Speaker 1: Hello, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland's We're coming to see you
Speaker 1: guys this January. It's coming up soon, isn't it, Chuck.
Speaker 1: That's right. It's our annual visit now to San Francisco
Speaker 1: Sketch Fest, for my money, the best comedy festival around,
Speaker 1: and they have us back kind of every year now,
Speaker 1: which is great. Oh yeah, it's an annual tradition these days.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna be there on Sunday, January fourteenth at
Speaker 1: the Castro Theater. And there are tickets left, but they're
Speaker 1: going fast. Portland's you guys are sold out, have been
Speaker 1: for a while. Hats off to you guys in Seattle.
Speaker 1: We're coming to see you guys January, and there's even
Speaker 1: fewer tickets left than there are for San Francisco. That's right.
Speaker 1: That's in the More Theater and you can get all
Speaker 1: the ticket information at s y s K live dot com.
Speaker 1: Are live touring home on the web, so so happy
Speaker 1: holidays and hurry up. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck
Speaker 1: Bryan there. Wait, wait, I know you thought I was
Speaker 1: gonna say Jerry, but you're wrong because it's Noel today,
Speaker 1: guest producer Noel, and that makes this stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: That's how you doing. I'm good. Noel. Who is the
Speaker 1: the eighth Wonder of the ancient world? Yes, and the
Speaker 1: modern world too. He spans he spans space and time. Yes,
Speaker 1: like the Colossus span the harbor of Rhodes or did it? Uh,
Speaker 1: it didn't. We're gonna learn a lot, Chuck. I'm so
Speaker 1: excited about this one. Oh yeah, these two? You mean
Speaker 1: these two? That's right? Um? Yeah, I hit upon it
Speaker 1: and I'm like, this is a two parter right here,
Speaker 1: and I can't believe we haven't done this already. Like
Speaker 1: everybody knows about the Seven Wonders of the Ancient world,
Speaker 1: but nobody knows about the seven Wonders of the ancient world.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. Nobody knows about them at all.
Speaker 1: It's like a perfect, perfect stuff you should know episode
Speaker 1: if you ask me times two a sequel, that's right.
Speaker 1: So um, to get started, we we probably would. Let's
Speaker 1: just give a brief overview of the seven Wonders. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's do should you just want to name them? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna we're gonna do them chronologically too, Okay,
Speaker 1: is that how they're listed for me? Yeah? Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: then first up we have the the the Great Pyramid,
Speaker 1: the Great Pyramid of Giza, right, and then after that,
Speaker 1: again chronologically, there's the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and apparently
Speaker 1: there used to be it used to be the Walls
Speaker 1: of Babylon in addition to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon,
Speaker 1: but they were removed later. Uh. And then what's next, chuck,
Speaker 1: the Temple of our artemies at here we go the
Speaker 1: temple of Artemis at Ephesus. Uh, either one Artemis at
Speaker 1: Ephesus nice man um. And then there's a statue of
Speaker 1: Zeus at Olympia, which I have to admit I had
Speaker 1: not heard of before I had heard of that one.
Speaker 1: I think, I think a couple of these. I felt
Speaker 1: bad because maybe I had disregarded some of the Seven
Speaker 1: Wonders of the ancient world because a couple of these
Speaker 1: were news to me. Oh yeah, okay, so that one
Speaker 1: was for me. The Mausoleum at hell Carnassis was also
Speaker 1: new for me too. Yeah. Colossus of Rhodes old hat sure,
Speaker 1: everybody knows that one. Come on, yeah, Like, I've got
Speaker 1: Colossus of Rhodes underwear on right now. I know you
Speaker 1: where you got that whole style where you wear the
Speaker 1: sag and you show your underwear too, that's right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then finally the Lighthouse of Alexandria, which is I
Speaker 1: think I had heard of that one. But when when
Speaker 1: you put these all together, it is not. It is
Speaker 1: no small list, no, and and so this list, like
Speaker 1: you may wonder who put this list together, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: maybe Jacques Cousteau, maybe um bertrand Russell, who knows. It's
Speaker 1: actually way, way way older than that. Um This list
Speaker 1: goes back to the time of ancient Greece. Actually, and
Speaker 1: they're not entirely certain who wrote the first one, but
Speaker 1: there were several people who kind of took the list
Speaker 1: and and added to it or subtracted to it. And
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of candidates for who who had written
Speaker 1: the list, But the one I saw that's pretty roundly
Speaker 1: considered probably the first one to have written a list
Speaker 1: is Diodorus Cecilius or Diodorus of Sicily. Yeah. And the
Speaker 1: reason that these lists were made was because at the
Speaker 1: time Greece had done a pretty good job of subjugating
Speaker 1: a lot of the areas around it, like Turkey, Persia, Babylon,
Speaker 1: and these places were now safe for Greeks to go visit.
