WEBVTT - The Nature of the Diamond, Part 2 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:07.040 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.520 --> 0:00:14.320 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:14.400 --> 0:00:15.240 name is Robert. 0:00:15.080 --> 0:00:18.040 Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with 0:00:18.160 --> 0:00:22.439 part two in our series on diamonds Now. In the 0:00:22.440 --> 0:00:28.320 previous episode we focused specifically on one strange question about diamonds, 0:00:28.720 --> 0:00:33.760 which was our diamonds in one form or another poisonous. 0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:36.320 This was the question that originally got me interested in 0:00:36.360 --> 0:00:40.879 the subject of diamonds, and brief recap I came across 0:00:40.880 --> 0:00:45.560 it because of a passage in the absolutely bonkers autobiography 0:00:46.240 --> 0:00:51.400 of the sixteenth century Italian sculptor named Benvenudo Cellini, who 0:00:51.400 --> 0:00:54.920 told a story, among many other wild and probably heavily 0:00:54.960 --> 0:00:58.800 embellished tales, about his enemies trying to poison him with 0:00:59.000 --> 0:01:02.520 the powder of a hounded diamond while he was in prison. 0:01:03.040 --> 0:01:06.920 And then from there we examined some other sources from history, 0:01:07.000 --> 0:01:11.480 documenting the documenting and examining the belief that diamonds or 0:01:11.480 --> 0:01:15.280 diamond powder could be used as a lethal poison, and 0:01:15.319 --> 0:01:18.920 in the end it seemed that the actual evidence of 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:23.080 diamonds being reliably poisonous when swallowed was sort of weak, 0:01:23.440 --> 0:01:25.800 but not weak enough that I'd just like down a 0:01:25.840 --> 0:01:28.800 pixie stick full of it. Basically, it seems there's sort 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:31.560 of a dearth of high quality modern evidence one way 0:01:31.640 --> 0:01:35.119 or the other. Seems kind of doubtful that diamonds are poisonous, 0:01:35.160 --> 0:01:38.720 but not doubtful enough that I would advise eating them. 0:01:38.800 --> 0:01:42.520 I'd avoid it. But we are back today with part 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:44.800 two to talk some more about diamonds. 0:01:45.160 --> 0:01:48.560 That's right, And as we mentioned in the last episode, 0:01:48.760 --> 0:01:51.480 we figured it would be essential to talk a little 0:01:51.520 --> 0:01:55.520 bit about like what diamonds are and roll through some 0:01:55.640 --> 0:01:58.000 material you may be familiar with, you may may not, 0:01:58.040 --> 0:02:01.480 you may have forgotten about it, but where diamonds come 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:05.400 from and what some of their major properties are. Right, 0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:07.840 we'll start with the obvious, and this is highly subjective, 0:02:07.880 --> 0:02:10.600 of course, but it's a popular view on diamonds, and 0:02:10.639 --> 0:02:15.160 that is they're beautiful. A diamond receives white light, breaks 0:02:15.200 --> 0:02:18.880 that white light like a prism, and then these resulting 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:22.200 colors hit the various facets of the diamond. What's more, 0:02:22.520 --> 0:02:25.040 light that enters a faceted diamond, which you can do 0:02:25.080 --> 0:02:27.800 from all sides, may bounce around in there several times 0:02:27.800 --> 0:02:29.400 before shining back out again. 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:33.840 You know, it actually was making me wonder why sparkling 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:38.200 is sort of a general stand in for something that 0:02:38.360 --> 0:02:41.600 is beautiful or something that catches the attention. You know. 0:02:42.000 --> 0:02:44.079 Yeah, I think part of it is just that we've 0:02:44.120 --> 0:02:47.720 all really drunk the kool aid on how beautiful diamonds are, 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:51.880 not only in our lifetimes, but the over centuries and 0:02:51.960 --> 0:02:57.120 centuries of pro diamond propaganda. Because it is interesting to 0:02:57.600 --> 0:02:59.560 We'll get into this in a bit, like trying to 0:02:59.560 --> 0:03:04.119 