Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Selects: How the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World Work, Part I

Transcript

Selects: How the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World Work, Part I · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi, everybody. Chuck here on Saturday.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: I am in charge of picking out the Saturday Select
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: this week, and this week we're doing a two parter,
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: so you're going to hear the first part today and
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: then next week Josh we'll have his selection, and then
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: the following week you can listen to part two. Or
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: you can just get creative and type with your little
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: fingies on the internet and get part two on your own.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: If you just can't wait two weeks. But here is
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: part one from December twenty six, twenty seventeen. All the
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: seven Wonders of the Ancient World work. Part one.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
• 0:49
  Speaker 4: I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant there.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: Wait wait, I know you thought I was going.
• 0:54
  Speaker 4: To say Jerry, but you're wrong because it's Nol today,
• 0:58
  Speaker 4: guest producer Nol, and that makes this stuff you should know.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: That's right?
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: How you doing?
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: I'm good? Noel?
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Who is the uh the eighth Wonder of the ancient world?
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: He is and the modern world too.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: He spans He spans space and time.
• 1:14
  Speaker 4: Yes, like the Colossus spanned the Harbor of Roads or
• 1:18
  Speaker 4: did it it didn't. We're gonna learn a lot, Chuck,
• 1:22
  Speaker 4: I'm so excited about this one.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, these two? You mean these two?
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: That's right?
• 1:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I hit upon it, and I'm like, this is a
• 1:29
  Speaker 4: two parter right here, and I can't believe we haven't
• 1:31
  Speaker 4: done this already. Like everybody knows about the Seven Wonders
• 1:34
  Speaker 4: of the Ancient World, but nobody knows about the Seven
• 1:37
  Speaker 4: Wonders of the Ancient World, you know.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: What I mean, Nobody knows about them at all.
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: It's like a perfect, perfect stuff you should know episode
• 1:44
  Speaker 4: if you ask me times two, Well, the sequel, that's right.
• 1:49
  Speaker 4: So to get started, we probably would Let's just give
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: a brief overview of the Seven Wonders.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: Okay, let's do you.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Just want to like name them?
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we're gonna We're gonna do them chronologically too, Okay.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Oh is that how they're listed for me?
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Okay, Well, then first up we have the the the
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Great Pyramid, the Great Pyramid of Giza.
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: Right, and then after that, again chronologically, there's the Hanging
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: Gardens of Babylon and apparently there used to be it
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: used to be the walls of Babylon in addition to
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: the hanging Gardens of Babylon, but they were removed later, right,
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: and then what's next, chuck.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: The Temple of Artemies at.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Here we go the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus Ephesus
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: either one Artemis at Ephesus, nice man.
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: And then there's a statue of Zeus at Olympia, which
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: I have to admit I had not heard of before.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: I had heard of that one. I think, I think
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: a couple of these.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: I felt bad because maybe I had disregarded some of
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: this and wonders of the ancient world because a couple
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: of these were news to me.
• 3:04
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, okay, so that one was for me. The
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: Mausoleum at Halli Carnassis was also new for me too.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Colossus of Rhodes old hat.
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: Sure everybody knows that one.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Come on, yeah, Like, I've got Colossus of Roads underwear
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: on right now.
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: I know you wear you got that whole style where
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: you wear the sage and you show your underwear too,
• 3:24
  Speaker 4: That's right.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: And then finally the Lighthouse of Alexandria m h which
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: is I think I had heard of that one. But
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: when you put these all together, it is not. It
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: is no small list.
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: No, And so this list, like you may wonder who
• 3:40
  Speaker 4: put this list together, you know, maybe Jacques Cousteau, maybe
• 3:45
  Speaker 4: Bertrand Russell, who knows. It's actually way way way older
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: than that. This list goes back to the time of
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: ancient Greece, actually, and they're not entirely certain who wrote
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: the first one, but there were several people who kind
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: of took the list and added to it or subtracted
• 4:05
  Speaker 4: to it. And there's a bunch of candidates for who
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: had written the list, But the one I saw that's
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: pretty roundly considered probably the first one to have written
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: a list is Deodorus Sicilis, or Diodorus of Sicily. And
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: the reason that these lists were made was because at
• 4:23
  Speaker 4: the time Greece had done a pretty good job of
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: subjugating a lot of the areas around it, like Turkey, Persia, Babylon,
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: and these places were now safe for Greeks to go visit.