Speaker 1: And because the Greeks were wealthy and had a lot
Speaker 1: of leisure time, they actually became some of the world's
Speaker 1: first tourists, international tourists. And that was basically the you know,
Speaker 1: the list of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world was, hey,
Speaker 1: you should go visit these things, go to these places
Speaker 1: and see these things, and so some people would go
Speaker 1: do I think it was probably a point of pride
Speaker 1: to be able to say I've seen all seven what
Speaker 1: they called the amata. Yeah, theiamata translates as things to
Speaker 1: be seen, or if you want to get even more modern,
Speaker 1: it's literally like here are your musties if you're going
Speaker 1: on vacation. It was kind of like the first travel
Speaker 1: website kind of, but it was just a list. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't on the web yet. That would take a
Speaker 1: couple of hundred years, at least a couple of hundred
Speaker 1: because these guys they did live in like the third, fourth,
Speaker 1: fifth centuries BC, right, Yeah, so over time, this list,
Speaker 1: like I said, it was, Um, it started out I
Speaker 1: think with um, the Great Pyramid has always been on there,
Speaker 1: hanging gardens have always been on there, Temple of Artemis,
Speaker 1: Statue Zeus, the Mausoleum, the classes of and then I
Speaker 1: think the lighthouse at Alexandria may not have been on
Speaker 1: and it was the wall of the walls of Babylon,
Speaker 1: and they said, we've already got bab blond covered, you guys,
Speaker 1: this lighthouse is to be seen. So it was eventually
Speaker 1: compiled and that list. So the list itself is pretty
Speaker 1: ancient too. Yeah. In Babylon, if they had one motto,
Speaker 1: it was come for the gardens, stay for the wall,
Speaker 1: for sure, you know. Yeah. Um. So out of all
Speaker 1: of those, the the only ones that are still around
Speaker 1: actually is the Great Pyramid. Yeah. I mean there are
Speaker 1: bits of some of these and various museums, most notably
Speaker 1: the British Museum. Yeah. And there are some ruins on
Speaker 1: the site still yeah, here and there, some some ruins
Speaker 1: underwater here and there. Um. I used to have you
Speaker 1: been to a lot of ruins? I've been to Pompeii,
Speaker 1: you me and I went. It was kind of the
Speaker 1: fulfillment of a lifelong dream. Yeah. You have you been
Speaker 1: to Pompeii? Yeah? What ruins? Have you been to? Just
Speaker 1: your your your garden variety ruins like uh, in Rome,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Oh yeah, man, the Colosseum, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was something to be seen. Huh yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's part of me. Like when I go to see ruins,
Speaker 1: it's um, it's really cool because I try and take
Speaker 1: myself back to that time. But then when I stand
Speaker 1: back and look at it and it's in its current surroundings,
Speaker 1: sometimes you get a little sad because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people like chewing gum and on their phone and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah man, and especially well we'll talk about
Speaker 1: the Pyramids. Uh, but you know have you have you
Speaker 1: seen the famous pizza hut pictures? No, what are you
Speaker 1: talking about? Well, you know that the Pyramids. Oh is
Speaker 1: that a photo shopped? No, it's not photo shopped. The
Speaker 1: Pyramids back right up or I guess front, right up
Speaker 1: to Cairo. H. So you always see the of image
Speaker 1: looking at the Pyramids from Cairo. If you see the
Speaker 1: image looking the other way, there's like a city right
Speaker 1: button up against it. In an ancient Egyptian in the
Speaker 1: foreground turns of the camera with a single tear coming down.
Speaker 1: But he was really Italian. Now there's there, there's a
Speaker 1: literally a pizza hut kfc um, which you could do
Speaker 1: worse facing you could be a burger kid facing the
Speaker 1: Great Pyramids of Egypt and the Sphinx. And in one
Speaker 1: of the windows of the pizza hut there's the Pizza
Speaker 1: Hut logo. And if you stand inside that Pizza Hut,
Speaker 1: you can take a photograph of that Pizza Hut cap
Speaker 1: and logo kind of sitting on top of the pyramid.
Speaker 1: And uh so, you know, there are all kinds of
Speaker 1: photos now of Pizza Hut, and it's just it's sort
Speaker 1: of you know, it's not it speaks of the times,
Speaker 1: you know, which is what I talked about being a
Speaker 1: little s add there's a pizza hut. There's a freaking
Speaker 1: Kentucky Fried Chicken yards from the Great Pyramids. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: know how I feel about that. I guess that's well,
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty clear how you feel about it.
Speaker 1: You don't like it, I don't know. But I mean
Speaker 1: you can't say, like, no, what are you gonna have
Speaker 1: a restaurant here? You can't do anything it's just it
Speaker 1: is what it is, you know. Yeah, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not like you're gonna live without KFC for a second.
Speaker 1: That's true. I would challenge some KFC if I was
Speaker 1: over there, the very famous one by the Pern I
Speaker 1: know what you mean. Though, Sure, you know it was
Speaker 1: a little weird, But at the same time you're like, wow,
Speaker 1: you know this thing was built by slaves who died working.
Speaker 1: So maybe the KFC is actually preferable in some ways,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, And maybe that's what I should feel
Speaker 1: sad about. Just feel sad about both. Okay, so let's
Speaker 1: go to the Great Pyramids of Giza and there's actually
Speaker 1: if you go, um, oh, we're gonna really wear out
Speaker 1: the way Back Machine huh yeah this and gased it up.
Speaker 1: It's ready, um, and I got a new air fresher
Speaker 1: and you like it. I'm not big on the pineapple,
Speaker 1: but it's all right, pineapple. We can swap it out
Speaker 1: for the second part. Okay, Okay, So, um, we're gonna
Speaker 1: get in the Way Back Machine and if you go,
Speaker 1: we're actually just gonna go back a couple of days
Speaker 1: because we're going to modern times. But if we're gonna
Speaker 1: look at the Great Pyramid at Giza. There's actually just
Speaker 1: one of them that's on the list of the seven
Speaker 1: Wonders of the Ancient World. It's one particular one, the
Speaker 1: Pyramid of Kufu or Chaops is what the Greeks call them,
Speaker 1: and his is the biggest pyramid of them all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there are more than, uh more than or
Speaker 1: exactly eighty pyramids scattered across Egypt, uh various sizes and there.
