are chemically and physically
Speaker 1: identical to naturally occurring diamonds. But for the longest yeah,
Speaker 1: diamonds had to be mined from the Earth. And while
Speaker 1: diamonds occur naturally on every continent and have been mined
Speaker 1: around the world historically, and we'll come back to this,
Speaker 1: there was one place to gather your diamonds and it
Speaker 1: was India.
Speaker 3: Mm.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Now I mentioned that I would get into comic
Speaker 4: books a little bit, because the connection here is that
Speaker 4: we should also mention that the word diamond is actually
Speaker 4: linked directly to x Man Wolverine's claws and skeleton, because
Speaker 4: I don't have to tell most of you that Logan's
Speaker 4: retractable claws and bones are said to be coated with
Speaker 4: the fictional indestructible sci fi metal known as Adamantium.
Speaker 1: Now, the authors and artists of Marvel Comics did not
Speaker 1: invent the idea of adamantium. It apparently pops up in
Speaker 1: earlier fictional works, a natural extrapolation of the adjective adamantine,
Speaker 1: which means unyielding or unbreakable, related to the word adamant
Speaker 1: as well, which this was all widely used in pre
Speaker 1: marvel fiction. And of course all of this extends back
Speaker 1: to the ancient world as well, with writings in Greek
Speaker 1: and Latin that utilize atomas, either once again figuratively or
Speaker 1: in reference to some sort of legendary unbreakable stone or gym,
Speaker 1: such as in some tellings, the substance used to construct
Speaker 1: the chains that bound Cerberus, the great three headed hound
Speaker 1: of Hades.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is worth flagging because it leads to
Speaker 2: a confusion that could arise from some ancient sources, because
Speaker 2: in some ancient sources people talk about something that seems
Speaker 2: like it could be a diamond, but we're not necessarily
Speaker 2: positive that's what they're referring to. And in some of
Speaker 2: these cases, these Latin or Greek writers are using this
Speaker 2: term adamas, the Latin word adamas derived from the Greek. Now,
Speaker 2: I was also reading about this in Ogden in Diamonds
Speaker 2: in Early History of the King of gems, and Ogden
Speaker 2: talks about how the English word diamond is derived from
Speaker 2: this Latin word adamas, which in turn came from the Greek.
Speaker 2: And there's an interesting etymology here. So in Greek the
Speaker 2: word dama itself, dama meant something like conquer or tame.
Speaker 2: Elsewhere I've read that it had the sense of break,
Speaker 2: as in the way you would break a horse like
Speaker 2: you would tame it. So with the negative prefix ah
Speaker 2: in front of it, that means kind of like un
Speaker 2: ah dema adamas meant unconquerable, untameable, unbreakable, unalterable. But Ogden says,
Speaker 2: in medieval European sources, the prefix ah starts to disappear
Speaker 2: from this Latin term ademas, and then we're just left
Speaker 2: with terms like damon or Damon's, which in English eventually
Speaker 2: became diamond. But by losing the ah prefix ahead of it,
Speaker 2: this would mean that, according to Greek word logic, it's
Speaker 2: sort of losing the un and unbreakable, so it's kind
Speaker 2: of meaning tameable or breakable again. But of course that
Speaker 2: meaning was lost at this point. Just came to me
Speaker 2: in the gym, but in its usage in ancient Greek
Speaker 2: and Roman sources. The term odomas may sometimes refer to diamonds,
Speaker 2: but it also clearly refers to other materials that were
Speaker 2: considered especially hard or strong, and Ogden calls out things
Speaker 2: like maybe maybe some sort of early proto steel or
Speaker 2: special naturally occurring alloys and grains found alongside gold and
Speaker 2: ore or other gems.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. Now. To come back to Marvel,
Speaker 1: I was wondering, because again, you know, Marvel's been around
Speaker 1: long enough that there's so many characters and creatures that
Speaker 1: everything's been done at least once. Surely. I was like, well,
Speaker 1: there's got to be a character that has either diamond
Speaker 1: claws or a diamond skeleton, And in fact, there does
Speaker 1: seem to be such a creature. There is apparently an
Speaker 1: alternate timeline where you have a fusion of two characters.
