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How the Terracotta Army Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
0:04
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
0:12
Speaker 1: Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry. We're
0:17
Speaker 1: just hanging figure we pressed record and see what happens. Yeah,
0:21
Speaker 1: Alry Terracotta Army of three not very imposing or terra Cotta.
0:27
Speaker 1: Did you go to the High Museum and see this
0:29
Speaker 1: when it was around? No, I didn't. You know, Umi did,
0:31
Speaker 1: and I wish I would have gone, but I did not. Yeah,
0:34
Speaker 1: but she was quite blown away. It was awesome and
0:37
Speaker 1: I didn't even Um, I hadn't heard of it until then.
0:40
Speaker 1: And then when I went and saw it, was like,
0:41
Speaker 1: this is pretty amazing, what a great story, And then
0:45
Speaker 1: I wanted to podcast about it and then just sort
0:47
Speaker 1: of forgot and now here it is a year later
0:49
Speaker 1: or however long. Yes, it was a while ago. Yeah,
0:53
Speaker 1: it was, um, but it's still a pretty fascinating story. Yeah.
0:57
Speaker 1: In that exhibit. If you live um on planet Earth,
1:02
Speaker 1: go to the website and see where it's going to be,
1:04
Speaker 1: because it travels around there. Is it like the Body's exhibit? Yeah,
1:08
Speaker 1: I mean there's uh, there's this exhibit. And then I
1:10
Speaker 1: think there's permanent um exhibits elsewhere. There's a permanent exhibit
1:15
Speaker 1: at the site itself. That's maybe one in London. I'm
1:19
Speaker 1: not positive. Well London has everything, but they do, they
1:23
Speaker 1: really do, know you. The only thing they don't have
1:25
Speaker 1: is twelve ounces of bears. That's yeah, because there's sixteen
1:29
Speaker 1: ounce that's right. Yeah, you don't need it. Took a
1:32
Speaker 1: trip there. I was like, what's with all these tallboys?
1:34
Speaker 1: And they're like, what's that? Oh? I get it now. Yeah,
1:38
Speaker 1: And it's not like you when you go to the pub.
1:41
Speaker 1: You don't go in for a twelve ounce or you
1:43
Speaker 1: go for a point. Yeah, and it's an imperial point, right?
1:47
Speaker 1: Is that more than sixteen ounces? Is that one point?
1:50
Speaker 1: Is that sixteen point nine? Is that one point nine ounces?
1:54
Speaker 1: I'll bet it is, Jerry? Hold up fingers. Jerry said
1:57
Speaker 1: twenty ounces is an imperial point, so I was wrong.
2:01
Speaker 1: Sixteen is a standard point? Are you sure it's not
2:03
Speaker 1: twenty five? Jerry? That's called a double deuice. That's called
2:06
Speaker 1: the core's double doucee. Double deuce is technically why because
2:12
Speaker 1: the twelve is a single? Right, No, but a double
2:16
Speaker 1: I thought double juice just meant, we're gonna put two
2:19
Speaker 1: beers into one can. That's the double double beer. What
2:24
Speaker 1: what are we talking about today? I don't know. I'm
2:25
Speaker 1: thirsty all of a sudden, though. You want a beer.
2:28
Speaker 1: It's Friday. I love a beer. Let me just reach
2:30
Speaker 1: into my bag. Here, you're your cooler bag, carry around
2:35
Speaker 1: like a purse. I wish man, that'll be fun, cooler
2:38
Speaker 1: Fannie pack drinking on the job like it's the nineteen fifties.
