Speaker 1: Hi, friends. If this were to be July and you're
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know listener, you might be queuing up
Speaker 1: the following episode, but it's not. It's modern times. But
Speaker 1: I enjoyed this one, so it's my select pic. It's
Speaker 1: all about the Terracotta Army, and it's called How the
Speaker 1: Terracotta Army Works. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark with Charles w Chuck Bryant and Jerry.
Speaker 1: We're just hanging figure. We pressed record and see what happens. Yeah. Sorry,
Speaker 1: Terracotta Army of three not very imposing over Terracotta. Did
Speaker 1: you go to the High Museum and see this when
Speaker 1: it was around? No? I didn't, you know, Yumi did,
Speaker 1: and I wish I would have gone, but I did not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but she was quite blown away. It was awesome and
Speaker 1: I didn't even um. I hadn't heard of it until then.
Speaker 1: And then when I went and saw it, it was like,
Speaker 1: this is pretty amazing, what a great story, And then
Speaker 1: I wanted to podcast about it and then just sort
Speaker 1: of forgot and now here it is a year later
Speaker 1: or however long. Yes, it was a while ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was UM but it's still a pretty fascinating story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in that exhibit. If you live UM in on planet Earth,
Speaker 1: go to the website and see where it's going to be,
Speaker 1: because it travels around there like the Body's exhibit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's, uh, there's this exhibit and then I
Speaker 1: think there's permanent UM exhibits elsewhere. There's a permanent exhibit
Speaker 1: at the site itself, and it's pretty maybe one in London,
Speaker 1: I'm not positive. Well, London has everything, but they do,
Speaker 1: they do. The only thing they don't have is twelve
Speaker 1: ounces of bears. That's yeah, because there's sixteen owns that's right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't need it. I took a trip there. I
Speaker 1: was like, what's with all these tallboys? And they're like,
Speaker 1: what's that? Oh? I get it now. Yeah. And it's
Speaker 1: not like you when you go to the pub, you
Speaker 1: don't go in for a twelve ounce or you go
Speaker 1: for a point. Yeah, and it's an imperial point, right?
Speaker 1: Is that more than sixteen ounces? Is that one point?
Speaker 1: Is that sixteen point nine? Is that one point nine ounces?
Speaker 1: I'll bet it is. Jerry hold up fingers. Jerry said
Speaker 1: twenty ounces is an imperial point, So I was wrong.
Speaker 1: Sixteen is a standard point. Are you sure it's not
Speaker 1: twenty five, Jerry. That's called a double doucee. That's called
Speaker 1: the core's double doucee. Double deuce is technically why because
Speaker 1: the twelve is a single? Right? No, but a double
Speaker 1: I thought double juice just meant we're gonna put two
Speaker 1: beers into one can. That's the double double beer. What
Speaker 1: what are we talking about today? I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: thirsty all of a sudden, though. You want a beer.
Speaker 1: It's Friday. I love a beer. Let me just reach
Speaker 1: into my bag. Here, you're your cooler bag, carry around
Speaker 1: like a purse. I wish man, that'd be fun, cooler
Speaker 1: Fannie pack drinking on the job like it's a nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties Ye alright, let's get serious, buddy, okay, Chuck. On
Speaker 1: the morning of March seven, farmers set out to dig
Speaker 1: a well, so begins the article on how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot Com. Yes, but it also begins this story A
Speaker 1: pretty amazing story. Actually, yeah, it's it's awesome. This was
Speaker 1: in the Chinese village of Good Look ug oh, that
Speaker 1: was pretty good. That's what I'm gonna say, um, And
Speaker 1: they were digging for water and got down about thirteen
Speaker 1: feet and hit something hard and dug up a terra
Speaker 1: cotta face and head, and we're like, exactly, they're probably
Speaker 1: whoa yeah or whatever the Chinese expression for what would
Speaker 1: be what was kind of universal? Okay, I'm curious we
Speaker 1: do have We found out we're not banned in China,
Speaker 1: by the way, Yeah, so hello to all of our
Speaker 1: listeners out there in China. Um, and will you let
Speaker 1: us know what woe was in Chinese? Yeah? I think
Speaker 1: we should do a show sometime on universal uh sounds Yeah,
Speaker 1: like UM have heard different um or read different things
Speaker 1: about how people laugh in different countries and people remark
Speaker 1: of of of affirmation or decline something like, I think
Speaker 1: it'd be really interesting. Yeah. They're called idioms, right, is
Speaker 1: that what it is? Like? Here we might go huh,
Speaker 1: but somewhere else they might go what else? I don't know.