Speaker 1: This apparently occurs throughout I think DC and Marvel both
Speaker 1: get into this, where not only do you have variants
Speaker 1: of different characters in different to alternate realities, but you
Speaker 1: also have fusions of different individuals. So there's one alternate timeline,
Speaker 1: one alternate Earth or whatever, where you have a single
Speaker 1: entity that is merged out of Emma Frost aka the
Speaker 1: White Queen who has I think this ability to like
Speaker 1: shape shift into a diamond form that grants her immunity
Speaker 1: and in vulnerability, especially from like psychic attacks. And then Wolverine,
Speaker 1: who are just talking about this single entity who ends
Speaker 1: up looking like a really posh wolverine with blonde hair
Speaker 1: and an eyepatch. His name is diamond Patch apparently, or
Speaker 1: that is his code name, and he has clause and
Speaker 1: presumably a skeleton made out of diamond, and if he
Speaker 1: stabs you with his diamond clause, he can read your mind.
Speaker 2: Why is he called diamond Patch? He does have an
Speaker 2: eye patches. Is the eye patch made of diamond?
Speaker 1: Ah? Maybe I don't know. I mean, if you if
Speaker 1: your claws or diamond, maybe you don't want to ac
Speaker 1: accessorize with diamonds too much. I'm not sure. I'm not
Speaker 1: an expert on diamond patch here. We'll have to hear
Speaker 1: from our more devoted comic readers out there. But it
Speaker 1: does raise all sorts of questions about what it would
Speaker 1: be like to have a skeleton made out of diamond.
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound particularly great if you're going to potentially
Speaker 1: get into a you know, some sort of a throw
Speaker 1: down with the Hulk or something.
Speaker 2: I wonder if there's a plot line where he pounds
Speaker 2: his claws into a powder and then feeds it as
Speaker 2: poisoned to somebody.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I would hope so, I mean, but
Speaker 1: then I guess he has the healing factor too, So
Speaker 1: what does that mean? Does like his powderized bones then
Speaker 1: reheal into a solid diamond once more.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure they really do do everything in comic books,
Speaker 2: don't they. What you were just saying a minute ago
Speaker 2: is right, Like anytime you imagine, I wonder if somebody's
Speaker 2: done this, there's like a comic book where somebody did that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's been done, and it was maybe done
Speaker 1: decades ago, and it's been done a second time. They've
Speaker 1: revisited it. But that's one of the things I love
Speaker 1: about diving into the world of comics.
Speaker 2: There's so much variety, a world where all possible elevator
Speaker 2: pitches have been realized. That's right, he's made of diamond,
Speaker 2: all right.
Speaker 1: Well, at this point, let's turn our attention back to
Speaker 1: the real world and back specifically to India and ancient India. Again.
Speaker 1: India is extremely important in the history of diamonds, as
Speaker 1: Ogden points out in the book, until the sixteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: it was the most important, if not the only, source
Speaker 1: of diamonds in the Mediterranean, in European worlds, and Ogden
Speaker 1: mentions has a lot to share about diamonds in this book.
Speaker 1: This is a terrific book. Highly recommend it. At one
Speaker 1: point he mentions some of the detective aspects of the
Speaker 1: diamond that you see appearing in Indian lore at different points,
Speaker 1: that they may have provided protection against quote serpents, tigers,
Speaker 1: and thieves. That one gave me a lot of pause there,
Speaker 1: because I'm trying to imagine, first of all, our diamond's
Speaker 1: going to protect you from thieves. That doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: a very logical idea tigers, though it made me think about, well, okay,
Speaker 1: a tiger is a you know, an ambush predator that
Speaker 1: wants to make sure it has the most advantageous attack conditions.