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: And because the Greeks, who were wealthy and had a
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: lot of leisure time, they actually became some of the
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: world's first tourists, international tourists, And that was basically the
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: point of the list of the Seven Wonders of the
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: ancient world was hey, you should go visit these things,
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: go to these places and see these things, and so
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: some people would go do I think it was probably
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: a point of pride to be able to say I've
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: seen all seven what they called theamatta.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, theamata translates as things to be seen, or if
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: you want to get even more modern, it's literally like
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: here are your mussies if you're going on vacation.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: It was kind of like the first travel website.
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: Kind of, but it was just a list.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it wasn't on the web yet. That
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: would take a couple hundred years.
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: Sure, at least a couple hundred because these guys they
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: did live in like the third, fourth, fifth centuries BCE, right, Yeah,
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: so over time this list, like I said it was,
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: it started out I think with the Great Pyramid has
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: always been on there, sure, hanging gardens have always been
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: on there, Temple of Artemis, stato Zeus, the Mausoleum, the
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: classes of roads, and then I think the lighthouse at
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: Alexandria may not have been on and it was the
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: wall of the Walls of Babylon, and they said we've
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: already got Babylon covered, you guys. This lighthouse is to
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: be seen, so it was eventually compiled and that list.
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: So the list itself is pretty ancient too.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: In Babylon, if they had one motto, it was come
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: for the gardens, stay for the wall.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: For sure, you know.
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: So out of all of those, the the only ones
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: that are still around actually is the Great Pyramid.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: I mean there are bits of some of these in
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: various museums, most notably the British Museum.
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And there are some ruins on the site still.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, here and there, some ruins underwater here and there.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: I used to have you been to a lot of ruins?
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: I've been to Pompeii? You me and I went. It
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: was kind of the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, have you been to Pompeii? Yeah?
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: No, what ruins have you been to?
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: Just your your your garden variety ruins like in Rome,
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: that kind of thing.
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, man, the call to see them, yeah, that
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: was something to be seen.
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: Huh.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's part of me. Like when I
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: go to see ruins, it's it's really cool because I
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: try and take myself back to that time. But then
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: when I stand back and look at it and it's
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: current surroundings, sometimes it get a little.
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: Sad because there's a lot of people like chewing gum
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: and on their phone and stuff.
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know, yeah man, and.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: Especially well we'll talk about the pyramids, but you know
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: you have you seen the famous pizza hut pictures?
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: No, what are you talking about?
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: Well, you know that the pyramids.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: Oh is that a photoshopped No, it's not photoshopped. The
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: Pyramids back right up or I guess front, right up
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: to Cairo, So you always see the image looking at
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: the Pyramids from Cairo. If you see the image looking
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: the other way, there's like a city right button up against.
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: It, right, and an ancient Egyptian in the foreground turns
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: of the camera, the single tear coming down in his eye,
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: his cheek, but.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: He was really Italian. Right, No, there's there there's a
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: literally a pizza hut KFC.
• 8:11
  Speaker 5: Which you could do worse facing it could be facing
• 8:15
  Speaker 5: the Great Pyramids of Egypt and the Sphinx, and and
• 8:19
  Speaker 5: one of the windows.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Of the pizza hut there's the Pizza Hut logo.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: And if you stand inside that pizza hut you can
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: take a photograph of that Pizza Hut cap and logo
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: kind of sitting on top of the pyramid, and so
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: you know, there are all kinds of photos now of
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Pizza Hut, and it's just it's sort of you know,
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: it's not it speaks of the times, you know, sure,
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: which is what I talked about being a little sad.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: There's a pizza hut, there's a friggin Kentucky Fried Chicken
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: yards from the Great Pyramids.
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I know how I feel about that.
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: I guess, well, I think it's pretty clear how you
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: feel about it.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: You don't like it, I don't know, But I mean
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: you can't say, like, no, what are you going to
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: have a restaurant here? You can't do anything. It's just
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: it is what it is, you know.
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's not like you're gonna live without
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: KFC for a second.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: That's true. I would challenge some KFC if I was
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: over there too.
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: The very famous one by the Pyramids.
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: I know what you mean. Though, Sure, you know it
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: was kind of a little weird.
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: But at the same time, you're like, wow, you know
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: this thing was built by slaves who died working, So
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: maybe the KFC is actually preferable in some ways, you know.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And maybe that's what I should feel sad about.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: Sure, just feel sad about both.
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: Okay, So let's go to the Great Pyramids of Giza,
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: and there's actually if you go, oh, we're gonna really
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: wear out the way Back machine.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Huh. Yeah, this gassed it up.