Speaker 1: We got we have focus here, terracotta army. Yes. Um.
Speaker 1: So they alerted the government like any good UM citizens should,
Speaker 1: and said, hey, I think we have something here you
Speaker 1: should come look at. Yeah. Because when they dug down
Speaker 1: a little more and they found shards of the same
Speaker 1: type of pottery, and a lot of it in kind
Speaker 1: of vague human form. And that's when they're like, there's
Speaker 1: something weird going on here, So let's contact the authorities.
Speaker 1: And the authorities said archaeologists away and sent them out
Speaker 1: to the site. Because it was nineteen seventy four, they said, hey,
Speaker 1: let's contact the Chinese government right away. That's right. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that would happen today. Uh the Chinese people,
Speaker 1: you think, I don't know. It depends on who they are.
Speaker 1: I would guess they probably were more likely to in
Speaker 1: seventy four than today. All right, So what they knew
Speaker 1: the the government and experts and archaeologists said, well, hold
Speaker 1: on a minute, you guys are digging near the burial
Speaker 1: ground of Chin sure Hondi and Um he was the
Speaker 1: first emperor of China and he had a huge mausoleum,
Speaker 1: and I bet you anything that's what you guys have found.
Speaker 1: And uh, it turns out they were right. The archaeologist
Speaker 1: so Um. The legend had it that Um Chin sure Huangdi,
Speaker 1: China's first emperor, Um had himself built a pretty awesome mausoleum.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, you couldn't even call it
Speaker 1: a mausoleum. It was called a funerary complex. It was
Speaker 1: so massive. But as they started to dig and get
Speaker 1: further and further along in this excavation, which they have
Speaker 1: still not even and come close to completing, from something, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the size of Manhattan, the size of Manhattan, his
Speaker 1: his mausoleum um, they started to realize, like it's even
Speaker 1: bigger than we ever thought. Like it wasn't lost. They
Speaker 1: knew that he was buried somewhere around this area. It
Speaker 1: was just you don't go digging up emperor's tombs. But
Speaker 1: these these farmers had found something pretty interesting and it
Speaker 1: was enough to get the archaeologists over that, and they
Speaker 1: started to dig. And they still have yet to excavate
Speaker 1: Cheen's tomb, his actual tomb where he's buried, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk about that later. But when they started dig, they
Speaker 1: started to reveal like more and more of these terra
Speaker 1: cotta figures, and they would stumble upon one room. At
Speaker 1: first they stumbled upon a room and they found chuck,
Speaker 1: like six thousand of these things of infantry in all
Speaker 1: standing at the ready, all larger than life. They were
Speaker 1: about six to six and a half feet tall. That's
Speaker 1: including the base. Yeah, all made of terra cotta. Um, crossbows,
Speaker 1: finger on the trigger, um, dudes on horses. Well, those
Speaker 1: are in separate rooms. So first room was like six
Speaker 1: thousand infant freemen. It was lined up like a information
Speaker 1: information would be lined up. Then there was another room
Speaker 1: that had like specialists like cavalry, got archers with crossbows,
Speaker 1: blow darters yeah. Um. And then there was a third
Speaker 1: room that had I think eighties six like commanders. It
Speaker 1: was like the command room. So basically what they revealed
Speaker 1: was this terra cotta army information in this guy's grave, yes,
Speaker 1: with the idea that, um, he wanted protection in the
Speaker 1: afterlife because he was one of the great jerks of
Speaker 1: world history. He really Yeah, he was terrible. He was
Speaker 1: a tyrant, for sure. He was a He perhaps was
Speaker 1: responsible for the deaths of more than one million of
Speaker 1: his citizens. He also, though, got things done. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the guy. Okay. So he was the first emperor.
