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