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: It's ready, and I got a new air fresher, and
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: you like it.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: I'm not big on the Pineapple, but it's all right,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: hill the old Pineapple.
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: We can swap it out for the second part. Okay, Okay,
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: So we're gonna get in the way Back machine and
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: if you go, we're actually just going to go back
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: a couple of days because we're going in modern times.
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: But if we're gonna look at the Great Pyramid at Giza,
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: there's actually just one of them that's on the list
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: of the seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It's one
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: particular one, the Pyramid of Kufu or Chaops is what
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: the Greeks call them, and his is the biggest pyramid
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: of them all.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there are more than more than or
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: exactly eighty pyramids scattered across Egypt, various sizes, and they're
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: imagine they're all pretty great to go look at. But
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: the big daddy of them all, like you said, is
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: Cufu k h U f U, and it is It
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: is the one you know that you can get with
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: a pizza hut cap on top.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: It's the main dude there with the three pyramids, with
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: the sphinx standing by watching over Kentucky Fried Chicken to
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: make sure nobody robs it.
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: Well, it actually would work really well for that pizza
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: hut cap because it's the one of the three. You
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: always see the three together. The other two are the
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: Pyramid of men Kuar and the other one is Pyramid
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: of Coffrey, and they're smaller, but if you'll notice those
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: two have points. Yeah, the biggest one, the Pyramid of Cufu,
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: has a flat top. Like it just knew that that
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: pizza hut was coming in four thousand years, right. But
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: so we know so little about this pyramid that they're
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: not entirely certain if this is true or not. But
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: there's a pretty widespread theory that that pyramid was actually unfinished.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: Oh really, mm hmm. They couldn't bring those final stones. Huh.
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: Maybe everybody involved died or there was a change in
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: dynasty or something. But they think and there's other evidence
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: we'll talk about, but it seems like it might have
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: been unfinished.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: Didn't Napoleon shoot off the nose of the sphinx? Or
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: is that a Is that an old wives tale? No?
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: That was isis?
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: Oh?
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: Okay, probably so, Chuck.
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: One of the things that's so great about this pyramid
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: is just how massive it is, right, Yes, it's it's tall.
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: It's very tall.
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: It's like four hundred and eighty feet tall, which that's
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: that's a substantial height if you ask me.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean for a long time it was one
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: of the tallest or the tallest building in the world,
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: which is amazing.
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, until the fourteenth century when Lincoln Cathedral in England
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: finally topped it. So for almost for about thirty four
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: hundred years it stood as the tallest structure, the man made,
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: human made structure in the world.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: It's hard to believe.
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty cool.
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: And then its side, each side at the base is
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: about seven hundred and fifty five feet long. They're just massive,
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: massive structures.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: And you know how I was talking about the fact
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: that it's uh, it just butted right, up against Cairo
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: at least is not surrounding, like the city is not
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: just on all sides. So if you do look at
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: it from the city, it's on the Giza Plateau and
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: that is still you know, I'm not sure how far
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: it goes back, but you know, a nice wide aerial shots.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: Looks like most of that plateau is pretty preserved, right
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: at least, So.
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: This the whole thing.
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: The pyramid was built sometime during the reign of King Kufu,
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: appropriately enough, and the king reign from I think twenty
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: five eighty nine to twenty five sixty six, So it's
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: pretty old pyramid, and it's it's you know, and it's
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: made of just a ton of blocks cut blocks, right.
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: One of the things like if you go on some sites,
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: you'll find people who just kind of poopoo the pyramids,
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: like it's just pile piles of stone. Oh, clearly, But
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: it's actually pretty clever engineering, especially considering how long ago
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: it was built. It's not just a pilot stone. There's
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: a lot of corridors and shafts and rooms, and the
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: engineers had to take into account where to place these
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: things so that the structure didn't collapse in on itself
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: as it aged. So it is a pretty big feed
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: of engineering just in addition to its size, you know.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there are more than two million pile
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: of stones. Who says that.
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: Some people online?
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, more than two million limestone and granite blocks, the
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: weight of about six and a half million tons.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: And these things are.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: Engineered such that they it's about a fifty one degree
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: slope on each side, and each side faces exactly to
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: the four cardinal directions.
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: So it's pretty impressive.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's no accident. It's not like it just happened
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: to land that way. It was all done very much
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: on purpose. These rocks fit together, the blocks really really tightly,
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: less than a fiftieth of an inch separating them. So
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: that right there is why these things are still standing,
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: you know, right.
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: And so when you look at the pyramid, it's actually
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: so I think I said four hundred and eighty feet.