figure out out when in history diamonds start becoming gems, 0:03:04.639 --> 0:03:08.600 Like there's definitely definitely seems to be a point in 0:03:08.639 --> 0:03:11.359 ancient cultures where like a diamond's not a gem. It's 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:13.920 useful for cutting gems, but it's not a gem, and 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:16.760 then that shifts over time. So we'll get into that 0:03:16.800 --> 0:03:20.720 more in a bit. But in terms of light entering 0:03:20.760 --> 0:03:23.440 the diamond and what it does in there, here's another 0:03:23.480 --> 0:03:25.520 interesting fact. This is one that I was reading about 0:03:25.560 --> 0:03:29.080 in an excellent Nova article titled The Science behind the 0:03:29.120 --> 0:03:34.520 Sparkle by Robert Hazen. A diamond actually slows down light 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:39.640 inside of itself and does so like no other known 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:42.480 colorless substance. So compared to things like ice and water. 0:03:42.560 --> 0:03:46.160 For example, the author here writes that a diamond slows 0:03:46.240 --> 0:03:49.760 light down to less than eighty thousand miles per second, 0:03:50.080 --> 0:03:53.320 and that's more than one hundred thousand miles per second 0:03:53.440 --> 0:03:57.160 slower than in air. The slow down, Hayzan rites is 0:03:57.200 --> 0:03:59.480 complex and has to do with electron interactions and the 0:03:59.480 --> 0:04:03.040 substances traveling through and it occurs with any matter, including 0:04:03.120 --> 0:04:06.000 air and glass. And to put it all in context, 0:04:06.040 --> 0:04:07.920 the speed of light in a vacuum is of course 0:04:08.160 --> 0:04:11.200 one hundred and eighty six thousand miles per second. So anyway, 0:04:11.240 --> 0:04:13.760 you can crunch the numbers, and I think crunching numbers 0:04:13.760 --> 0:04:16.040 makes it actually feel a little more special when you 0:04:16.560 --> 0:04:19.680 observed the sparkle here. But yeah, they do sparkle with 0:04:19.720 --> 0:04:23.680 an almost otherworldly brilliance. There's a surreal dance of colors. 0:04:24.200 --> 0:04:28.119 And even if you don't desire diamonds for yourself, again, 0:04:28.160 --> 0:04:30.760 the desire for them is just so entrenched in our 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:33.240 culture that it's a part of our language. You know, 0:04:33.360 --> 0:04:36.280 you're just referencing, like talking about something sparkling, even if 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:38.200 it's not a diamond, you're talking about something else, but 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:40.440 you're talking about it as if it were a diamond 0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:43.160 We talk about things like diamonds in the rough and 0:04:43.200 --> 0:04:45.960 so forth. Now here's another thing you definitely already know 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:49.440 about diamonds. They're not only beautiful, they're very hard. Diamonds 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:52.039 are the hardest naturally occurring substance that we know of, 0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:55.599 so hard in fact, that they have numerous industrial applications. 0:04:55.920 --> 0:05:00.279 Yeah, that's right. And one thing that has confused in 0:05:00.279 --> 0:05:03.440 the past is like the different terminology we use for 0:05:03.520 --> 0:05:07.400 the strength or resilience of materials, because if we of 0:05:07.400 --> 0:05:10.040 course used terms like hard and tough and all that 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:12.640 in an informal way where they all kind of mean 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:15.640 the same thing, but they also have some more specific 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:20.800 kind of scientific definitions or definitions in industrial uses. And 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:23.680 it's i think illuminating to look at the difference. So 0:05:23.800 --> 0:05:28.680 what is toughness versus hardness? As usually understood, toughness is 0:05:28.720 --> 0:05:33.719 the ability of a material to absorb energy without breaking 