Speaker 1: Before him, China had seven kingdoms, and um in four
Speaker 1: eighty one, all these kingdoms said, you know what, I
Speaker 1: want to be the main kingdom. So it started what
Speaker 1: was called the Warring States, the era of battling for
Speaker 1: land and superiority. And I saw this really neat documentary
Speaker 1: on that geo I think called China's Ghost Army. I
Speaker 1: think it's what's called. I posted a link on our
Speaker 1: on our podcast page for this episode. Totally worth watching.
Speaker 1: It's like an hour. But they say that UM before this,
Speaker 1: prior to this Warring States era, when an emperor died
Speaker 1: in chen the chen Um Kingdom, Uh, they would kill
Speaker 1: the whole court, hundreds of people would be buried alive
Speaker 1: with the emperor. And then this Warring States, these battles
Speaker 1: and wars were so significant as far as casualties went.
Speaker 1: There like, we can't do that anymore, we need them
Speaker 1: to go fight in the wars. So they stopped that tradition.
Speaker 1: But it was because of this Um the Warring States
Speaker 1: era interesting and that can you imagine like two people
Speaker 1: just being mass buried alive together because the emperor died,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine. So let's get back to this jerk
Speaker 1: cheen He Uh He overtook and basically was the first emperor.
Speaker 1: Uh forced people to be in the army, built up
Speaker 1: a huge army UM. He relocated in his first year
Speaker 1: about a hundred and twenty thousand families. And that's like
Speaker 1: Stalin did that same thing. It's like, you can't have
Speaker 1: ethnic unity and then that kind of collective thought and
Speaker 1: then potentially an upper rising if you break up that
Speaker 1: kind of ethnic bonds by basically bussing people in and
Speaker 1: out of different areas. Yeah, it makes sense, but this
Speaker 1: guy was doing it like um, a couple like about
Speaker 1: two thousand years before stalling crazy. He burned all the books,
Speaker 1: he burned all the writings. Uh. Scholars that didn't jibe
Speaker 1: with his line of thought were buried alive or beheaded. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He was a piece of garbage and he was terrible. Um.
Speaker 1: He assembled a workforce of a million men to build
Speaker 1: about five thousand miles of roads, um. And the Great
Speaker 1: Wall of China. Yeah, the first Great Wall of China.
Speaker 1: So while he said he was a jerk, he made
Speaker 1: a point. He got things done. I mean he he
Speaker 1: got a monetary system that was unified. Yeah. He also
Speaker 1: unified weights and measurements. Um. He unified China from seven
Speaker 1: kingdoms into one country. And it's still that way today
Speaker 1: two thousand years later. And if you've noticed the similarity
Speaker 1: between Chin and China, that's because the country is named
Speaker 1: after him, so he got things done. Vital figure in
Speaker 1: China's history, but he did a brutal, brutal, controlling, murderous dictator. Right.
Speaker 1: He wasn't asking, And he also had a really conflated
Speaker 1: view of his the empire that he'd put together. And
Speaker 1: you can see this apparently in the money that he minted.
Speaker 1: Like he there were different regions that he conquered had
Speaker 1: different kinds of money, so he did create like a
Speaker 1: single monetary system. I think you said, um, and that
Speaker 1: that money was square shaped with a hole in the center,
Speaker 1: so kind of like a square donut. The band Liang
Speaker 1: coin and that coin at the time in ancient China,
Speaker 1: um the square represented the earth and the circle represented
Speaker 1: the sky or the heavens. And so what he was
Speaker 1: saying is that this earth, my empire, is even greater
Speaker 1: than the heavens that surround the earth. That's how how
Speaker 1: good I'm feeling about my off right now? He felt
Speaker 1: pretty good, but he was parah annoyed, and I think
Speaker 1: that usually comes when you're on top and you get
Speaker 1: there by any means necessary, you're gonna be watching your
Speaker 1: back your whole life. Um. Specifically, he came from the
Speaker 1: west and conquered eastward. So when he was buried, he
Speaker 1: had the terra Cotta army facing east to protect him
Speaker 1: because of all the badness he had done. And this
Speaker 1: is after he had killed hundreds of scientists that he
Speaker 1: commissioned to try and prolong his life. Yeah, so we
Speaker 1: talked about him actually in the Bizarre Medical Treatments episode.