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: I think it's four hundred and fifty five feet at
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: its height. Originally it was four hundred and eighty feet
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: and it was also encased in limestone.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Well did it originally have the point then?
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: I don't think so, because I think they would. I
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: think there's some other stuff that suggests that it was
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: unfinished too. I don't know if it ever had the point.
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: I don't know if anybody knows for certain, but it
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: seems like it hadn't been put on yet.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: Like an inscription at the top that's just not quite done.
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: Well, that's one of the things.
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: That's one of the reasons why they think that it
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: wasn't done, because it's lacking inscriptions that other pyramids have,
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: like in ass Oh, it doesn't have any no more
• 15:45
  Speaker 4: like we dedicate this to the Sun god raw and
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: the name of King Kufu.
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: And blah blah blah, right, yeah, the usual.
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: So it's lacking any kind of inscriptions. The king's burial chamber,
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: the actual sarcophagus, which is just this huge, massive stone
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: that they actually built the chamber around. It's not like
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: they built the room and then imported this thing. It's
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: bigger than any entrance to the room. But it's it's
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: kind of rough, it's got some cut marks still showing,
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: and it was obviously not finished. And then the other
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: reason why they think that it wasn't ever finished, Chuck,
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: was that there's no evidence that anyone ever found any
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: treasure loot bodies anything. Yeah, it's like it's this dead,
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: empty place that has never been used. Ironically too and
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: tomb dead people into it was just never finished either.
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: So that's one theory that it was finished and never used.
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: Another one is that it actually was looted, and it
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: was looted so thoroughly that there's just not even evidence
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: of it being looted.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Whoa.
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: And then that yeah, it's kind of impressive.
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: And then the last one is that it is finished
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: and that all of these shafts and like walkways and
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: crawl spaces that we found are actually meant to distract
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: you from the real places where the tombs are that
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: we've just not found yet.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Couldn't they find those by now?
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: Though not necessarily. They're still finding like secret rooms and
• 17:19
  Speaker 4: passages that are hidden from view. They're just starting to
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: now apply the technology to seeing through stone.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: Literally, just get up the X ray camera right and
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: just stand at pizza hut, zoom in right and just
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: see what's in that thing.
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: You don't even need that you can send off for
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: some of those X ray specs from a comic book exactly.
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: I don't know why no one else has thought of
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: this yet.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: So I have a question. Then they said it's originally
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: covered in limestone in that casing. Does that mean that
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: originally it was not in a step pattern and it
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: was just smooth on the outside. Yes, Well, how in
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: the world did they get up there? Would they just
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: slide back down?
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: Well, the answer that is obvious. It was aliens that
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: helped them. That's right, That's that's it. That's the answer.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: I have no idea, Chuck, that's a really good question
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: to tell you the truth. Maybe they maybe there's a
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: passageway inside.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: Right that they come out the top, you know, come out.
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: The top, pull the limestone up into place, and then
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: slide down it and start the process over again.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: But if you want to see kind of probably what
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: it looked like, just go look at the Iron Maiden
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: Power Slave album cover.
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of like smoothly covered.
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: It's not stepped, really, I mean, there's steps, but they're
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: they're meant to be like a staircase.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: It's not steps on the outside.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that makes sense. So yeah, So in the
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: fourteenth century, there was an earthquake, and as you'll see,
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: that becomes a pattern here with a lot of these
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: ancient wonders that would become ruins because of earthquakes.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: You know, most of these in the Middle East. It's
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: a volatile area tectonically speaking, so you know, over the
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: course of thousands of years, things are gonna tumble over time,
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it is what happened in this case.
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: It's basically earthquakes, earthquake, earthquake, earthquake, over and over again.
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: It's the great leveler of monuments, right.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: But the Kufu Pyramids stood. It was stood that earthquake
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: because it's just more than a pile of rocks. It
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: is so big and so grand and so heavy, I guess,
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: and probably a little luck came involved as well.
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but it was also really good engineering too, for sure.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: But the earthquake did get it in that it did
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: level Cairo, and they went out to the pyramid and
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: took the limestone off of it and used it to
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: rebuild Cairo.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's another common refrain of notices.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: A lot of these would be toppled, and then people
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: would come in and say, hey, let's use this stuff
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: for like actual for the city, yeah, instead of just
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: some monument to a ruler.
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: Yep. And if you are you ever going to go
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: see the pyramids.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: I was.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: It was sort of on the old bucket list until
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: I saw the pizza hut thing.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: To day.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: Oh man, that's funny.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: And I read an article where someone was like, don't
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: do it, just don't go really yeah, but I mean
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: that's just one person's opinion. We also had people that
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: said the northern lights aren't that impressive.