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:38.520 or fracturing, whereas hardness is the ability of a material 0:05:38.920 --> 0:05:43.320 to resist what's called plastic deformation, in other words, to 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:48.080 resist local changes to its shape from friction. So to 0:05:48.120 --> 0:05:52.760 imagine concrete examples, these changes could be things like cutting, denting, 0:05:53.040 --> 0:05:57.279 or scratching. So the harder a material is, the more 0:05:57.400 --> 0:06:00.279 difficult it is to make a scratch or a dent 0:06:00.480 --> 0:06:03.839 in its surface. Hard materials don't scratch easily. In fact, 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:07.119 they scratch other things, and you can usually tell which 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:10.520 material is harder by rubbing them together and seeing which 0:06:10.560 --> 0:06:13.640 one scratches the other. Meanwhile, to come back to toughness, 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:18.640 brittleness is the opposite of toughness. The tougher material is 0:06:19.040 --> 0:06:22.520 the more energy it can absorb before it cracks. So 0:06:23.240 --> 0:06:26.760 rubber is not hard, but it is tough. You might 0:06:26.760 --> 0:06:29.359 be able to scratch it easily with a knife, but 0:06:29.440 --> 0:06:33.719 you can also hit it really hard and it won't fracture. Meanwhile, 0:06:33.760 --> 0:06:36.080 like you said, rob a diamond is the hardest and 0:06:36.440 --> 0:06:40.240 naturally occurring substance on Earth, so you can't scratch its 0:06:40.320 --> 0:06:43.800 surface with a knife or any other normal material apart 0:06:43.800 --> 0:06:46.400 from another diamond. It is going to be really, really 0:06:46.440 --> 0:06:49.360 difficult to make a scratch or a cut in a diamond. 0:06:49.640 --> 0:06:53.360 We need special apparatus for doing so. But while it's 0:06:53.400 --> 0:06:57.000 the hardest natural material on Earth, it is not the toughest. 0:06:57.120 --> 0:06:59.760 In fact, believe it or not, you can break a 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:03.960 diamond with a regular steel hammer and anvil in fact, 0:07:04.760 --> 0:07:07.600 before we I just wanted to gut check myself on 0:07:07.640 --> 0:07:09.560 this and be like, okay, well, assuming you can do that, 0:07:09.640 --> 0:07:11.360 I want to see it. I bet there are videos 0:07:11.400 --> 0:07:13.680 of people doing it, like on YouTube, and yep, you 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:15.760 can look them up. People put a diamond on an 0:07:15.760 --> 0:07:19.000 anvil and smash it with a hammer. It breaks to pieces. 0:07:19.560 --> 0:07:22.720 It's not necessarily easy to do, but with the regular 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:26.120 steel tools and enough force you can do it. That's right. 0:07:26.160 --> 0:07:30.320 And we'll get into some specific examples of diamonds being 0:07:30.360 --> 0:07:34.800 shattered as we proceed here. So yeah, they are not indestructible, 0:07:34.840 --> 0:07:38.840 even though at times our linguistic treatment of diamond and 0:07:38.920 --> 0:07:44.200 related terms ends up bleeding into that area. And in fact, 0:07:44.240 --> 0:07:46.840 I have a pretty i think amusing comic book example 0:07:46.880 --> 0:07:47.600 of that here in a. 0:07:47.560 --> 0:07:51.360 Bit oh nice. But just to reinforce the shorthand on 0:07:51.440 --> 0:07:54.600 toughness versus hardness, a hard material, it's going to be 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:59.600 difficult to cut, dent or scratch. A tough material, it's 0:07:59.640 --> 0:08:01.360 going to be difficult to break. 0:08:01.920 --> 0:08:04.520 Now here's another thing about diamonds that I think everyone 0:08:05.520 --> 0:08:07.880 either you know this or you've heard it before, or 0:08:08.040 --> 0:08:10.120 you're going to say, oh yeah, yeah, that's right. Now 0:08:10.160 --> 0:08:13.920 I remember, okay, we're all carbon based organisms here in 0:08:13.960 --> 0:08:17.040 a billion year old carbon if you will. And another 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:19.239 interesting thing to remember about diamonds is that a diamond 0:08:19.320 --> 0:08:21.400 is actually pure carbon. What we know of as a 0:08:21.400 --> 0:08:25.000 diamond is actually a crystalline form of