Speaker 1: Imagine they're all pretty great to go look at. But
Speaker 1: the big daddy of them all, like you said, is
Speaker 1: Cufu k h u f U, and it is. It
Speaker 1: is the one you know that you can get with
Speaker 1: the pizza hut cap on top right. It's one. It's
Speaker 1: the main dude there with the three pyramids with the
Speaker 1: sphinx standing by watching over Kentucky Fried Chicken to make
Speaker 1: sure nobody robs it. Well, it actually would work really
Speaker 1: well for that pizza hut cap because it's the one
Speaker 1: of the three. You always see the three together. The
Speaker 1: other two are the Pyramid of menku Are and the
Speaker 1: other one is Pyramid of Coffree, and they're smaller, but
Speaker 1: if you'll notice those two have points. The biggest one,
Speaker 1: the Pyramid of Kufu has a flat top, like it
Speaker 1: just knew that that pizza hut was coming in four
Speaker 1: thousand years right. But the so we know so little
Speaker 1: about this pyramid that they're they're not entirely certain if
Speaker 1: this is true or not. But there's a pretty widespread
Speaker 1: theory that um, that pyramid was actually unfinished. Oh really,
Speaker 1: they couldn't bring this final stones, huh. That maybe everybody
Speaker 1: involved died or there was a change in dynasty or something.
Speaker 1: But they think and there's other evidence we'll talk about,
Speaker 1: but it seems like it might have been unfinished. Didn't
Speaker 1: Napoleon toot off the nose of the sphinx? Or is that?
Speaker 1: Is that an old wives tale that was isis? Okay?
Speaker 1: Probably so took. One of the things that's so great
Speaker 1: about this pyramids just how massive it is, right, It's
Speaker 1: it's tall. It's very tall. It's like, um, four hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty feet tall, which that's that's a substantial height
Speaker 1: if you ask me. Yeah, I mean for a long
Speaker 1: time it was one of the tallest or the tallest
Speaker 1: building in the world, which is amazing. Yeah, until the
Speaker 1: fourteenth century when Lincoln Cathedral in England finally topped it.
Speaker 1: So for almost for about thirty four hundred years, it
Speaker 1: stood as the tallest structure man made, human made structure
Speaker 1: in the world. It's hard to believe. Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: And then it's side. Each side at the base is
Speaker 1: about seven one hundred and fifty five ft long. There's
Speaker 1: just massive, massive structures. Yeah. And you know how I
Speaker 1: was talking about the fact that it's uh, it just
Speaker 1: butt right up against Cairo. Um at least it's not surrounding, uh,
Speaker 1: like the city is not just on all sides. So
Speaker 1: if you do look at it from the city, it's
Speaker 1: on the Giza plateau and that is still you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how far it goes back, but you know,
Speaker 1: a nice wide aerial shots. Looks like most of that
Speaker 1: plateau is pretty preserved at least. So so this the
Speaker 1: whole thing. The pyramid was built um sometime during the
Speaker 1: reign of King Kufu appropriately enough, Um and the king
Speaker 1: rain from I think sixty six. So it's pretty old
Speaker 1: pyramid and it's it's you know, and it's made of
Speaker 1: just a ton of blocks cut blocks, right. So one
Speaker 1: of the things like if you go on some sites,
Speaker 1: uh you'll find people who's just kind of poopoo the
Speaker 1: pyramids there is just like it's just pile piles of
Speaker 1: stone really, but it's actually pretty clever engineering, especially considering
Speaker 1: how long ago, um it was built. It's not just
Speaker 1: a pilot stone. There's a lot of corridors and shafts
Speaker 1: and rooms, and the engineers had to take into account
Speaker 1: where to place these things so that they structure didn't
Speaker 1: collapse in on itself as it you know aged um.
Speaker 1: So it is a pretty pretty big feet of engineering
Speaker 1: just in addition to its size, you know. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean there are more than two million pile of stones.
Speaker 1: Who says that some people online? Yea more than two
Speaker 1: million limestone and granite blocks, the weight of about six
Speaker 1: and a half million tons, And these things are engineered
Speaker 1: such that they that it's about a fifty one degree
Speaker 1: slope on each side, and each side is faces exactly
Speaker 1: to the four cardinal directions. So it's pretty impressive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's no accident. It's not like it just happened to
Speaker 1: land that way. It was all done very much on purpose.
Speaker 1: These rocks fit together, the blocks really really tightly, less
Speaker 1: than a fiftieth of an inch separating them. So that
Speaker 1: right there is why these things are still standing, you know, right,
Speaker 1: And so when you look at the pyramid, it's actually
Speaker 1: so I think, I said fot, I think it's fo
Speaker 1: at its height originally it was four ft and it
Speaker 1: was also encased in limestone. Um, well, did it originally
Speaker 1: have the point then? I don't think so, because I
Speaker 1: think they would. I think there's some other stuff that
Speaker 1: suggests that was unfinished too. Um. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I ever had the point. I don't know if anybody
Speaker 1: knows for certain, but it seems like it hadn't been
Speaker 1: put on yet, like an inscription at the top that's
Speaker 1: just not quite done. Well, that's one of the things.