Speaker 1: And you and I have seen, you know, some compelling
Speaker 1: evidence about, say, weighing ways to deter a tiger attack
Speaker 1: by having like fake eyes on the back of your
Speaker 1: head and so forth, wearing like a mask on the
Speaker 1: back of your head, and to whatever extent that is
Speaker 1: useful or not. You can think, well, okay, a diamond glitters.
Speaker 1: Maybe a diamond does something optical that in some way
Speaker 1: might make a tiger think twice about attacking you.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure that's interesting. Yeah, I wonder the sparkling
Speaker 2: could function kind of like eye spots, or just in
Speaker 2: some other way could disrupt a tiger an ambush predator
Speaker 2: since that attack is now appropriate.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so I don't know. I didn't look too
Speaker 1: hard into that, but it came to mind. Ogden also
Speaker 1: mentions that that for the most part, these diamonds were
Speaker 1: for men only, and they were thought to make women
Speaker 1: quote sterile and unhappy, and he points out that while
Speaker 1: this notion runs against the general modern marketing trend with diamonds,
Speaker 1: which has European roots, you know, for the longest, the
Speaker 1: durable diamond was considered the perfect gem to symbolize the
Speaker 1: masculine might of kings.
Speaker 2: Ah, okay, so it's like, oh, because the diamond is invincible,
Speaker 2: it makes people think that I'm invincible, I'm so strong,
Speaker 2: I'm so tough.
Speaker 1: Yes, just ignore the part about how you can smash
Speaker 1: it with a hammer, and it just becomes a million almost,
Speaker 1: it almost becomes almost invisible when you break it. Right now,
Speaker 1: a quick note on jim stones in general, because we
Speaker 1: get into this whole like gems and then diamonds. I
Speaker 1: decided to look this up in Brian M. Fagan's seventy
Speaker 1: Great Inventions of the Ancient World. Guess who has co
Speaker 1: author is in the section on gemstones. It's Jack Ogden.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, So.
Speaker 1: Once more the at least partially citing Ogden here. Gyms
Speaker 1: have factored into human jewelry since the earliest times, though
Speaker 1: the setting of colored stones which were the preference for
Speaker 1: the longest, with the move toward transparent gemstones not occurring
Speaker 1: un till the first millennium BC with the rise of
Speaker 1: the Persian Empire. The setting of colored stones was only
Speaker 1: possible once a fairly sophisticated metal working industry was established.
Speaker 1: So they point out that for the longest colored stones
Speaker 1: were used as quote blocks of pigment, and this would
Speaker 1: be inlaid in a metal form. The stones were usually
Speaker 1: cut to fit a particular setting, and it wasn't until
Speaker 1: later that the reverse would become the fad.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, So if I'm understanding this right, it would
Speaker 2: mean like that originally gyms were more like just sort
Speaker 2: of a tool. They were one piece of artistic filler
Speaker 2: to fill out whatever it is you're designing. But later
Speaker 2: on they would come to be more of the focus
Speaker 2: and whatever you're designing would be based around the gym
Speaker 2: in it. Correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the point I was taking from all of this.
Speaker 1: And in addition to the rise of the Persian Empire,
Speaker 1: you also had other factors influencing the shift towards transparent gemstones.
Speaker 1: I mean, not that you completely abandoned color gyms, but
Speaker 1: like sort of the opening of the mind to the
Speaker 1: idea that hey, these are beautiful. As well, you have
Speaker 1: things like the conquest of Oxander the Great, which we'll
Speaker 1: come back to, and a number of other factors that
Speaker 1: Ogden gets into more depth about in the book, you know,
Speaker 1: with various trade routes opening up and so forth. Now,
Speaker 1: according to Ogden, the earliest known use of diamonds in
Speaker 1: jewelry and you know, a enormous.
Speaker 2: Caveat with all this.