2:43
Speaker 1: All right, let's get serious, buddy, Okay, Chuck. On the
2:46
Speaker 1: morning of March seven, farmers set out to dig a well,
2:52
Speaker 1: so begins the article on how Stuff Works dot Com. Yes,
2:55
Speaker 1: but it also begins this story, A pretty amazing story. Actually, yeah,
3:00
Speaker 1: it's it's awesome. This was in the Chinese village of
3:03
Speaker 1: Good Look. Uh oh, that was pretty good. That's what
3:07
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say. Um And they were digging for water
3:11
Speaker 1: and got down about thirteen feet and hit something hard
3:15
Speaker 1: and dug up a terra cotta face and head. And
3:20
Speaker 1: we're like, exactly, they're probably whoa yeah or whatever the
3:24
Speaker 1: Chinese expression for what would be what was kind of universal. Okay,
3:30
Speaker 1: I'm curious, we do have we found out we're not
3:32
Speaker 1: banned in China, by the way. Yeah, so hello to
3:34
Speaker 1: all of our listeners out there in China. Um, and
3:37
Speaker 1: will you let us know what woe was in Chinese? Yeah?
3:40
Speaker 1: I think we should do a show sometime on Universal Uh.
3:43
Speaker 1: Sounds like um, I heard different um or read different
3:48
Speaker 1: things about how people laugh in different countries and people
3:52
Speaker 1: remark of of of affirmation or decline something like, I
3:57
Speaker 1: think it'd be really interesting. Yeah. They're called idioms, right,
4:01
Speaker 1: is that what it is? Like? Here we might go huh,
4:04
Speaker 1: but somewhere else they might go what else I don't know.
4:10
Speaker 1: We got we have focus here, Terracotta army. Yes. Um.
4:14
Speaker 1: So they alerted the government like any good um citizens should,
4:18
Speaker 1: and said, hey, I think we have something here. You
4:20
Speaker 1: should come look at. Yeah, because when they dug down
4:22
Speaker 1: a little more and they found shards of the same
4:25
Speaker 1: type of pottery and a lot of it in kind
4:29
Speaker 1: of vague human form, and that's when they're like, there's
4:32
Speaker 1: something weird going on here, So let's contact the authorities,
4:35
Speaker 1: And the authorities said archaeologists away and sent them out
4:40
Speaker 1: to the site. Because it was nine seventy four, they said, hey,
4:42
Speaker 1: let's contact the Chinese government right away. That's right. I
4:46
Speaker 1: don't know what that would happen today. Uh the Chinese people,
4:51
Speaker 1: you think, I don't know. It depends on who they are.
4:54
Speaker 1: I would guess they probably were more likely to in
4:57
Speaker 1: seventy four than today. So what they knew the the
5:02
Speaker 1: government and experts and archaeologist said, well, hold on a minute,
5:05
Speaker 1: you guys are digging near the burial ground of Chen
5:09
Speaker 1: sure Handi, and Um he was the first emperor of China,
5:15
Speaker 1: and he had a huge mausoleum. And I bet you
5:18
Speaker 1: anything that's what you guys have found. And Uh, it
5:21
Speaker 1: turns out they were right, the archaeologists right. So Um,
5:24
Speaker 1: the legend had it that Um Chen sure Huangdi, China's
5:29
Speaker 1: first emperor, Um had himself built a pretty awesome mausoleum.
5:34
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, you couldn't even call it
5:36
Speaker 1: a mausoleum. It was called a funerary complex. It was
5:39
Speaker 1: so massive. But as they started to dig and get
5:42
Speaker 1: further and further along in this excavation, which they have
5:45
Speaker 1: still not even and come close to completing from or something, Yeah,
5:50
Speaker 1: it's the size of Manhattan, the size of Manhattan, his
5:55
Speaker 1: his mausoleum. Yeah, Um, they started to realize, like it's
5:59
Speaker 1: even big or than we ever thought, Like it wasn't lost.
6:02
Speaker 1: They knew that he was buried somewhere around this area.
6:05
Speaker 1: It was just you don't go digging up emperor's tombs.
6:10
Speaker 1: But these these farmers had found something pretty interesting and
6:13
Speaker 1: it was enough to get the archaeologists over that, and
6:16
Speaker 1: they started to dig. And they still have yet to
6:18
Speaker 1: excavate Cheen's tomb, his actual tomb where he's buried, and
6:23
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that later. But when they started dig,
6:26
Speaker 1: they started to reveal like more and more of these
6:28
Speaker 1: terra cotta figures, and they would stumble upon one room.