Speaker 1: That's one of the reasons why they think that it
Speaker 1: wasn't done, because it's lacking inscriptions that other pyramids have,
Speaker 1: like in aces, doesn't have no more like we dedicate
Speaker 1: this to the sun god raw in the name of
Speaker 1: King Kufu and um, right, yeah, the usual. So it's
Speaker 1: lacking any kind of inscriptions. The king's burial chamber, the
Speaker 1: actual sarcophagus, which is just this huge, massive stone that
Speaker 1: they actually built the chamber around. It's not like they
Speaker 1: built the room and then imported this thing was it's
Speaker 1: bigger than any entrance to the room, but it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of rough, it's got some cut marks still showing,
Speaker 1: and it was obviously not finished. And then the other
Speaker 1: reason why they think that it wasn't ever finished, Chuck,
Speaker 1: was that there's no evidence that anyone ever found any treasure,
Speaker 1: loot bodies, anything. It's like, yeah, it's like it's this dead,
Speaker 1: empty place that has never been used. Ironically too and
Speaker 1: tomb dead people into it was just never finished either.
Speaker 1: So that's one theory that it was finished and never used.
Speaker 1: Another one is that it actually was looted and it
Speaker 1: was looted so thoroughly that um, there's just not even
Speaker 1: evidence of it being looted. And then the yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of impressive. And then the last one, uh, is
Speaker 1: that um, it is finished, and that all of these
Speaker 1: shafts and like walkways and crawl spaces that we found
Speaker 1: are actually meant to distract you from the real places
Speaker 1: where the tombs are that we've just not found yet.
Speaker 1: Couldn't they find those? By now? Though not necessarily, they're
Speaker 1: still finding like secret rooms and passages that are hidden
Speaker 1: from view. They're just starting now apply the technology to
Speaker 1: seeing through stone. Literally, just get up the X ray
Speaker 1: camera right and just stand at pizza hut, zoom in
Speaker 1: right and just see what's in that thing. You don't
Speaker 1: even need that. You can send off for some of
Speaker 1: those X ray specs from a comic book exactly. I
Speaker 1: don't know why, and no one else has thought of
Speaker 1: this yet, So I have a question. Then they said
Speaker 1: it's originally covered in limestone in that case, sing, does
Speaker 1: that mean that originally it was it was not in
Speaker 1: a step pattern and it was just smooth on the outside. Yes,
Speaker 1: How in the world did they get up there? Would
Speaker 1: they just slide back down? Well, the answer that it's
Speaker 1: obvious it was aliens that helped them. That's right, That's
Speaker 1: that's it. That's the answer. I have no idea, Chuck,
Speaker 1: that's a really good question to tell you. Maybe they
Speaker 1: maybe there's a passageway inside right that they can come
Speaker 1: at the top, You come out the top, pull the
Speaker 1: limestone up into place, and then slide down and start
Speaker 1: the process over again. Interesting. But if you want to
Speaker 1: see kind of probably what it looked like, just go
Speaker 1: look at the Iron Maid in Power Slave album covered
Speaker 1: it's kind of like smoothly covered. It's not stepped really.
Speaker 1: I mean there's steps, but they're they're meant to be
Speaker 1: like a staircase. It's not steps on the outside. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. So yeah. So in the fourteenth century
Speaker 1: there was an earthquake and as you'll see, that becomes
Speaker 1: a pattern here with a lot of these ancient uh
Speaker 1: wonders that would become ruins because of earthquakes. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: most of these in the Middle East. It's a volatile
Speaker 1: area tectonically speaking, so um, you know, over the course
Speaker 1: of thousands of years, things are going to tumble over time,
Speaker 1: you know, And it is what happened in this case.
Speaker 1: It's basically earthquakes, earthquake, earthquake, earthquake, over and over again.
Speaker 1: It's the great leveler of monuments, right. Yeah. But the
Speaker 1: Cufoo Pyramids stood. It was stood that earthquake because it's
Speaker 1: just more than a pile of rox. It is so
Speaker 1: big and so grand and so heavy, I guess, and
Speaker 1: probably a little luck came involved as well. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it was also really good engineering too, for sure. But
Speaker 1: the the earthquake did get it in that it did
Speaker 1: level Cairo and they went out to the pyramid and
Speaker 1: took the limestone off of it and used it to
Speaker 1: rebuild Cairo. Yeah, and that's another common refrain of notices.
Speaker 1: A lot of these would be toppled, and then people
Speaker 1: would come in and say, let's use this stuff for
Speaker 1: like actual for the city, yeah, instead of just some
Speaker 1: monument to a ruler. Yeah. And if you are you
Speaker 1: ever gonna go see the pyramids? I was. It was
Speaker 1: sort of on the old bucket list until I saw
Speaker 1: the pizza hut thing today. Oh man, that's funny. And
Speaker 1: I read an article where someone was like, don't do it,
Speaker 1: just don't go really, Yeah, but I mean that's just
Speaker 1: one person's opinion. We also had people that said the
Speaker 1: the northern lights aren't that impressive. Yeah, and that one
Speaker 1: one person. Yeah, we got shouted down for that. Oh
Speaker 1: my god. It still happens from time to time. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: So if you do go the chuck the way that
Speaker 1: you go into the pyramid, as far as you can,
Speaker 1: it's actually and no one's figured out how to go
Speaker 1: in the way that it was intended. It's that that
Speaker 1: entrance is lost to history as far as I know.