carbon, a fact 0:08:25.040 --> 0:08:28.000 that was discovered for the first time in seventeen seventy 0:08:28.040 --> 0:08:34.199 two by French chemist Anthony Lavosier, an individual who made 0:08:34.280 --> 0:08:38.360 numerous contributions to the advancement of chemical and biological sciences 0:08:38.840 --> 0:08:41.160 before he was executed at the age of fifty on 0:08:41.320 --> 0:08:45.720 charges of tax fraud and tobacco adulteration. That's adding water 0:08:45.840 --> 0:08:47.880 to tobacco before sale. By the way, I had to look 0:08:47.920 --> 0:08:50.120 that up. I was like, what was this guy allegedly 0:08:50.160 --> 0:08:53.400 doing to his tobacco. These were charges that he was 0:08:53.440 --> 0:08:56.439 exonerated of a year and a half later, but by 0:08:56.440 --> 0:08:58.680 that point he was of course already dead. 0:08:59.040 --> 0:09:03.880 Adding tobacco, I would think of normally watering down a 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:08.040 liquid to adulterate it. I could maybe tobacco gets soggy, 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:10.600 so you can like bulk up the weight by getting 0:09:10.600 --> 0:09:11.880 water in it. I don't know, I guess though. 0:09:11.920 --> 0:09:13.760 Holding the thumb on the scales one way or another. 0:09:13.840 --> 0:09:17.200 Yeah, but you're saying they found that he didn't do 0:09:17.280 --> 0:09:18.400 it after they killed him. 0:09:18.720 --> 0:09:22.000 Yeah, yeah, after and pretty soon after they're like, actually 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:25.880 are bad on that one. A lot has was written 0:09:25.960 --> 0:09:28.600 and has been written about how this was maybe not 0:09:28.640 --> 0:09:31.640 a great move, because even in his short life that 0:09:31.760 --> 0:09:35.960 was obviously cut short by execution, he did make a 0:09:36.000 --> 0:09:39.360 number of contributions to the advancement of science. Now, speaking 0:09:39.360 --> 0:09:42.920 of liquids, though, I have to throw in in one 0:09:42.920 --> 0:09:46.199 of our primary sources for this series diamonds in Early 0:09:46.280 --> 0:09:49.960 History of the King of Gems by Jack Ogden. Ogden 0:09:49.960 --> 0:09:52.800 points out that during the Renaissance, various philosophers believe that 0:09:52.880 --> 0:09:57.800 diamonds must be some form of congealed juice or quote 0:09:57.880 --> 0:10:01.400 most pure juice juice. So of what I was a 0:10:01.400 --> 0:10:02.480 little unclear. 0:10:02.160 --> 0:10:04.880 On that juice of carbon, juice of carb. 0:10:06.640 --> 0:10:09.400 That gets us to where do diamonds come from. Naturally 0:10:09.400 --> 0:10:12.560 occurring diamonds are formed under intense pressure and temperature deep 0:10:12.600 --> 0:10:15.000 within the Earth and then brought to the surface via 0:10:15.080 --> 0:10:20.240 volcanic action. And diamonds are found in three types of deposits. 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:24.000 First of all, you have kimberlight pipes. These are formed 0:10:24.040 --> 0:10:28.840 by intrusions of magma into the Earth's crust, bringing in diamonds, 0:10:28.880 --> 0:10:32.240 among other things, from the Earth's mantle. The pipes themselves 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:34.000 tend to be only one hundred million years old, while 0:10:34.040 --> 0:10:36.720 the diamonds they bring up may be anywhere between like 0:10:36.760 --> 0:10:40.160 one and three point three billion years old. And then 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:45.280 you also have alluvial gravels and glacial tills. So in 0:10:45.360 --> 0:10:49.840 these diamonds are released by either fluvial or river based 0:10:50.280 --> 0:10:54.600 or glacial erosion of the kimber light matrix, and then 0:10:54.640 --> 0:10:57.679 they're redeposited in rivers or in a glacial till. This 0:10:57.720 --> 0:11:00.720 is the sediment moved by a glacier as it moves 0:11:01.440 --> 0:11:02.360 over the course of time. 0:11:03.360 --> 0:11:06.680 Right, So we need these mechanisms to explain diamonds being 0:11:06.679 --> 0:11:09.760 brought near to the surface of the Earth because they 0:11:09.760 --> 0:11:14.120 have to be formed way deep down in the Earth's mantle. 