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that one person.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we got shouted down for that. Oh my god.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: It still happens from time to time.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Uh huh.
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: So if you do go, though, chuck the way that
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: you go into the pyramid, as far as you can,
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: it's actually an No one's figured out how to go
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: in the way that it was intended. It's that entrance
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: is lost to history as far as I know. The
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: entrance that you use is actually a carved tunnel through
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: the pyramid from the ninth century from this guy named
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: Abdullah al Maman who oversaw a looting expedition, and he's
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: one of the reasons why they think that it was
• 20:53
  Speaker 4: unused because even back in the ninth century, this guy
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: couldn't find anything in the sealed pyramid interesting.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: And you gain access to that through the bathroom of
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: pizza hut.
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: That's right with your X ray specs. Wow, you want
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: to take a break.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do that.
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: Let's do it now.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, we're back.
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: Yes, we are.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: No more poopoo ing of modern things next to old things.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: I sound like an old man crabbing, grabbing along.
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: That's all right, man uh.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: And this next one is interesting, the hanging Gardens of Babylon,
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: because this is one that that may not have even existed.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: These are this is the we're going chronologically, like you said,
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: so the second oldest if it was re built in
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: about the sixth century. And obviously these don't exist anymore
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: in any shape or form. But the deal is that
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: these this was in like modern day Iraq, and they
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: were gardens that it was really about the building. It's
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: kind of like the first big botanical garden, right. It
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: wasn't just things hanging from the sky. It was plants
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: and trees and everything planted in this grand, big building
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: that had water flowing through it.
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, in the desert.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: So if it was in Babylon, it would have been
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: about ninety miles or ninety kilometers. I can't remember which
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: one Outside of Baghdad modern day Baghdad, right, And if
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: it wasn't Babylon, they think that maybe King Nebukanezer built
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: the gardens. This is according to legend at least sure,
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: he built the gardens for his wife Ametis, who was
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: from the north where it's much more fertile and green.
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: And apparently Ametus missed her homeland, so the king built
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: her the hanging gardens. And again this is in the desert,
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: so to. And Babylon was a magnificent place in and
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: of itself, again, like their walls were once on this
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: list of seven Wonders to go see, right, But supposedly
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: it was just this enormous building, tiered with huge walkways. Yeah,
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: and they planted it with dirt and trees. And there
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: was a quote that was said it was thickly planted
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: with trees of every kind that, by their great size
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: or charm, could give pleasure to the beholder. That was
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: Deodorus who said that, and he was writing like a
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: while after they would have been built. But the idea
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: that you could just walk down treeline avenues in this
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: building in the desert's pretty neat.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I get the sense that in today's terms,
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: it would be like a sort of a nice office park.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: I gets.
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: So now we just take them for granted.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: But back then it was a big deal.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: You didn't have these structures with all these plants in
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: the middle of the desert like this. It was along
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: the Euphrates River most likely, and we're talking about I mean,
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: it looks any of the pictures that you've seen, it
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: really looks like it was something else. About seventy five
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: feet tall, like you said, tiered, this brick structure with
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: plants and waterfalls coming off of it, and twenty two
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: foot thick walls four hundred feet wide, and all manner
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: of flora all over the place, and irrigated from that
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: Euphrates River.
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: Right if if again it wasn't Babylon. But there's a
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: couple of reasons why that whole thing is why it
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: is question right. So for on the one hand, there's
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: no evidence of it. No one said this is where
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: it was, right, And other people say, well, of course
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: you can't say that these were plants, these were gardens.
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: There's not going to be any trace of it left.
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: Maybe you know, we've the building and we don't even
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: realize it. The reason why they think it might not
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: have actually existed in Babylon is because, first of all,
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: King nebukin Ezer love to boast about all of the
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: stuff he did. He left inscriptions in cuneiform basically everywhere.
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: He's like, you know, let out like a thirty second belch. Today,
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: King Nebucanezer, he would have stuff like this inscribed.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, I can't think of anyone today who I
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: could like in that too, but yes.
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: Right, exactly like he was one of a kind. No
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: ruler ever has for any resemblance to him. But he'd
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: never mentioned the gardens of Babylon and any cuneiform tablet
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: that's ever been discovered.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he did not tout it in writing, which is
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: very very unusual.