Speaker 1: I think without realizing it, that um, he at the
Speaker 1: back in the day at the time they believe mercury
Speaker 1: had some sort of like life enhancing or immortality bestowing properties,
Speaker 1: and he would take mercury pill. I think that that's
Speaker 1: ironically what killed him. Um. But he in addition to mercury,
Speaker 1: he sent out people to like find Fountain of Youth
Speaker 1: or whatever was the Chinese legend version of that. Um.
Speaker 1: He was obsessed with remaining alive and simultaneously, like you said,
Speaker 1: totally paranoid with dying. So he must have been a
Speaker 1: very tormented person. Yeah, he killed. Hum. Doctors and scientists
Speaker 1: were killed who could not come up with a way
Speaker 1: to make him immortal and again buried alive or beheaded. O. Great.
Speaker 1: Not a good guy. UM, all right, you want to
Speaker 1: take a break here and talk more about the terracotta army. Yes, sorry,
Speaker 1: so chuck, Um, when we uh, we were talking about
Speaker 1: this guy, think you're paying it a pretty good picture
Speaker 1: of him. I guess he comes to either he comes
Speaker 1: to grip with the idea that he's going to die,
Speaker 1: because at the time, like he's trying to chase immortality,
Speaker 1: he's concocting um like a huge burial massoleum for himself.
Speaker 1: I guess, hedging his bets in case he does die.
Speaker 1: But by this time, like Confucius and other scholars in
Speaker 1: China had basically like philosophically debunked the idea of life
Speaker 1: after death. So this man was utterly crazy by his
Speaker 1: contemporary standards. Um, And that kind of shows if you
Speaker 1: step back and really think about the attitude and the
Speaker 1: mentality behind what he was doing. But he at some
Speaker 1: point either came to grips with the factors he was
Speaker 1: gonna die, or he was just hedging his bets and
Speaker 1: thought he was going to remain immortal. But just in case,
Speaker 1: let me have this incredible grand funerary complex created, and
Speaker 1: let's build a terra Cotta army to protect me in
Speaker 1: the afterlife. Yeah, it's really neat to look at the
Speaker 1: terr Kotta army. Now is art, but it's eight thousand soldiers.
Speaker 1: Like this guy was clearly cuckoo. He was off his rocker. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was a bad man. He was a bad man. Alright.
Speaker 1: So shall we start with the army. Yes, let's because
Speaker 1: it's not all that was that he had commission. But
Speaker 1: the armies are very it's pretty significant. It is significant. Um,
Speaker 1: Like you said, they are in formation. So the front
Speaker 1: dudes are Um, they're kneeling down their bowmen and they
Speaker 1: were famous the armies they had then, and this is
Speaker 1: one of the reasons he took over. They figured out
Speaker 1: the crossbow, and they figured out how to shoot while
Speaker 1: riding a horse, and that was basically all she wrote. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody else is like your mother. Yeah, like down here
Speaker 1: with a sword on the ground and you're shooting at
Speaker 1: me from twenty ft away with some weird metallic bolt.