Speaker 1: You know, this is based on surviving written records, This
Speaker 1: is based on surviving artifacts and so forth. The earliest
Speaker 1: known use of diamonds and jewelry dates back to after
Speaker 1: three twenty five BCE in northern India and Afghanistan following
Speaker 1: Alexander the Great's military conquest in this area, and the
Speaker 1: earliest diamond rings come from this region as well. Again,
Speaker 1: going we have to go back to the caveat about
Speaker 1: metallurgy and metal working having to reach a certain point
Speaker 1: before you could really make much in the way of
Speaker 1: diamond rings and so forth. But the earliest diamond rings
Speaker 1: come from this region as well, and this all leads
Speaker 1: to an influx of diamonds and diamond lore into the
Speaker 1: Mediterranean world, though their initial use in the Mediterranean region
Speaker 1: was for drilling and engraving other gems. So this touches
Speaker 1: on a topic that Ogden considers at length. You know,
Speaker 1: when do diamonds start becoming more than stones to be
Speaker 1: used in cutting gems, When do they become gems themselves.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, that's an interesting question, and I would wonder
Speaker 2: if it has anything like what is the economic intersection
Speaker 2: between the value of a gym as a decorative item
Speaker 2: or something that's prized just for its own sake versus
Speaker 2: the value of a gym that it has specific utility
Speaker 2: as a tool. Because as we know about the diamond
Speaker 2: being the hardest of all these gems. It has a
Speaker 2: real utility, It has a real direct use value.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And again, like not all forms of carbon
Speaker 1: have the same value. Other forms of carbon. You can't
Speaker 1: bring them into a diamond dealer and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: how much for this lump of carbon? How much for me?
Speaker 1: I'm carbon? What's the going rate? Now? And then, likewise,
Speaker 1: not all forms of crystal are going to, you know,
Speaker 1: command vast sums of money either. So Ogden points out
Speaker 1: that early written evidence for diamonds as gems, again considered gems,
Speaker 1: is a you can be found in a northern in text,
Speaker 1: often dated with some disagreement to three hundred BCE. Other
Speaker 1: dating of the text may push the reference to the
Speaker 1: second millennium BCE, or possibly to the fourth century CE.
Speaker 1: The text is called the Atha Sastra, or the Lesson
Speaker 1: of Profit, and it points out a few interesting ideas
Speaker 1: of the time period. Again depending on exactly when this
Speaker 1: would have been, but a few of the ideas that
Speaker 1: were put forth regarding the value of a diamond, Ogden writes,
Speaker 1: quote the list of diamond colors given in the Atha
Speaker 1: Sostra include cat's eye, sirisa flower, cow's urine, cows fat,
Speaker 1: clear crystal, Mulatti flower, and then adds any other gem
Speaker 1: color which is a little help to us cow's urine. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a humorous book as well. It's again again very
Speaker 1: fun read. But also other aspects of the diamond mentioned
Speaker 1: this text stress that large, heavy, and hard diamonds are best.
Speaker 1: The best diamonds have symmetrical points. The best diamonds can
Speaker 1: scratch a vessel, and not only do they sparkle, but
Speaker 1: they spin like a top. These are the various not
Speaker 1: on their own obviously, but you know, with wind spun
Speaker 1: by the human looking at them. These are all aspects
Speaker 1: of a suitable diamond, ones that are true gems and
Speaker 1: not something that you need to just break down and
Speaker 1: use for your gym working and so forth.
Speaker 2: That is interesting, And I wonder where criteria like this
Speaker 2: are originally derived from. I guess some of it is
Speaker 2: just like intuitive preferences about anything that, like, you know,
Speaker 2: bigger is better, heavier is better. I guess a harder
Speaker 2: diamond or a harder thing called a diamond is going
Speaker 2: to be more durable, it will last longer. But I wonder,
Speaker 2: like it spins like a top, why is that preferred?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I guess it just comes down to
Speaker 1: just the the you know, the structural completeness of the thing,
Speaker 1: the in the symmetry of the thing, right, But but
Speaker 1: in general, yeah, it also you can't help but think
Speaker 1: about the idea of like just branding. Like someone's like, hey,
Speaker 1: we got to move some diamonds here, we got to
Speaker 1: move something. Why don't we start selling these diamonds? So
Speaker 1: let's just start start talking about just how pretty these
Speaker 1: things are and how how you know, and then figure
Speaker 1: out like what is the what are the best candidates
Speaker 1: to push forward? Is the new King of gems? M
Speaker 1: Now at this point I thought we'd talk about one
Speaker 1: of the most wonderful uh collection of falsehoods concerning uh
Speaker 1: the origin of diamonds uh and uh and the and
Speaker 1: the gathering of diamonds, and that is of course the
Speaker 1: Valley of the Gems.