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: And then there's another guy, Herod Herodotus. He was an
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: historian from Greece and he wrote a basically a monograp
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: on Babylon one hundred years after Nebukanezer, and he didn't
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: mention the hanging gardens at all. No gardens, no legend
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: of a garden, no talk of a garden, no garden.
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: I visited nothing about gardens. Yeah, and the idea that
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: he would have passed over one of the great wonders
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: of the ancient world. When he's writing about the town
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: that contains it, it's pretty questionable. So some people say, well,
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: maybe it wasn't in Babylon. Maybe it was in another
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: place in Assyria.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe the Assyrian queen built it. Maybe the ruler
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: of Nineveh, whose name and these names I just love
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: ticking through all these names, as if nebucad Nezar wasn't
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: good enough, Senakaib it's great, the ruler of Nineveh may
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: have built them. I had always thought these were real,
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: But I tend to think that maybe nebuchad Nesser didn't
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: have anything to do with it, because it doesn't You're right.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: I don't think it makes any sense that it was
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: not mentioned in any of these accounts, right, because they
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: just and it wasn't just Nebukinzer all all this stuff
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: like keeping records.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: It was all very new.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: It was like the hot thing to do, you know, sure, right,
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: and so they wouldn't just say, oh, by the way,
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: we failed to mention we built this what would eventually
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: be a wonder of the world, but we just didn't
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: think it was important enough to write down.
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and this is from Nebukinezer, who used to leave
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: like inscriptions in the blocks of buildings saying built by Nebukinzer,
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: ruler of Babylon from sea to sea.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: Even if he didn't build it, he would.
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: Have met right exactly, he would have mentioned it.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: So if if it was in NINEVA, it would have
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: been close to present day Mosl in northern Iraq, right right.
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: And if it was in NINEV, then we've actually already
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: found the gardens of Babylon because they they discovered a
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: structure that was clearly in something similar to what the
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: Gardens of Babylon have described. It was a structure that
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: had irrigation brought to it, that used water screws to
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: pump water remember from our Archimedes death ray episode, uh huh,
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: to pump it upward to this thing. So we found
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: a garden, basically a botanical garden structure in NINEV. So
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: if it is there, we now know where the hanging
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: gardens were.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And that is the idea is that they took
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: this water up them from the Euphrates into these big
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: holding tanks, these big cisterns essentially on top and then
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: it would use a very clever system of gravity.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: To then feed down and irrigate all the.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: Different areas as it flowed downward.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: Right, really something to see.
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: I can't imagine what it must have been like like,
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: especially they rely can't.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: You know. I'm kind of disappointed now I have to
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: admit why we because it doesn't sound like it was
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: there or maybe even real.
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but it could have been. In NINEV I think
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: it was real. I think it was a nineveh Yeah,
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: because if you if you look at the if you
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: look at some I think it was Diodorus. Diodorus's writing
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: from Sicily, the guy from Sicily. Yeah, he says that
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: there were hanging gardens, but they were built by Assyrian king,
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: So I'm pretty sure that's that's it, all right, So
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: they were real, Chuck, and we know where they are. Okay,
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: and then you want to do one more for this episode.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's take a break and we'll come back and
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: finish up with the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus after this.
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: Okay, Chuck, and we're back. Yes, this one, this might
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: be my favor. Do you have a favorite one yet?
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: My favorite one will be in the next episode. Oh okay, cool,
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: how's that for a tease.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: That's a great tease.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: This one's pretty good though, because this took by all accounts,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: over one hundred and twenty years to build in just
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: one night to go bye bye, yeah, which is how
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: it goes sometimes.
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: Yep, especially when there's someone with pyromania involved.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: So ephesusesis Ephesis, That's what I'm going with.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: How about you, Artemis at Ephesis. I think that sounds better.
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: I think that might be it.
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: So Ephesis is It's actually a pretty well known city
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: of the ancient world, and I think it's still around
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: in some way, shape or form. But it was It
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: used to be a fabulously wealthy port city in what's
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: today Turkey, but it was under the control basically of Greece. Yea,
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: from what I understand, it was allowed to remain an
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: independent city state, but it was still like that was
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: at the pleasure of Greece and then later Rome. But
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: they managed to be an important place of finance and
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: law too. I think that's where a lot of the
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: courts were was in Ephesis. But it was also well
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: known for all of its magic cults. Right, Yes, that's
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: where the Magician's mansion was located.
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: Back in the ancient world.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so when they call it the city of magic,
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: they mean that literally.
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: Right, not magic city.