0:11:14.320 --> 0:11:17.040 Or they used to be before Superman, of course, But 0:11:17.200 --> 0:11:21.200 more truthfully, since around the nineteen fifties, we have been 0:11:21.240 --> 0:11:24.120 able to make synthetic diamonds that are chemically and physically 0:11:24.160 --> 0:11:28.600 identical to naturally occurring diamonds. But for the longest yeah, 0:11:28.679 --> 0:11:31.040 diamonds had to be mined from the Earth. And while 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:34.800 diamonds occur naturally on every continent and have been mined 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:37.800 around the world historically, and we'll come back to this, 0:11:37.840 --> 0:11:40.600 there was one place to gather your diamonds, and it 0:11:40.679 --> 0:11:54.640 was India. M Yeah, Now I mentioned that I would 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:57.600 get into comic books a little bit, because the connection 0:11:57.679 --> 0:11:59.600 here is that we should also mention that the word 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:04.800 diamonds and is actually linked directly to x Man Wolverine's 0:12:05.120 --> 0:12:07.480 claws and skeleton, because I don't have to tell most 0:12:07.480 --> 0:12:10.840 of you that Logan's retractable claws and bones are said 0:12:10.840 --> 0:12:14.079 to be coated with the fictional indestructible Sci fi metal 0:12:14.160 --> 0:12:18.120 known as adamantium. Now, the authors and artists of Marvel 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:21.640 Comics did not invent the idea of adamantium. It apparently 0:12:21.679 --> 0:12:26.800 pops up in earlier fictional works, a natural extrapolation of 0:12:26.840 --> 0:12:32.400 the adjective adamantine, which means unyielding or unbreakable, related to 0:12:32.480 --> 0:12:37.080 the word adamant as well, which this was all widely 0:12:37.200 --> 0:12:40.400 used in pre Marvel fiction. And of course all of 0:12:40.400 --> 0:12:42.640 this extends back to the ancient world as well, with 0:12:42.720 --> 0:12:46.520 writings in Greek and Latin that utilize atom ass either 0:12:46.679 --> 0:12:49.719 Once again, figuratively or in reference to some sort of 0:12:49.840 --> 0:12:53.840 legendary unbreakable stone or gym, such as in some tellings, 0:12:53.920 --> 0:12:57.760 the substance used to construct the chains that bound Cerberus, 0:12:58.080 --> 0:13:00.199 the great three headed hound of Hades. 0:13:00.559 --> 0:13:03.760 Yeah, so this is worth flagging because it leads to 0:13:03.800 --> 0:13:08.240 a confusion that could arise from some ancient sources. Because 0:13:08.559 --> 0:13:12.680 in some ancient sources people talk about something that seems 0:13:12.760 --> 0:13:15.880 like it could be a diamond, but we're not necessarily 0:13:16.000 --> 0:13:20.120 positive that's what they're referring to. And in some of 0:13:20.160 --> 0:13:23.280 these cases, these Latin or Greek writers are using this 0:13:23.440 --> 0:13:28.440 term adamas. The Latin word adamas derived from the Greek. Now, 0:13:28.520 --> 0:13:31.440 I was also reading about this in Ogden in Diamonds 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:34.880 in Early History of the King of Gems, and Ogden 0:13:34.920 --> 0:13:39.240 talks about how the English word diamond is derived from 0:13:39.280 --> 0:13:42.160 this Latin word adamas, which in turn came from the Greek. 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:46.040 And there's an interesting etymology here. So in Greek the 0:13:46.080 --> 0:13:52.840 word dama itself, dama meant something like conquer or tame. 0:13:53.160 --> 0:13:56.000 Elsewhere I've read that it had the sense of break, 0:13:56.160 --> 0:13:58.240 as in the way you would break a horse like 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:02.360 you would tame it. So with the negative prefix ah 0:14:02.400 --> 0:14:04.400 in front of it. That means kind of like un 0:14:05.000 --> 0:14:14.079 ah dema ademas meant unconquerable, untameable, unbreakable, unalterable. But Ogden says, 0:14:14.200 --> 0:14:19.880 in medieval European sources, the prefix ah starts to disappear 0:14:20.040 --> 0:14:23.840 from this Latin term adomas, and then we're just left 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:28.600 with terms like damon or Damon's, which in English eventually 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:32.440 became diamond. But by losing the ah prefix ahead of it, 0:14:32.640 --> 0:14:35.040 this would mean