Speaker 2: I think this is where we come back to Alexander
Speaker 2: the Great.
Speaker 1: That's right, Alexander the Great does factor into all of this.
Speaker 1: This myth is heavily associated with him, but also to
Speaker 1: be clear, it seems to predate him and also would
Speaker 1: be retold many more times in various formats involving Marco Polo.
Speaker 1: It also pops up as a story about about the
Speaker 1: hero Sinbad the Sailor. So it isn't just an Alexander
Speaker 1: the Great thing, but he becomes associated.
Speaker 2: With the story. Okay, what's the story? Okay?
Speaker 1: So, and it mainly becomes associated with Alexander the Great
Speaker 1: through the writings of the Greek philosopher Theophrastus, who lived
Speaker 1: three seventy two more or less to around two eighty
Speaker 1: seven BCE, who wrote of the valley in his work
Speaker 1: De Lapidibus or on Gems. And this is the one
Speaker 1: that throws Alexander the Great into the story, makes him
Speaker 1: the hero of the tale, and also seemingly canonizes the
Speaker 1: involvement of snakes within the story, a story that, according
Speaker 1: to Ogden, seems to have pre existed this riding by
Speaker 1: many centuries as a folk narrative about this mystical valley
Speaker 1: of the Gems. However, Ogden also knows it wouldn't really
Speaker 1: become like cemented as like part of the quote romance
Speaker 1: of Alexander till the nineteenth century. Right, so, Ogden tees
Speaker 1: is a part the different versions of the myth, but
Speaker 1: it basically goes down like this Okay, there's a valley
Speaker 1: out there in the wilds of India, and guess what,
Speaker 1: it's full of diamonds. Now, Joe, wouldn't you like to
Speaker 1: get into that that valley and get those diamonds.
Speaker 2: I want to get in that valley like a ballpit,
Speaker 2: just swim around in it, Scrooge mcducket.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, that that's understandable. They are diamonds, after all.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. Uh, these diamonds are inaccessible by
Speaker 1: normal means, due either to the terrifying cliffs, but also
Speaker 1: because there's there's there are even worse things down there.
Speaker 1: There are a whole bunch of snakes, venomous snakes in
Speaker 1: some in cases, giant venomous snakes, and you don't want
Speaker 1: to mess with those. Do you still want the diamonds?
Speaker 2: Let's assume that I am absolutely mad with greed, so yes, okay.
Speaker 1: In order to get these diamonds out, here's what you
Speaker 1: need to do. First. You need to get yourself some meat,
Speaker 1: a bunch of big strips of meat, giant strips of meat,
Speaker 1: as much meat as you can get together, okay, all right,
Speaker 1: and then you're gonna throw that meat down into the
Speaker 1: pit down into the valley.
Speaker 2: Do you stand on top of the cliffs and throw
Speaker 2: it down?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, you'd want to throw it down from above.
Speaker 1: You don't want to get down there because that's where
Speaker 1: the snakes are. So throw that meat into the into
Speaker 1: the valley, into the pit. Because guess what, those diamonds
Speaker 1: are just laying about down there on the surface, on
Speaker 1: the floor of the pit, on the floor of the valley.
Speaker 1: And if you throw the meat down, you know what's
Speaker 1: gonna happen. The diamonds are gonna stick to the meat.
Speaker 2: Perfect.
Speaker 1: This is raw meat, by the way, is it's not cooked?
Speaker 1: Don't you don't want to throw like well done meat
Speaker 1: into the valley of gems.