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: But it had like a quarter of a million residents
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: at its peaker at the time when the Temple of
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: Artemis was in full swing, and it was originally built
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: this temple, this massive, huge temple back in five point
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: fifty BCE by a guy named King Croesus. They think
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: that that might be old King Cole.
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: Did you know that?
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: Oh really, m h huh, that's what I've always heard.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: So King Crosis of Lydia.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: And this one, if you look it up under the
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: images it is it looks like you're you're kind of
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: classic Greek temple. It's rectangular that it measures about three
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: fifty by one eighty feet.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: And the thing about this one that is really jumped
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: out at me were the columns. And there are more
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: than one hundred columns and their marble and it's not
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: just like everything had columns. So that's that's all fine,
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: and well, these.
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: Are enough with the columns.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: These are the ionic architectural style columns. But these were
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: like if you look at it, there like the two
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: rows of columns on the front. To me, like the
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: fact that they doubled them up and offset them is
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: just really kind of striking looking.
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: It is. It's gorgeous.
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: And if you just the size of this thing too,
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: three hundred and fifty feet in length right or in depth,
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: that's like one in more than one football field American
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: football field. Which is this is a pretty good sized temple. Yeah,
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: it's not as massive as you might think in this
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: but it's still pretty big.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, you gotta you have to think all
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: of this in ancient standards. Sure, like today you look
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: at a building in size of a football field and
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: it's not that big of a deal, but it's still large.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: But by those standards back then, it was enormous.
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: Right, which I'm I'm happy with saying it's massive.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, put on your ancient hats, folks.
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: Plus also plus also just the the ornate detail that
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: was carved into the structure in every single spot, it
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: was pretty neat. And then if you looked at the
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: pediment of the temple, the base, there was a door
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: and two windows. I believe the windows are on either
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: side of the door. That was not for Upion, that
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: was for Artemis to enter and leave her temple at
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: her whim.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: So Artemis herself, this is this is one of the
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: reasons why this is my favorite. Artemis herself was the
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: Greek precursor to the Roman Diana. Okay, she was the
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: goddess of fertility, of the hunt and I believed the
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: moon too, right, all right, And she was Apollo's twin sister.
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: She was the daughter of Zeus and Leto, so she
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: was a pretty important deity. But she was kind of
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: cobbled together at the Temple of Artemis with an already
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: much much much older deity for the area. And her
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: name was Sibyl, and Sibyl was based on an ancient
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: fertility goddess from nine thousand years ago. So they took
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: Sybil and they took Artemis, who basically represented the same
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: thing but to two different cultures, and they put it
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: together at this Temple of Artemis at Ephesis.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, we're talking about a statue. I don't
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: think we said that.
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, we didn't.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: We weren't talking about some kind of weird black voodoo,
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: black magic.
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: It's a statue built from gold, silver, ebony, and some
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: other stuff. They had laying around. Pull tabs from tabcans.
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: Sure, it was like a found object thing basically.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: But this what's amazing about this one.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: You can actually look up the statue even though these
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: are just I don't know.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: If whether it were pictures of it or is this
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: just called from I.
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: Don't know, man, I'm not sure if it was just
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: from writings or if they do have it somewhere.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: Well.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: The cool thing is is the statue has this row
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: of bulbs hanging from her body and if you look
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: at it looks like she's wearing a.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: Tunic made of avocados.
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: Or like water balloons. Sure, but what they are is
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: up for debate. Some people say, well, they're obviously breasts,
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: she's a fertility goddess.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, make a little it does.
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: It would make even more sense if it weren't for
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: the fact that Sybil's cult was known to castraight bulls
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: as sacrifice, so they think they were probably bull testicles, right,
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: and the actually the Sybil cult high priests would castrate
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: them so they could be more like Sybil I e.
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: Without testicles. Remember our castration episode do I Boy, We've
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: talked about a lot of stuff, Chuck, we have. So
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: you've got this amazing wonderful, super cool statue in an
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: already amazing temple. And it's not just me who thought
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: that that it was the most amazing one of all.
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: There was another guy who wrote. His name was antipurv Sidon.
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: He says, I and this is he's writing back in
• 36:37
  Speaker 4: You know, I guess BCE still because he was an
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: ancient Greek. But he said, I have seen the walls
• 36:45
  Speaker 4: of unbreachable Babylon. Remember that was originally when the Seven
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: Wonders along which chariots may race, and the statue of
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: Zeus by the River Alpheus, the hanging Gardens, and the
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: Colossus of the Sun, the Great Man made mountains of
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: the Lofty Pyramid, and the gigantic tomb of Masciless. But
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: when I saw the sacred House of Artemis reaching the clouds,
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: the others paled.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: And that was Antipur of Sidon, right. So he's saying, like,
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: I've seen all the wonders, and to me, the temple
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: of Artemis at Efesis is the best.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: And he said, you got to see it. She has
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: bolt testicles hanging around her neck.