that according to Greek word logic, it's 0:14:35.080 --> 0:14:38.040 sort of losing the un in unbreakable, so it's kind 0:14:38.040 --> 0:14:41.280 of meaning tameable or breakable again. But of course that 0:14:41.360 --> 0:14:43.960 meaning was lost at this point, just came to mean 0:14:44.040 --> 0:14:47.240 the gem. But in its usage in ancient Greek and 0:14:47.360 --> 0:14:51.520 Roman sources, the term adomas may sometimes refer to diamonds, 0:14:51.520 --> 0:14:55.160 but it also clearly refers to other materials that were 0:14:55.160 --> 0:14:59.880 considered especially hard or strong, and Ogden calls out things 0:15:00.120 --> 0:15:03.760 like maybe maybe some sort of early proto steel or 0:15:03.800 --> 0:15:08.440 special naturally occurring alloys and grains found alongside gold and 0:15:08.600 --> 0:15:10.400 ore or other gems. 0:15:11.000 --> 0:15:14.000 That's right, that's right. Now. To come back to Marvel, 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:17.320 I was wondering, because again, you know, Marvel's been around 0:15:17.320 --> 0:15:20.320 long enough that there's so many characters and creatures that 0:15:20.400 --> 0:15:23.480 everything's been done at least once. Surely. I was like, well, 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:26.240 there's got to be a character that has either diamond 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:30.400 claws or a diamond skeleton, and in fact, there does 0:15:30.480 --> 0:15:34.520 seem to be such a creature. There is apparently an 0:15:34.600 --> 0:15:38.000 alternate timeline where you have a fusion of two characters. 0:15:38.160 --> 0:15:41.320 This apparently occurs throughout I think DC and Marvel both 0:15:41.320 --> 0:15:45.160 get into this, where not only do you have variants 0:15:45.200 --> 0:15:49.440 of different characters and different alternate realities, but you also 0:15:49.480 --> 0:15:54.560 have fusions of different individuals. So there's one alternate timeline, 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:58.520 one alternate Earth or whatever, where you have a single 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:03.080 entity that is merg urged out of Emma Frost aka 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:06.200 the White Queen, who has I think this ability to 0:16:06.200 --> 0:16:08.960 like shape shift into a diamond form that grants her 0:16:09.280 --> 0:16:14.560 immunity and invulnerability, especially from like psychic attacks. And then Wolverine, 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:18.520 who are just talking about this single entity who ends 0:16:18.560 --> 0:16:21.680 up looking like a really posh wolverine with blonde hair 0:16:21.720 --> 0:16:25.200 and an eye patch. His name is Diamond Patch apparently, 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:29.720 or that is his code name, and he has claws 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:33.520 and presumably a skeleton made out of diamond, and if 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:36.520 he stabs you with his diamond clause, he can read 0:16:36.560 --> 0:16:37.000 your mind. 0:16:40.000 --> 0:16:42.320 Why is he called diamond patch? He does have an 0:16:42.320 --> 0:16:45.880 eye patch. Is the eyepatch made of diamond? 0:16:46.400 --> 0:16:46.600 Ah? 0:16:47.000 --> 0:16:47.400 Maybe? 0:16:47.480 --> 0:16:49.400 I don't know. I mean, if you if your claws 0:16:49.440 --> 0:16:52.520 are diamond, maybe you don't want to accessorize with diamonds 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:54.480 too much. I'm not sure. I'm not an expert on 0:16:54.560 --> 0:16:57.440 diamond patch here. We'll have to hear from our more 0:16:57.480 --> 0:17:01.000 devoted comic readers out there. But it does raise all 0:17:01.040 --> 0:17:03.880 sorts of questions about what it would be like to 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:08.920 have a skeleton made out of diamond. It doesn't sound 0:17:08.960 --> 0:17:10.960 particularly great if you're going to potentially get into a 0:17:11.080 --> 0:17:13.240 you know, some sort of a throwdown with the Hulk 0:17:13.359 --> 0:17:13.800 or something. 0:17:14.240 --> 0:17:16.080 I wonder if there's a plot line where he pounds 0:17:16.080 --> 0:17:18.280 his claws into a powder and then feeds it as 0:17:18.280 --> 0:17:19.280 poisoned to somebody. 