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