Speaker 1: I guess not metallic, but wouldn't. Yeah, they weren't forging
Speaker 1: steel back then. I wonder when they did start. I
Speaker 1: don't know. It sounds like a podcast it does how
Speaker 1: steel works. Yeah, it would be a good one. I
Speaker 1: could see that. Um. So you have these bowmen, they
Speaker 1: have on their armor. Um, their fingers on the trigger
Speaker 1: there incredibly detailed down to the soles of their feet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have their shoes they're wearing have like tread marks
Speaker 1: on the bottom. So they took great pride, these artists,
Speaker 1: clearly because they probably didn't want to get killed, because
Speaker 1: each of them had to sign in case there was
Speaker 1: a flaw, it could be traced back to who built
Speaker 1: this one. Yeah, that they were killed if they didn't
Speaker 1: like it. They most decidedly were. There were eighty three.
Speaker 1: They found the stamps, which were ultimately the signatures of
Speaker 1: eighty three different foreman, and each foreman had a team
Speaker 1: of apprentices working under him, and the reason that they
Speaker 1: did assign those stamps was so that he could have
Speaker 1: them killed if he didn't like how slow work was progressing,
Speaker 1: if he didn't like what it looked like. Um. And
Speaker 1: at first, chuck, they were like, well, this is clearly
Speaker 1: they just set up an assembly line. Molds were known
Speaker 1: to the Chinese back then, and um, that's the only
Speaker 1: way you could possibly create seven thousand figures from a
Speaker 1: terra cotta army. And they found that yes, actually the
Speaker 1: heads were um created through molds. I think that arms
Speaker 1: were and stuff like that, but the bulk of them
Speaker 1: were created by this thing called coiling. Okay, so what
Speaker 1: is that like three D printing? Very much so. Actually
Speaker 1: they take clay and hammer until it's soft impliable, and
Speaker 1: then you wrap it in like a rope around it,
Speaker 1: and then you mold it. And the thing it really
Speaker 1: took these there's people who are recreating it to try
Speaker 1: to figure out how they did it, and they've examined
Speaker 1: like broken pieces so they can see the inside and
Speaker 1: they can see the coiling evidence very clearly, and they're like,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make any sense, Like you can't quickly make
Speaker 1: um all these figures in an efficient way by coiling?
Speaker 1: Why would they not just use molds? And finally somebody realized,
Speaker 1: like this emperor was a bloodthirsty tie right, he didn't
Speaker 1: care about efficiency. He cared about differences distinctions. So while
Speaker 1: so while the heads, just the actual shape of the
Speaker 1: heads were made in molds, the bodies were made by hand,
Speaker 1: each one through this coiling method. So where you could
Speaker 1: make like a molded body and maybe a week, it
Speaker 1: would take a month to do one body by coiling.
Speaker 1: And that's what they were doing because he wanted them different.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. Yeah, he just didn't want to carbon carbon
Speaker 1: copies soldiers exactly. So each one of these the body
Speaker 1: was made by hand through this incredibly intensive coiling method.
Speaker 1: So they're starting from the ground up obviously with the
Speaker 1: base and then coiling their way up. The legs then
Speaker 1: were molded and affixed, uh, as well as the arms
Speaker 1: and torsos. No, not the torsos, not the torso No,
Speaker 1: that's not right. Um okay, gotcha. But then the heads,
Speaker 1: they said they found eight different head molds. Yes, and
Speaker 1: that's just the big mold, not the right. The faces
Speaker 1: were done by hand individually as well, right, each face. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The hair and expressions, yeah yeah, and the hair uh.
Speaker 1: You know, warriors who had had the most kills had
Speaker 1: longer hair and a bigger up right bigger bee high
Speaker 1: and um, so they would you know, they took great
Speaker 1: care into making you know, the the most revered soldiers
Speaker 1: have their hair matched as it should, basically as realistic
Speaker 1: as they could. Yeah. Like around, if you're just an infantryman,
Speaker 1: you'd be wearing like one of one of those beanies,
Speaker 1: a beanie hat probably, um, with maybe like your bund
Speaker 1: just kind of sticking up off to the side. Underneath,
Speaker 1: if you're a general, you might be wearing a huge
Speaker 1: hat with a pheasant feather and a bow tying the
Speaker 1: whole thing underneath you. Pretty fancy, Yeah, very fancy. So
Speaker 1: these things were incredibly detailed. They weren't like a knockoff
Speaker 1: Star Wars figure that you would find in bulk Area
Speaker 1: or something like that, you know, or China. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: that was way more appropriate than Bulgaria. They probably make
Speaker 1: the real thing too. Um. Yeah, these were very detailed.