Speaker 2: No, it'll be stickier if it's raw.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now at this point you're wondering, Okay, I want
Speaker 1: the diamonds, but now I just spend all this money
Speaker 1: on meat. I just literally threw it away. Well, this
Speaker 1: is where the birds come in. The birds are going
Speaker 1: to swoop down and they're going to collect that meat,
Speaker 1: that free meal, from the bottom of the valley and
Speaker 1: bring it back up to the top of the cliffs
Speaker 1: to eat. That meat. I will remind you still has
Speaker 1: diamonds stuck to it all over brilliant. Now, at this point,
Speaker 1: many of the tellings indicate that what you need to
Speaker 1: do is scare the birds away from that meat long
Speaker 1: enough to peel off all the diamonds, and then you're
Speaker 1: going to leave the meat. The birds will leave you
Speaker 1: alone at that point. They don't actually want the diamonds,
Speaker 1: they want the meat. And then once you have the diamonds,
Speaker 1: you can run off and do what you will with them.
Speaker 2: I love this scheme. It's a diamond heist to beat
Speaker 2: them all.
Speaker 1: There are also versions of the story in which you
Speaker 1: have to kill the birds to get the diamonds out
Speaker 1: of their stomach, but really, I mean, who wants to
Speaker 1: go through with that? It seems much easier to just
Speaker 1: scare them away long enough to get the diamonds off
Speaker 1: the meat and then cash in mm hmm. Interestingly, in
Speaker 1: cases in retellings of the story where snakes are involved,
Speaker 1: this is also sometimes used to explain why you should
Speaker 1: never put diamonds in your mouth because they there may
Speaker 1: be lingering snake venom and in some way like that
Speaker 1: snake venom never completely leaves the diamonds, and therefore to
Speaker 1: eat them would be to invite death.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, so this would be a different explanation of
Speaker 2: the supposedly lethal mechanism of the diamonds, because if you
Speaker 2: didn't listen to the last episode, the main explanation given
Speaker 2: by at least by Benvenudo Chillini was that the diamond
Speaker 2: it's not actually chemically poisonous. It's that pounded up diamonds
Speaker 2: have all these little sharp edges in them, and because
Speaker 2: they're so hard, nothing can like dull their edges. They
Speaker 2: will just go down into your guts and end up
Speaker 2: cutting you up from the inside. But this would be
Speaker 2: a totally different folk logic for why they are allegedly poisonous.
Speaker 2: They have snake venom on them.
Speaker 1: That's right. Then, the second voyage of Sindbad, he actually
Speaker 1: escapes from the pit by strapping one of the pieces
Speaker 1: of meat to his own back. This telling involves the
Speaker 1: giant mythic rock bird, and the snakes are also giants
Speaker 1: that swallow elephants. Diamonds are also present.
Speaker 2: Is Sinbad trying to get the diamonds or are they
Speaker 2: just incidental?
Speaker 1: He is mainly just trying to escape at this point,
Speaker 1: so it's just kind of a clever escape scheme, I believe,
Speaker 1: But you know, the voyages of Sindbad and so forth,
Speaker 1: I feel like those are stories I need to properly revisit.
Speaker 1: Maybe we can find a way to explore them in
Speaker 1: a future episode. But again, this story is widely told
Speaker 1: and retold plenty of The Elder, of course, also repeats
Speaker 1: the myth at some point. But at the end of it,
Speaker 1: I was wondering, like, well, what does it mean? Like
Speaker 1: where does this story come from? You know, will get
Speaker 1: into another story later on, another seemingly fantastical bit of
Speaker 1: folklore and myth that involves sticky things and diamonds, So
Speaker 1: I was wondering if that would have anything to do
Speaker 1: with it. But I ended up turning to an article
Speaker 1: by S. Tolanski from nineteen sixty one titled some Folklore
Speaker 1: in History of diamond and the author here speculates that
Speaker 1: the story may have been originally circulated in some of
Speaker 1: its earliest forms by none other than Indian diamond miners
Speaker 1: to cover up the true source of their lucrative trade,
Speaker 1: because again, diamonds are not coming from a valley, They're
Speaker 1: not just littering on the ground in a place haunted
Speaker 1: by venomous snakes, you know, their mind from specific locations.