Speaker 1: The entrance that you use is actually a carved tunnel
Speaker 1: through the pyramid from the ninth century from this guy
Speaker 1: named Abdullah all Mama who oversaw the a looting expedition,
Speaker 1: and he's one of the reasons why they think that
Speaker 1: it was unused because even back in the ninth century,
Speaker 1: this guy couldn't find anything in the sealed pyramid interesting.
Speaker 1: And you gain access to that through the bathroom of
Speaker 1: pizza with your X ray specs. You want to take
Speaker 1: a break, Yeah, let's do that. Let's do it now. Hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: we're back. Yes, we are no more poopo ng of
Speaker 1: modern things next to old things. I sound like an
Speaker 1: old man grabbing, grabbing along. That's all right, man uh.
Speaker 1: And this next one is interesting hanging gardens of Babylon,
Speaker 1: because this is one that that may not have even existed. Um,
Speaker 1: these are this is the we're going chron chronologically, like
Speaker 1: you said, so the second oldest if it was real,
Speaker 1: built in about the sixth century. And obviously these don't
Speaker 1: exist anymore in any shape or form. But the deal
Speaker 1: is that these this was in like modern day Iraq,
Speaker 1: and they were gardens that it was really about the building. Um,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like the first big botanical garden it
Speaker 1: wasn't just things hanging from the sky. It was plants,
Speaker 1: uh and trees and everything planted in this grand, big
Speaker 1: building that had water flowing through it. Yeah, in the desert. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if it was in Babylon, it would have been
Speaker 1: about ninety miles or kilometers, you can't remember which one
Speaker 1: outside of Baghdad modern day Baghdad, right. And if it
Speaker 1: wasn't Babylon, they think that maybe King Nebuchaannezzar built the gardens.
Speaker 1: This is according to legend, at least he built the
Speaker 1: gardens for his wife Amatists, who was from the north
Speaker 1: where it's much more fertile and green, and apparently amateurs
Speaker 1: mr her homeland, so the king built her the hanging gardens.
Speaker 1: And again this is in the desert, so to to.
Speaker 1: And Babylon was a magnificent place in and of itself
Speaker 1: again like their walls were once on this list of
Speaker 1: seven Wonders to go see right. Um. But supposedly it
Speaker 1: was just this enormous building, tiered with huge walkways, and
Speaker 1: they they planted it with dirt and trees. And there's
Speaker 1: a a quote that said it was thickly planted with
Speaker 1: trees of every kind that by their great size or
Speaker 1: charm could give pleasure to the beholder. That was Diodorus
Speaker 1: who said that, and he was writing like for a
Speaker 1: while after um, they would have been built. But the
Speaker 1: idea that you could just walk down tree line avenues
Speaker 1: in this building in the desert, it's pretty neat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I get this inset. In today's terms, it
Speaker 1: would be like a sort of a nice office park. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess now we just take them for granted. But
Speaker 1: back then it was a big deal. You didn't have
Speaker 1: these structures with all these plants in the middle of
Speaker 1: the desert like this. Um, it was along the Euphrates
Speaker 1: River most likely, and we're talking about I mean, it
Speaker 1: looks any of the pictures that you've seen, it really
Speaker 1: looks like it was something else about seventy five ft tall,
Speaker 1: like you said, tiered. Uh, this brick structure with plants
Speaker 1: and waterfalls coming off of it and twenty two ft
Speaker 1: thick walls four feet wide and all all manner of
Speaker 1: flora all over the place and irrigated from the Euphrates River.
Speaker 1: Right if if again, it wasn't Babylon. But there's a
Speaker 1: couple of reasons why that whole thing is um. Why
Speaker 1: it's question right. So for on the one hand, there's
Speaker 1: no evidence of it, no one said this is where
Speaker 1: it was, um, And other people say, well, of course
Speaker 1: you can't say that these were plants, these were gardens.
Speaker 1: There's not gonna be any trace of it left. Maybe
Speaker 1: you know, we found the building and we don't even
Speaker 1: realize it. Um. The reason why they think it might
Speaker 1: not have actually existed in Babylon is because, first of all,
Speaker 1: King Nebuchadnezzar loved to boast about all of the stuff
Speaker 1: he did. He left inscriptions in cuneiform basically everywhere. He's like,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, let out like a thirty second belch today,
Speaker 1: King Nebuchadnezzar, he would have stuff like this inscribed. Right.
Speaker 1: I can't think of anyone today who I could like
Speaker 1: him that too, But yes, right, exactly, like he was
Speaker 1: one of a kind. No ruler ever has bore any resemblance.
Speaker 1: But he never mentioned the gardens of Babylon and any
Speaker 1: cuneiform tablet that's ever been discovered. Yeah, he did not
Speaker 1: tout it in writing, which is very very usual. And
Speaker 1: then there's another UM guy, Herod Herodotus UM. He was
Speaker 1: a a Storian from Greece, and he wrote a basically
Speaker 1: a monograph on Babylon a hundred years after Nebuchadnezzar, and
Speaker 1: he didn't mention the hanging gardens at all. No gardens,
Speaker 1: no legend of a garden, no talk of a garden,
Speaker 1: no garden. I visited nothing about gardens. And the idea
Speaker 1: that he would have passed over one of the great
Speaker 1: wonders of the ancient world when he's writing about the
Speaker 1: town that contains it, it's pretty questionable. So some people say, well,
Speaker 1: maybe it wasn't in Babylon. Maybe it was in another
Speaker 1: place in Assyria. Yeah, maybe, uh, the Assyrian queen built it.