Speaker 1: Not you know, you wouldn't want to say lifelike. They're
Speaker 1: still artistic slightly, but they were pretty detailed still. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they the ones you see now when they see
Speaker 1: him in the museum or you look it up on Google. Um,
Speaker 1: they are not colored, but that is because of humidity
Speaker 1: and time. But um, originally they fired him in the
Speaker 1: killing and they painted and lacquered them as well. That's right.
Speaker 1: I'd love to see those. Look at watch that National
Speaker 1: Geographic thing. They've redone one in the original colors that
Speaker 1: they think, and they're almost garish. They're so different like
Speaker 1: colorful wise and um, lots of surprising lavenders and blues
Speaker 1: and purples and things, reds, colors used to be way
Speaker 1: more garish. Um, but so okay. They were doing some
Speaker 1: assembly line stuff. Most of the bulk of it, though,
Speaker 1: was coiled by hand. The faces, the hair all done
Speaker 1: by hand, and then each one was painted by hand
Speaker 1: and then given a coat of lacquer. That's insane. It's
Speaker 1: insane that the Sky would have had an assembly line
Speaker 1: of seven thousand of these things built and unpainted. But
Speaker 1: he didn't. He went even more detailed. And apparently also
Speaker 1: I learned from that documentary at the time lacquer was
Speaker 1: an extremely expensive um product and he was using it
Speaker 1: on his terra cottas soldiers. It still ain't cheap, uh,
Speaker 1: And that they there wasn't just the soldiers, there were
Speaker 1: also um some Uh. There was a strong man in
Speaker 1: another room and some what do you call him that
Speaker 1: circus performers, Yeah, acrobats. And I looked up the strong
Speaker 1: man and he was noted for the detail of his
Speaker 1: biceps and he had a gut, he did, he had
Speaker 1: a gut and some my guns, yeah, cutting guns. He's
Speaker 1: missing his head right, Yeah, I didn't see a head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, he's got he's a big boy. He's like um,
Speaker 1: he was built like Andre the Giant, Yeah kind of
Speaker 1: all right, you want to take another little rest here,
Speaker 1: We'll take a quick napa and then I'll let you
Speaker 1: awake very gently. All right, We'll we'll finish up. What up, buddy, huh,
Speaker 1: it's time to finish the terracott army. Oh man, oh,
Speaker 1: I got like crusted in my eyes. Look at you. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm back, Chuck, Okay. So Geen wasn't the only ruler
Speaker 1: to do this, right, No, he wasn't. Who else did it? Well?
Speaker 1: Do you remember in our Pyramids episode, although it hasn't
Speaker 1: come out yet, no one will know what I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: but you will eventually. Um, we talked about how the
Speaker 1: the Pyramid of Cufu was the pinnacle of pyramid building
Speaker 1: in dynastic Egypt, and then the pyramids got smaller because
Speaker 1: the rulers um cred I guess went down as people
Speaker 1: started to worship the Sun instead. Great point that I
Speaker 1: had never considered. Very similar thing happened in China as
Speaker 1: people as the well. The Ching dynasty only lasted for
Speaker 1: another four years after Cheen sure huangdi um died, and
Speaker 1: then the Han dynasty started, and the Hans apparently had
Speaker 1: much um easier hand with their subjects, and so as
Speaker 1: a result, even though they had terracotta armies buried with them,
Speaker 1: they were like a third to a sixth of the
Speaker 1: size of Cheen's terracotta army. And they take that as
Speaker 1: a sign and that this um might empower over people.