Speaker 1: You know, we alluded to the sources earlier. So perhaps
Speaker 1: this is a bit of misinformation that was popularized in
Speaker 1: order to throw thieves and would be minors off the scent.
Speaker 1: But it also raises the question like, even in ancient times,
Speaker 1: it feels like someone's you know, BS sensor would go
Speaker 1: off at some point and they might realize, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's actually where diamonds come from, and
Speaker 1: I know they don't want me to know where they
Speaker 1: come from, but it's something else, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of it. So anyway, that seems
Speaker 1: like one potentially valid hypothesis. But the author here also
Speaker 1: mentions another possibility, something that may or may not tie
Speaker 1: into it. He mentions something that has been observed in
Speaker 1: modern South Africa. He wrote quote four. In South Africa,
Speaker 1: where the deep dug mines have heaped around them great
Speaker 1: masses of waste worked out ores. It is known locally
Speaker 1: that the crops of fowls which wander and peck over
Speaker 1: this land frequently contain small diamonds. The chickens seem to
Speaker 1: have an eye for the shining pebbles, and a single
Speaker 1: fowl has been known to have as much as a
Speaker 1: total of five carrot weight of small diamond within its crop.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, So the crop, of course is it's part
Speaker 2: of the chicken's digestive system, which, if I recall correctly,
Speaker 2: is not the stomach. It's sort of like a little
Speaker 2: side pouch. It's got like you know, on the way
Speaker 2: to the rest of the digestive system. The chicken can
Speaker 2: store stuff in its crop for a while.
Speaker 1: And so the idea here would seem that like, okay,
Speaker 1: this would not one hundred percent explain the idea. But
Speaker 1: if something like this had been observed in ancient times,
Speaker 1: perhaps it might have influenced the various myth cycles that
Speaker 1: spun out of it. And therefore that's why you have
Speaker 1: birds and giant birds and so forth involved in it.
Speaker 1: In some cases you have the birds being killed and
Speaker 1: then opened up, and in other cases it's just like
Speaker 1: we'll get the diamonds off the meat before the birds
Speaker 1: eat it. That's how diamonds wind up in birds.
Speaker 2: After all, that's an interesting possibility.
Speaker 1: Now, another interesting idea that I that I ended up
Speaker 1: looking at here concerning the diamond and how the diamond
Speaker 1: is utilized as a as an idea, as a metaphor,
Speaker 1: and so forth, and particularly in parts of India, is
Speaker 1: the idea of the vodra. So in Hindu iconography you'll
Speaker 1: frequently encounter the symbol and legendary ritual weapon of the vodra.
Speaker 1: You'll recognize it as appearing almost like a claud talon,
Speaker 1: with each appendage curving out and then touching at the tips.
Speaker 1: And the vodra may be three, four or even five pronged,
Speaker 1: but it's not a claw. The finished symbol or artifact
Speaker 1: may resemble a closed lotus blossom. It is especially common
Speaker 1: in the Tibetan Vadriyana school of Buddhism, and it can
Speaker 1: be translated as thunder vehicle. For indeed, the vadra is
Speaker 1: in many ways a thunderbolt, a divine weapon, and also
Speaker 1: the metaphoric striking of enlightenment. It cleaves through ignorance like lightning. Indeed,
Speaker 1: in Hindu mythology, the vadra is the weapon of Indra,
Speaker 1: king of the Devas, and a god of the sky.