Speaker 1: Maybe the ruler of Nineveh, whose name and these names
Speaker 1: I just love kicking through all these names, as if
Speaker 1: Nebuchadnezzar wasn't good enough. Uh senac arib it's great, the
Speaker 1: ruler of Nineveh may have built them. Um. I had
Speaker 1: always thought these were real, But I tend to think
Speaker 1: that maybe uh Nebucadnezzar didn't have anything to do with it,
Speaker 1: because it doesn't You're right, I don't. I don't think
Speaker 1: it makes any sense that it was not mentioned in
Speaker 1: any of these accounts, right, because they just and it
Speaker 1: wasn't just Nebuchadnezzar all all this stuff like keeping records.
Speaker 1: It was all very new. It was like the hot
Speaker 1: thing to do, you know, And so they wouldn't just say, oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, we we failed to mention we built
Speaker 1: this what would eventually be a wonder of the world,
Speaker 1: but we just didn't think it was important enough to
Speaker 1: write down. Yeah, and this this is from Nebuchadnezzar, who
Speaker 1: used to leave like inscriptions in the blocks of buildings
Speaker 1: saying built by Nebuchadnezzar, ruler of Babylon from C to C.
Speaker 1: Even if he didn't build it, he would have been
Speaker 1: right exactly, he would have mentioned it. Right. So if
Speaker 1: if it was in ninevah Um, it would have been
Speaker 1: close to present day Mosel in northern Iraq, right. And
Speaker 1: if it was in ninevah then we've actually already found
Speaker 1: the gardens of Babylon be because they they discovered a
Speaker 1: structure that was clearly and something similar to what the
Speaker 1: Gardens of Babylon have described. It was a structure that
Speaker 1: m had irrigation brought to it, that used water screws
Speaker 1: to pump water, remember from our Archimedes death ray episode,
Speaker 1: um to pump it upward to this thing. So we
Speaker 1: found a garden basically a botanical garden structure in ninevah.
Speaker 1: So if it is there, we now know where the
Speaker 1: hanging gardens were. Yeah, and that is the idea, is
Speaker 1: that they took this water up them from the Euphrates
Speaker 1: into these big holding tanks, uh, these big cisterns essentially
Speaker 1: on top, and then it would use a very clever
Speaker 1: system of of gravity to then feed down and irrigate
Speaker 1: all the different areas as as it flowed downward. Right,
Speaker 1: Really something to see. I can't imagine what it must
Speaker 1: have been like like, especially there, can't, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of disappointed now I have to admit why because it
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like it was it was there or maybe
Speaker 1: even real. Yeah, but it could have been a ninevah.
Speaker 1: I think it was real. I think it was a ninevah.
Speaker 1: And yeah, because if you if you look at the
Speaker 1: if you look at some I think it was Diodorius.
Speaker 1: Diodorus is writing from Sicily, the guy from Sicily. He
Speaker 1: says that they were hanging gardens, but they were built
Speaker 1: by a Syrian king. So I'm pretty sure. That's that's it.
Speaker 1: So they were real, Chuck, and we know where they are. Um.
Speaker 1: And then you want to do one more for this episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's take a break and we'll come back and finish
Speaker 1: up with the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, right for this? Okay, Chuck,
Speaker 1: and we're back this one. This might be my faith.
Speaker 1: Do you have a favorite one yet? Uh? My favorite
Speaker 1: one will be in the next episode. Okay, cool. How's
Speaker 1: that for a tease. That's a great tease. This one's
Speaker 1: pretty good though, because this took, by all accounts, over
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty years to build and just one
Speaker 1: night to go bye bye. Yeah, which is how it
Speaker 1: goes sometimes, especially when there's someone with pyromania involved. Yeah, exactly. So, uh,
Speaker 1: Ephesus thesis, Thesis, That's where I'm going with. How about you,
Speaker 1: Artemis at Ephesus. I think it sounds better. I think
Speaker 1: that might be it. So if thesis is Um. It's
Speaker 1: actually a pretty well known city of the ancient world,
Speaker 1: and I think it's still around in some some way,
Speaker 1: shape or form. But it was It used to be
Speaker 1: a fabulously wealthy ports city in Um what's today Turkey,
Speaker 1: but it was under the control basically of Greece, and
Speaker 1: from what I understand, it was allowed to remain an
Speaker 1: independent city state, but it was still like that was
Speaker 1: at the pleasure of Greece and then later Rome. But
Speaker 1: they managed to be an important place of um finance
Speaker 1: and law too. I think that's where a lot of
Speaker 1: the courts were was in Ephesus. But it was also
Speaker 1: well known for all of its magic cults. Right, Yes,
Speaker 1: that's where the magician's mansion was located back in the
Speaker 1: ancient world. Yes, so when they call it the city
Speaker 1: of magic, they mean that literally, right, not magic city.
Speaker 1: It's but it had like a quarter of a million
Speaker 1: residents at its peaker at the time when the Temple
Speaker 1: of Artemis was in full swing, and it was originally
Speaker 1: built this temple, this massive, huge temple um back in
Speaker 1: five b C. By again named King Croesus. They think
Speaker 1: that that might be old King Cole Did you know that?