Speaker 1: Um had diminished tremendously. Yeah, I think it was symbolic
Speaker 1: of a kinder Um regime UM and one that was
Speaker 1: not also booby trapped with like very much like Raiders
Speaker 1: of the Lost Arc. Apparently Cheens to him or the
Speaker 1: whole complex was booby trapped with like blow darts and
Speaker 1: stuff ready to go ye, and also we did we um.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons why this thing was booby trapped
Speaker 1: was to prevent looters. Because remember there's a historian that
Speaker 1: was that came along not too long after. He's a
Speaker 1: part of the early Han dynasty. From what I understand,
Speaker 1: his name is Sema kion Um, and Seema Kian is
Speaker 1: the one who first described cheens mausoleum. And one of
Speaker 1: the things he described is that Um on the ceiling
Speaker 1: was a constellation made of pearls and gems. Mountains had
Speaker 1: been chiseled out of gold and that um that Cheen's
Speaker 1: tomb itself was surrounded by a river of mercury. Because
Speaker 1: remember again, since they said that um it bestowed immortality,
Speaker 1: and from what I understand, a lot of what Sima
Speaker 1: Kian was talking about a writing has been proven correct.
Speaker 1: So um. And they've also found that in the soil
Speaker 1: around Chion's tomb where they think he's buried, there's higher
Speaker 1: than unusually high mercury levels, like super high. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they think like, yeah, these crazy people buried him around
Speaker 1: a river of mercury, and who knows if there's a
Speaker 1: constellation of pearls and gemsa's maybe Seema Kian is right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that also makes it super dangerous to excavate still um,
Speaker 1: which is one of the reasons why they haven't done
Speaker 1: more there. Um there are six hundred pits that they
Speaker 1: have unearthed thus far, which is, like I said, I think,
Speaker 1: only about one percent. And um, they're sort of a
Speaker 1: raid to look elsewhere because of the booby traps in
Speaker 1: the mercury. I don't blame them. Uh So a few stats.
Speaker 1: Thirty six years to complete this army or the tomb,
Speaker 1: I guess um seven hundred thousand laborers they estimate eight
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty thousand square feet a hundred feet deep.
Speaker 1: With I saw eight thousand warriors, this is seven. I've
Speaker 1: seen different numbers too. Let's just say between six and
Speaker 1: eight UM forty thou weapons. And apparently these weapons are
Speaker 1: in really good shape. Well yeah, I mean they were
Speaker 1: like bronze swords and stuff like that. Yeah, they weren't
Speaker 1: made of like um, paper mache, so I guess they
Speaker 1: did have metal. Yeah, bronze at least that answers that
Speaker 1: in each one of these terra cotta soldiers weighs about
Speaker 1: three d and thirty pounds, which is crazy because they're
Speaker 1: not even solid. Oh yeah, it wouldn't be right. So
Speaker 1: what is the coil on the inside? Then they smooth
Speaker 1: out the outside, right, Okay, that makes sense. So we
Speaker 1: did mention that um Emperor Han ling D, who came
Speaker 1: fifty three years after Cheen, had his smaller terracotta soldiers.
Speaker 1: There's also the Wei Shan site Um which they found
Speaker 1: in two thousand two, another terracotta army. But they're all
Speaker 1: just a foot tall. They they they might as well
Speaker 1: not even be there. Symbolic and cute. Yeah that also
Speaker 1: symbolic again of a kinder. What was the one quote
Speaker 1: from do nothing in order to govern? Yeah, not quite
Speaker 1: the same as Chen That was the Emperor han ling
Speaker 1: D's quote. He was the motto Cheen was a little
Speaker 1: more do whatever you need to do to squash any disruption.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and Han ling D came along and said,
Speaker 1: you know what, we're going to not text you guys
Speaker 1: that much. We're gonna do away with forced labor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh, let's party. He was like the Rodney danger
Speaker 1: Field of the han dynasty. H I think he got
Speaker 1: respect though, Sure, that's true. So that's he was the
Speaker 1: Rodney Dangerfield post death, because Rodney has tons of respect.