Speaker 1: That may be, I think reasonably compared to other deity traditions,
Speaker 1: such as that of Zeus or that of odin in
Speaker 1: Norse mythology, but vadra also can apparently be translated as diamond,
Speaker 1: for the vodra is indestructible, and there is indeed a
Speaker 1: sense of a diamond to the shape of the thing
Speaker 1: as well. Sometimes the vadra appears like a club or
Speaker 1: a scepter with a long handle, other times a ritualistic
Speaker 1: item with two vadras, one on either end of like
Speaker 1: a handle. And you'll also find vadras on the handles
Speaker 1: of a symbolic bell, and indeed you also find it
Speaker 1: as a motif on the pommels and or the hilts
Speaker 1: of highly decorative swords. So I found this interesting as well,
Speaker 1: this idea of this thing going from like indestructible bolt
Speaker 1: of enlightenment to a weapon of war, but involving like
Speaker 1: aspects of thunder and lightning and also aspects of the diamond.
Speaker 1: I should also add that in Mahayana Buddhism there's also
Speaker 1: an important sutra that is generally referred to in English
Speaker 1: as the diamond Sutra.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, this seems to connect to the things that
Speaker 2: have come up in multiple ways, especially like the idea
Speaker 2: of a diamond being a sort of a symbol of
Speaker 2: the power of kings here. If there is a diamond
Speaker 2: association with the mythical weapon of Indra.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, so yeah, And also I love that
Speaker 1: in this we get this more spiritual idea of the
Speaker 1: diamond as opposed to certainly the sort of the modern,
Speaker 1: you know, western popular idea of the diamond. That's very
Speaker 1: and I guess it does get aligned with ideas of love.
Speaker 1: But I don't know, I don't get a very spiritual
Speaker 1: idea of the diamond when I'm watching a diamond commercial
Speaker 1: on television, Like, it doesn't seem like it's clearly not
Speaker 1: something that's coming from from the realm of the gods.
Speaker 1: It's something that's coming from the diamond store across town.
Speaker 2: Think how much more interesting those commercials would be if
Speaker 2: they did the Valley of Gems with the snake and
Speaker 2: the meat. You had to get the meat in order
Speaker 2: to get the diamond. That's part of the process.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I can see it.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: They can still have the you know, the excellent music,
Speaker 1: the high production values. But let's get some some diamond
Speaker 1: studded meat in the game. Let's get some giant birds,
Speaker 1: Let's get some snakes. It's a lot of fun to
Speaker 1: be at.
Speaker 2: I want to direct these commercials. Valentine's Day is coming up.
Speaker 2: You see you see like a husband going up to
Speaker 2: the cliff side. He's got the meat. It's like, you know,
Speaker 2: just dripping all over his back. I guess he's got
Speaker 2: to have something to fight the birds with later. It's
Speaker 2: all coming together in my mind.
Speaker 1: Oh man, steak restaurants, get in on this. This is great,
Speaker 1: great advertising for your Valentine's Day meals as well your
Speaker 1: Valentine's Day specials. You know, get people into that steak
Speaker 1: dinner with the diamonds. Have the diamond stuck to the steak.
Speaker 2: We call this a binvenudo special. I felt it crash
Speaker 2: beneath my teeth.
Speaker 1: All right. On that note, we're going to gohead and
Speaker 1: close out this episode, but we will be back with
Speaker 1: at least a third Diamond episode because all there's more
Speaker 1: stuff we didn't even have time for. There's more stuff
Speaker 1: involving various bodily fluids. We'll definitely get into some more myths.
Speaker 1: We'll get into some other topics, cosmic, spiritual.
Speaker 2: You name it.
Speaker 1: We will return to it in the next episode. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, Yah, we'd love to hear from all of you.
Speaker 1: We have a couple of episodes on diamonds already. You
Speaker 1: might have some thoughts, some feedback on anything we've discussed here.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're a diamond fan and maybe you hate diamonds.
Speaker 1: Maybe you have some sort of cultural connection with diamonds.
Speaker 1: Maybe you yourself work with diamonds. Right in we'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you. Just a reminder that core episodes
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind publish on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 1: and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed short
Speaker 1: form episodes go out on Wednesday, listener mail on Mondays,
Speaker 1: and on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns to
Speaker 1: just talk about a weird movie on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 2: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 2: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 2: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 2: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: your Mind dot com.
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