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: You've never seen anything like it.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: So this thing was very I mean it was it
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: was a legit tourist destination. People would travel long distances
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: to come to this place to see the statue in
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: the temple, and it was I mean, it's hard to believe,
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: but even back then they had. It boosted the local
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: economy and was literally supported by like gift shops selling
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: little statuette recreations of this thing.
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and this is already a wealthy area, so the
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: tourism was so big that that was still significant. The replicas,
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: the sale of the replicas still made that much of
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: a splash on the local that's how many were sold.
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: Like you go to New York City and you go
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: to a gift shop at at the Statue of Liberty
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: and you buy the little replica that exact thing was
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: going on thousands of years ago.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's nothing new.
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: I want one of those.
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: That would be great if you're looking for something for
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: me for Christmas, an original replica from the BCE, okay,
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: of the Temple of Artemis.
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: I would love that, all right.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: So you just want to give that's worth that's priceless basically. Okay,
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: So this story gets a little more interesting here. You
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: mentioned a pyromaniac earlier in July three fifty six BC.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: It was a man name and we almost didn't know
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: his name. He wrote Stratus, who is a pyromaniac who
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: burned this temple down for the by all accounts, for
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: the sole reason of living in infamy.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: And there was a.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: Decree that his name was I'll never be recorded at all,
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: so he wouldn't even earn that.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: But someone did.
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: Well that was it was punishable upon death to even
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: say his name afterward.
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, a guy named who was it?
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: Theopompus was the one who wrote it down, who recorded
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: the act and so.
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: What's his name? Heristratus?
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, was was recorded in infamy just like he wanted.
• 39:26
  Speaker 5: He was.
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: He was an ancient jerk, I think, is what you'd
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: call it.
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: And the temple, this is the story gets even better
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: because the temple burned the same day that Alexander the
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: Great was born, which was amazing, and the temple. They
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: would later rebuild the temple and Alexander said, yeah, you
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: know what, why don't I why don't I pay for
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: this thing?
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: All you gotta do is, like I don't know.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: Just throw my name on it somewhere, right, And they said, yeah,
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: that's nice, but we'll we'll just build it on her own.
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: Right, But then they backed slowly out of the room, like, okay,
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: that's okay, right, you're not gonna kill us, are you.
• 40:02
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: And I couldn't find a bunch of places that said
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: that he wanted his name on the temple except for
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: our article, So I'm not sure that's true.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: Did you see that in other places?
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: I did not.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's so the story goes. I'm not sure
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: about that though.
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: That's according to how stuff works. Yeah, so they rebuilt it.
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: They eventually did rebuild it, and I think it was
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: some Yeah, it was somewhat shortly after I'm not sure
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: actually how long it was after it was burned.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't, No one knows. They said they don't
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: know the date.
• 40:34
  Speaker 4: Okay, but it was rebuilt, and I think it was
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: rebuilt even bigger than before.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: But then in two sixty two CE, the Goths rated
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: it raided Aphasis, led by Robert Smith and Peter Murphy,
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: and they burned.
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: That thing to the ground.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: They actually broke the thing up and used the marble
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: to build the city. After what an earthquake yep, a
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: bunch of earthquake that's right.
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: It's the great leveler I know.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: And then I saw another thing that said, and this
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: wasn't our our article either, but it said that it
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: was rebuilt again even after that, and then a Christian
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: mob came along and destroyed it.
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: Oh, is that right?
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: That's what I saw.
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: I've not seen that one.
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: I did see that Ephesis was an important city in
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: the Bible, because I think Paul came and was proselytizing
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: there and started a riot because everybody's like, oh man,
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: your God sounds so great that it's going to undermine
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: our artemis and our local economy's going to fall to pieces.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: Wait, an, your religion was so interesting, it really was,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: you know, yeah, all right, have you got anything else
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: on that one?
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: No? I don't, man. I think we've reached the end
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: of part one.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: Hooray.
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: And if you're waiting while you're waiting.
• 41:54
  Speaker 4: For episode two to come out, you can get in
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: touch with us. We accept emails by the oodles at
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: stuff Podcasts at House Stuffworks dot Com, and has always
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: joined us at our home on the web. Stuff Youshould
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: Know dot com.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: more podcasts, myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.