Speaker 1: What was Rodney danger Fields epitaph? Do you remember? It's
Speaker 1: like one of the best ever. Someone I was on
Speaker 1: the Mark Maron's interview show w t F was interviewed
Speaker 1: and they were talking about the old days hanging out
Speaker 1: with Rodney and just what a beast that guy was.
Speaker 1: What do you mean just party beast? Oh yeah, like legendary. Um,
Speaker 1: you hang out with Rodney and you're in for a
Speaker 1: long night. I can imagine. Yeah, but a really good guy.
Speaker 1: I found it. Chuck. What his epitaph on Rodney danger
Speaker 1: Fields Grave Styf. There goes the neighborhood. So classic awesome,
Speaker 1: But I had like that you get a free bowl
Speaker 1: of soup. Oh that was pretty good man. You were
Speaker 1: like the rich little of this podcast. Uh, you got
Speaker 1: anything else? Nope. If you want to know more about
Speaker 1: the terra cotta army, go see it. And while you're
Speaker 1: doing that, you can type those words into the search
Speaker 1: bar at how stuff works dot com. Terra cotta is
Speaker 1: one word, by the way, one word Smithsonian Magazine. Oh
Speaker 1: did they goof it? Uh? And since I shame Smithsonian
Speaker 1: Magazine that means it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call this uh animal imprint feedback. Hey guys, I'm currently
Speaker 1: listening to how animal imprinting works and could not even
Speaker 1: finish it because I had to write you my godmother's dorsey. Uh.
Speaker 1: And Susan live on own and run an urban farm
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas on the east side. They have several
Speaker 1: animals such as chickens, bunnies, geese, miniature donkeys, boy and ducks. Um. Recently,
Speaker 1: a mother duck had no interest in her babies uh,
Speaker 1: and they got adopted by a chicken. That chicken got
Speaker 1: sick of them trying to play in all of the rain,
Speaker 1: and we have all the rain we've been getting, and
Speaker 1: left them on the around. A male goose named Gustavo
Speaker 1: took the baby ducks in and treats them as his own.
Speaker 1: On top of that, the next batch of baby ducks
Speaker 1: born he went and took as his own. Now Gustavo
Speaker 1: has about ten baby ducks that follow him around the nest.
Speaker 1: With them, he has his own private army. That's right, um,
Speaker 1: and they're not terra cotta. They're made of baby duck feathers,
Speaker 1: the softest army. I failed to mention that Gustavo is
Speaker 1: the face of the farm, greets people, follows around my
Speaker 1: godmothers and gives tours whoever stops by, So she says,
Speaker 1: she finishes with. I started listening to y'all about five
Speaker 1: months ago and cannot stop start many of my sentences
Speaker 1: now with this podcast, I was listening to say many
Speaker 1: random facts that I learned from. You also teach high
Speaker 1: school world history. And on the days I need to
Speaker 1: uh the students not to talk um a k A.
Speaker 1: The days that I don't have a lesson plan, UH
Speaker 1: talk too alright, play one of your episodes that applies
Speaker 1: to what we're learning and have them do bookwork. I
Speaker 1: find many of them not working and listening to your
Speaker 1: show instead. Nice. So that is from Christina, Maudie and Christina,
Speaker 1: thank you for your work as a teacher. And hello
Speaker 1: to all your students. And hello, Hello are your godmothers
Speaker 1: and Gustavo. Yes, hello miss Maudie's class. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: Miss Maudie. That's so nice. Yeah, I'm sure that's what
Speaker 1: they call her. Yeah, that'd be great. I call it Christina.
Speaker 1: That's way too modern of a school for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and big ups to Gustavo. That's pretty cool. I want
Speaker 1: to take a Gustavo to her someday. And she sent
Speaker 1: a picture of gustav on the ducks too. Uh well,
Speaker 1: we should post that somewhere all right, unless it's copyrighted.
Speaker 1: Let us know. If you want to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us, you can tweet to us at s y
Speaker 1: s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook, dot com,
Speaker 1: slash stuff. You should know. You can send us an
Speaker 1: email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com
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