Speaker 1: Oh really? Huh, that's what I've always heard, so King
Speaker 1: Crosus of Lydia. And this one, if you look it
Speaker 1: up under the images it is it looks like you're
Speaker 1: you're kind of classic Greek temple. It's rectangular, uh, that
Speaker 1: it measures about three fifty by one eight feet. And
Speaker 1: the thing about this one that is is uh really
Speaker 1: jumped out at me were the columns and there are
Speaker 1: more than a hundred columns and their marble and it's
Speaker 1: not just like everything had columns. So that's that's all fine,
Speaker 1: and well, these are enough with the columns. These are
Speaker 1: the ionic architectural style columns. But these were like if
Speaker 1: you look at it, there like the two rows of
Speaker 1: columns on the front. To me, like the fact that
Speaker 1: they doubled them up and offset them is just really
Speaker 1: kind of striking looking. It is. It's gorgeous. And if
Speaker 1: you're just the size of this thing to in length
Speaker 1: or in depth, that's like one in the one in
Speaker 1: uh more than one football field American football field, which
Speaker 1: is this is a pretty good sized temple. It's it's
Speaker 1: not as massive as you might think initially, but it's
Speaker 1: still pretty big. Well, I mean, you gotta you have
Speaker 1: to think all of this in ancient standards like today,
Speaker 1: you look at a building the size of football field,
Speaker 1: it's not that big of a deal, but it's still large.
Speaker 1: But by those standards back then, it was enormous, right,
Speaker 1: which I'm I'm I'm happy with saying it's massive. Put
Speaker 1: on your ancient hats, folks. Plus also, let's also, um,
Speaker 1: just the the ornate detail that was carved into the
Speaker 1: structure in every single spot, it was pretty neat. And
Speaker 1: then if you looked at the pediment of the temple
Speaker 1: of the base, there was a door and two windows.
Speaker 1: I believe the windows are on either side of the door.
Speaker 1: That was not for you, Pion, that was for Artemis
Speaker 1: to enter and leave her temple at her whim. That's right,
Speaker 1: So Artemis herself, this is this is one of the
Speaker 1: reasons by this is my favorite. Artemis herself was um
Speaker 1: the Greek precursor to the Roman Diana. Okay, she was
Speaker 1: the goddess of fertility of the hunt and I believed
Speaker 1: the moon too right, And she was Apollo's twin sister.
Speaker 1: She was the daughter of Zeus and Liedo, so she
Speaker 1: was a pretty important deity. But she was kind of
Speaker 1: cobbled together at the Temple of Artemis with an already
Speaker 1: much much much older deity for the area Um and
Speaker 1: her name was Sybil, and Sybil was based on an
Speaker 1: ancient like fertility goddess from nine thousand years ago so
Speaker 1: they took Sybil and they took Artemis, who basically represented
Speaker 1: the same thing but to two different cultures, and they
Speaker 1: put it together at this temple of Artemis at a thesis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're talking about a statue. I don't think
Speaker 1: we said that. Oh yeah, we No, we didn't. We
Speaker 1: weren't talking about some kind of weird black voodoo, black magic. Right,
Speaker 1: It's a statue built from gold, silver, ebony, and some
Speaker 1: other stuff they had laying around, uh pull tabs from
Speaker 1: tab cans. Sure, it was like a found object basically.
Speaker 1: But this what's amazing about this one. You can actually
Speaker 1: look up the statue even though uh, these are just
Speaker 1: I don't know if where there ever pictures of it,
Speaker 1: or is it's just called from I don't I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if it was just from writings or
Speaker 1: if they do have it somewhere. Well, the cool thing
Speaker 1: is is the statue has this row of bulbs hanging
Speaker 1: from her body, and if you look at it looks
Speaker 1: like she's wearing a a tunic made of avocados or
Speaker 1: like water balloons. Sure, but what they are is up
Speaker 1: for debate. Some people say, well, they're obviously breast. She's
Speaker 1: a fertility goddess for it does It would make even
Speaker 1: more sense if it weren't for the fact that Sybils
Speaker 1: cult Um was known to castrate bulls as sacrifice, so
Speaker 1: they think they were probably bull testicles, and the actually
Speaker 1: the the Cibil cult high priests would castrate themselves so
Speaker 1: they could be more like Sybil i e. Without testicles.
Speaker 1: Remember our castration episode. Boy, we've talked about a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff, Chuck, we have. So you've got this amazing, wonderful,
Speaker 1: super cool statue in already amazing temple. And it's not
Speaker 1: just me who thought that um that it was the
Speaker 1: most amazing one of all. There was another guy who wrote.