0:17:19.880 --> 0:17:21.800 I don't know, I would hope so, I mean, but 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:23.760 then I guess he has the healing factor too, So 0:17:24.720 --> 0:17:28.360 what does that mean? Does like his powderized bones then 0:17:28.440 --> 0:17:31.879 reheal into a solid diamond once more? I'm not sure. 0:17:32.320 --> 0:17:36.200 They really do do everything in comic books, don't they 0:17:36.320 --> 0:17:37.920 what you were just saying a minute ago, is right. 0:17:38.000 --> 0:17:40.399 Like anytime you imagine, I wonder if somebody's done this. 0:17:40.560 --> 0:17:42.719 There's like a comic book where somebody did that. 0:17:43.240 --> 0:17:45.240 Yeah, yeah, it's been done and it was it was 0:17:45.280 --> 0:17:47.680 maybe done decades ago, and it's been done a second time. 0:17:48.000 --> 0:17:50.199 They've revisited it. But that's one of the things I 0:17:50.200 --> 0:17:53.480 love about diving into the world of comics. 0:17:53.640 --> 0:17:57.240 There's so much variety, a world where all possible elevator 0:17:57.320 --> 0:18:01.400 pitches have been realized. That's right, he made of diamond. 0:18:03.520 --> 0:18:06.040 All right, Well, at this point, let's turn our attention 0:18:06.600 --> 0:18:10.400 back to the real world and back specifically to India 0:18:10.480 --> 0:18:11.359 and ancient India. 0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:12.400 Again. 0:18:12.440 --> 0:18:16.200 India is extremely important in the history of diamonds, as 0:18:16.240 --> 0:18:20.000 Ogden points out in the book, until the sixteen hundreds 0:18:20.000 --> 0:18:23.080 it was the most important, if not the only, source 0:18:23.119 --> 0:18:27.360 of diamonds in the Mediterranean, in European worlds, and Ogden 0:18:27.520 --> 0:18:30.800 mentions has a lot to share about diamonds in this book. 0:18:30.840 --> 0:18:34.359 This is a terrific book. Highly recommend it. At one 0:18:34.359 --> 0:18:37.080 point he mentions some of the protective aspects of the 0:18:37.160 --> 0:18:41.480 diamond that you see appearing in Indian lore at different 0:18:41.480 --> 0:18:46.000 points that they may have provided protection against quote serpents, tigers, 0:18:46.040 --> 0:18:50.600 and thieves. That one gave me a lot of pause there, 0:18:50.680 --> 0:18:54.120 because I'm trying to imagine, first of all, our diamond's 0:18:54.160 --> 0:18:56.800 going to protect you from thieves. That doesn't seem like 0:18:56.880 --> 0:19:01.760 a very logical idea tigers. That it made me think about, well, okay, 0:19:01.800 --> 0:19:05.760 a tiger is a you know, an ambush predator that 0:19:05.960 --> 0:19:11.040 wants to make sure it has the most advantageous attack conditions. 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:13.920 And you and I have seen, you know, some compelling 0:19:14.000 --> 0:19:18.159 evidence about, say, weighing ways to deter a tiger attack 0:19:18.240 --> 0:19:20.240 by having like a fake eyes on the back of 0:19:20.280 --> 0:19:22.399 your head and so forth, wearing like a mask on 0:19:22.440 --> 0:19:25.760 the back of your head, and to whatever extent that 0:19:25.880 --> 0:19:28.119 is useful or not. You could think, well, okay, a 0:19:28.160 --> 0:19:31.320 diamond glitters. Maybe a diamond does something optical that in 0:19:31.320 --> 0:19:34.919 some way might make a tiger think twice about attacking you. 0:19:35.119 --> 0:19:39.120 I'm not sure that's interesting. Yeah, I wonder the sparkling 0:19:39.200 --> 0:19:41.800 could function kind of like eye spots or just in 0:19:41.840 --> 0:19:46.320 some other way could disrupt a tiger an ambush predator 0:19:46.440 --> 0:19:48.360 since that attack is now appropriate. 0:19:49.160 --> 0:19:51.080 Yeah, yeah, so I don't know. I didn't look too 0:19:51.080 --> 0:19:55.640 hard into that, but it came to mind. Ogden also 0:19:55.680 --> 0:19:59.560 mentions that that for the most part, these diamonds were 0:19:59.600 --> 0:20:01.840 for me and only, and they were thought to make 0:20:01.920 --> 0:20:06.440 women quote sterile and unhappy. And he points out that 0:20:06.480 --> 0:20:09.600 while this notion runs against the general modern marketing trend 0:20:09.600 --> 0:20:13.960 with diamonds, which has European roots, you know, for the longest, 0:20:14.200 --> 0:20:17.680 the durable diamond was considered the perfect gem to symbolize 0:20:17.680 --> 0:20:20.280 the masculine might of kings. Ah. 0:20:20.320 --> 0:20:23.240 Okay, So it's like, oh, because the diamond is invincible, 0:20:23.280 --> 0:20:25.959 it makes people think that I'm invincible, I'm so strong, 0:20:26.040 --> 0:20:26.720 I'm so tough. 