Speaker 1: His name was antipurav Sidon. He says, I, and this
Speaker 1: is he's writing back in Um. You know, I guess
Speaker 1: BC still because he was an ancient Greek. But he said, Um,
Speaker 1: I have seen the walls of unbreachable Babylon. Remember that
Speaker 1: was aginally went seven wonders along which chariots may race,
Speaker 1: and the statue of Zeus by the river Alphaeus, the
Speaker 1: hanging gardens, and the Colossus of the Sun, the great
Speaker 1: Man made mountains of the lofty pyramids and the gigantic
Speaker 1: tomb of Mossulus. But when I saw the sacred House
Speaker 1: of Artemus reaching the clouds, the others paled. And that
Speaker 1: was antipur of side on right. So he's saying, like,
Speaker 1: I've seen all the wonders and to me, the Temple
Speaker 1: of Artemis, that Efsis is the best. And he said,
Speaker 1: you got to see it. She has bull testicles hanging
Speaker 1: around her neck. You've never seen anything like. Uh. So
Speaker 1: this thing was very I mean it was. It was
Speaker 1: a legit tourist destination. People would travel long distances to
Speaker 1: come to this place to see the statue in the temple,
Speaker 1: and it was I mean, it's hard to believe, but
Speaker 1: even back then they had. It boosted the local economy
Speaker 1: and was literally supported by like gift shops selling little
Speaker 1: statuette recreations of this thing. Yeah, and this was already
Speaker 1: a wealthy area, so the tourism was so big that
Speaker 1: that was still significant. The the replicas, the sale of
Speaker 1: the replicas still made that much of a splash on
Speaker 1: the local economy. That's how many were sold. Like you
Speaker 1: go to New York City and you go to a
Speaker 1: gift shop at the statue of Liberty and you buy
Speaker 1: the little replica that exact thing was going on thousands
Speaker 1: of years ago. Yeah, there's nothing new. I want one
Speaker 1: of those. That would be great if if you're looking
Speaker 1: for something for me for Christmas, an original replica from
Speaker 1: the BC. Okay, um of of the Temple of Artemus,
Speaker 1: I would love that, all right. So you just want
Speaker 1: to give it's worth. That's priceless basically, Okay. Uh, so
Speaker 1: this story gets a little more interesting here. You mentioned
Speaker 1: a pyromaniac earlier. Uh, in July three BC, there was
Speaker 1: a man name and we almost didn't know his name.
Speaker 1: He wrote Stratus, who was a pyromaniac who burned this
Speaker 1: temple down for the by all accounts, for the sole
Speaker 1: reason of living in infamy. And uh there was a
Speaker 1: decree that his name shall never be recorded at all,
Speaker 1: so he wouldn't even earn that, but someone did. Well,
Speaker 1: that was it was punishable upon death to even say
Speaker 1: his name afterward. Yea, But yeah, a guy named um
Speaker 1: who was it? THEO pompous was the one who wrote
Speaker 1: it down, who recorded the act, and so um what's
Speaker 1: his name? Harris Stratus was was recorded in infamy just
Speaker 1: like he wanted he was. He was an ancient jerk,
Speaker 1: I think, is what you'd call it. And the temple,
Speaker 1: this is the story gets even better because the temple
Speaker 1: burned h the same day that Alexander the Great was born,
Speaker 1: which was amazing, and the temple. They would later rebuild
Speaker 1: the temple, and Alexander said, yeah, you know what, why
Speaker 1: don't I Why don't I pay for this thing? Um,
Speaker 1: all you gotta do is, like, I don't know, just
Speaker 1: throw my name on it somewhere, right, And they said, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's nice, but we'll we'll just build it on her own, right.
Speaker 1: But then they backed slowly out of the room, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's okay, right, you're not gonna kill us, are Yeah?
Speaker 1: And I couldn't find a bunch of places that said
Speaker 1: that he wanted his name on the temple except for
Speaker 1: our article, So I'm not sure that's true. Did you
Speaker 1: see that in other places? I did not. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's so the story goes. I'm not sure about that though.
Speaker 1: That's that's according to the house stuff works. So they
Speaker 1: they rebuilt it. They eventually did rebuild it. Uh, and
Speaker 1: I think it was somewhat Yeah, it was somewhat shortly after.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure actually how long it was after it
Speaker 1: was burned. Yeah, I don't, No one knows. They said
Speaker 1: they don't know the date. Okay, but it was rebuilt,
Speaker 1: and I think it was rebuilt even bigger than before.
Speaker 1: But then in two sixty two, see the Goths rated
Speaker 1: it rated if faces Um, led by Robert Smith and
Speaker 1: Peter Peter Murphy, and they burned that thing to the ground.
Speaker 1: That's right. They actually broke the thing up and used
Speaker 1: the marble to build the city after what chuck an
Speaker 1: earthquake yep, a bunch of earthquake. That's right, it's the
Speaker 1: Great Leveler. And now and then I saw another thing
Speaker 1: that said, and this wasn't in our our our article either,
Speaker 1: but it said that it was rebuilt again even after that.
Speaker 1: And then Christian mob came along and destroyed it. Oh,
Speaker 1: is that right? That's what I saw. I've not seen
Speaker 1: that one. I did see that if Thesis was an
Speaker 1: important city in the Bible, because I think Paul came
Speaker 1: and was proselytizing there and started a riot because everybody's like,
Speaker 1: oh man, your God sounds so great that it's gonna
Speaker 1: undermine our artemis in our local economy is gonna fall
Speaker 1: to pieces. My ancient religion was so interesting, it really was,
Speaker 1: you know, all right, have you got anything else on
Speaker 1: that one? No? I don't, man, I think we've reached
Speaker 1: the end of part one. And if you're waiting, while
Speaker 1: you're waiting for episode two to come out, you can
Speaker 1: get in touch with us. You can join me on
Speaker 1: Twitter at josh um Clark. Uh. There's also the s
Speaker 1: Y s K podcast Twitter handle. You can join Chuck
Speaker 1: at Facebook dot com slash Charles W. Chuke Bryant or
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know. I've got
Speaker 1: my own website called are You Serious Clark dot com. Uh.
Speaker 1: We also accept emails by the oodles at stuff podcast
Speaker 1: at house Stuff works dot com and has always joined
Speaker 1: us at at Home on the web, Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, is how Stuff Works dot com.