0:20:27.240 --> 0:20:30.520 Yes, just ignore the part about how you can smash 0:20:30.520 --> 0:20:33.440 it with a hammer, and it just becomes a million almost. 0:20:33.480 --> 0:20:37.760 It almost becomes almost invisible when you break it. Right now, 0:20:38.600 --> 0:20:42.119 A quick note on jim stones in general, because we 0:20:42.160 --> 0:20:44.400 get into this whole half like gems and then diamonds. 0:20:44.880 --> 0:20:48.680 I decided to look this up in Brian M. Fagan's 0:20:48.760 --> 0:20:51.600 seventy Great Inventions of the Ancient World. Guess who has 0:20:51.840 --> 0:20:55.960 co author is in the section on gemstones. It's Jack Ogden. 0:20:56.160 --> 0:21:00.760 Oh okay, so once more, at least partially said Ogden. Here, 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:04.680 gems have factored into human jewelry since the earliest times, 0:21:05.160 --> 0:21:09.480 though the setting of colored stones which were the preference 0:21:09.640 --> 0:21:13.639 for the longest, with the move toward transparent gemstones not 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:16.440 occurring un till the first millennium BC with the rise 0:21:16.480 --> 0:21:19.840 of the Persian Empire. The setting of colored stones was 0:21:19.840 --> 0:21:24.440 only possible once a fairly sophisticated metal working industry was established. 0:21:24.840 --> 0:21:27.679 So they point out that for the longest, colored stones 0:21:27.720 --> 0:21:32.000 were used as quote, blocks of pigment, and this would 0:21:32.000 --> 0:21:36.440 be inlaid in a metal form. The stones were usually 0:21:36.520 --> 0:21:39.000 cut to fit a particular setting, and it wasn't until 0:21:39.080 --> 0:21:41.399 later that the reverse would become the fad. 0:21:41.840 --> 0:21:44.359 Oh okay, So if I'm understanding this right, it would 0:21:44.359 --> 0:21:47.920 mean like that originally gems were more like just sort 0:21:47.960 --> 0:21:51.200 of a tool. They were one piece of artistic filler 0:21:51.320 --> 0:21:54.960 to fill out whatever it is you're designing. But later 0:21:55.040 --> 0:21:57.000 on they would come to be more of the focus 0:21:57.040 --> 0:21:59.760 and whatever you're designing would be based around the gym 0:21:59.800 --> 0:22:01.199 inn it correct. 0:22:01.280 --> 0:22:03.439 Yeah, that's that's the point I was taking from all 0:22:03.480 --> 0:22:05.919 of this. And in addition to the rise of the 0:22:05.920 --> 0:22:08.960 Persian Empire, you also had other factors influencing the shift 0:22:09.000 --> 0:22:12.520 towards transparent gemstones. I mean, not that you completely abandoned 0:22:12.520 --> 0:22:16.159 color gyms, but like sort of the opening of the 0:22:16.240 --> 0:22:18.480 mind to the idea that, hey, these are beautiful. As well, 0:22:18.680 --> 0:22:20.680 you have things like the conquest of Alexander the Great, 0:22:20.720 --> 0:22:23.320 which we'll come back to, and a number of other 0:22:23.320 --> 0:22:26.040 factors that Ogden gets into more depth about in the book, 0:22:26.119 --> 0:22:30.240 you know, with various trade routes opening up and so forth. Now, 0:22:30.240 --> 0:22:33.439 according to Ogden, the earliest known use of diamonds in 0:22:33.560 --> 0:22:37.480 jewelry and you know, of course enormous caveat with all this. 0:22:37.600 --> 0:22:40.159 You know, this is based on surviving written records, This 0:22:40.240 --> 0:22:43.480 is based on surviving artifacts and so forth. The earliest 0:22:43.520 --> 0:22:46.480 known use of diamonds and jewelry dates back to after 0:22:46.800 --> 0:22:51.240 three twenty five BCE in northern India and Afghanistan, following 0:22:51.280 --> 0:22:55.560 Alexander the Great's military conquest in this area, and the 0:22:55.600 --> 0:22:59.119 earliest diamond rings come from this region as well. Again, 0:22:59.240 --> 0:23:01.159 going we have to go by to the caveat about 0:23:01.760 --> 0:23:05.280 metallurgy and metal working having to reach a certain point 0:23:05.320 --> 0:23:08.119 before you could really make much in the way of 0:23:08.200 --> 0:23:11.280