6:31
Speaker 1: And first they stumbled upon a room and they found chuck,
6:35
Speaker 1: like six thousand of these things of infantry men, all
6:39
Speaker 1: standing at the ready, all larger than life. They were
6:42
Speaker 1: about six to six and a half feet tall. Yeah,
6:46
Speaker 1: all made of terra cotta. Um, crossbows, finger on the trigger, um,
6:52
Speaker 1: dudes on horses. Well, those are in separate rooms. So
6:55
Speaker 1: first room was like six thousand infantrymen like a information
7:00
Speaker 1: information would be lined up. Then there was another room
7:02
Speaker 1: that had like specialists like cavalry, got archers with crossbows,
7:07
Speaker 1: blow darters yeah, um and then there was a third
7:11
Speaker 1: room that had I think eighties six like commanders. It
7:14
Speaker 1: was like the command room. So basically what they revealed
7:17
Speaker 1: was this terra cotta army information in this guy's grave, Yes,
7:24
Speaker 1: with the idea that UM he wanted protection in the
7:27
Speaker 1: afterlife because he was one of the great jerks of
7:32
Speaker 1: world history. He really Yeah, he was terrible. He was
7:36
Speaker 1: a tyrant for sure. He was a he perhaps was
7:39
Speaker 1: responsible for the deaths of more than one million of
7:42
Speaker 1: his citizens. He also though, got things done. Yeah, let's
7:49
Speaker 1: talk about the guy. So he was the first emperor.
7:52
Speaker 1: Before him, China had seven kingdoms, and UM in four
7:57
Speaker 1: eighty one, all these kingdoms said, you know what, I
8:00
Speaker 1: want to be the main kingdom. So it started what's
8:02
Speaker 1: called the Warring States, the era of battling for land
8:06
Speaker 1: and superiority. And I saw this really neat documentary on
8:11
Speaker 1: that geo I think called China's Ghost Army. I think
8:16
Speaker 1: it's what's called I posted a link on our on
8:19
Speaker 1: our podcast page for this episode. Totally worth watching. It's
8:22
Speaker 1: like an hour. But they say that UM before this,
8:25
Speaker 1: prior to this Warring States era, when an emperor died
8:30
Speaker 1: in Cheen, the Cheen um Kingdom. Uh. They would kill
8:37
Speaker 1: the whole court, hundreds of people would be buried alive
8:41
Speaker 1: with the emperor. And then this warring States, these battles
8:45
Speaker 1: and wars were so significant as far as casualties went.
8:50
Speaker 1: There like, we can't do that anymore, we need them
8:53
Speaker 1: to go fight in the wars. So they stopped that tradition.
8:56
Speaker 1: But it was because of this um the Warring States
8:59
Speaker 1: era and thing. And that can you imagine like two
9:03
Speaker 1: people just being mass buried alive together because the emperor died,
9:07
Speaker 1: I can't imagine. So let's get back to this jerk
9:12
Speaker 1: chen He Uh he overtook and basically was the first
9:17
Speaker 1: emperor Uh forced people to be in the army, built
9:22
Speaker 1: up a huge army. Um. He relocated in his first
9:26
Speaker 1: year about a hundred and twenty thousand families. And that's
9:29
Speaker 1: like Stalin did that same thing. It's like, you can't
9:32
Speaker 1: have ethnic unity and then that kind of collective thought
9:36
Speaker 1: and then potentially an uprising if you break up that
9:40
Speaker 1: kind of ethnic bonds by basically bussing people in and
9:43
Speaker 1: out of different areas. Yeah, it makes sense, but this
9:45
Speaker 1: guy was doing it like UM a couple like about
9:49
Speaker 1: two thousand years before Stalin crazy. He burned all the books,
9:53
Speaker 1: he burned all the writings. Uh. Scholars that didn't jibe
9:56
Speaker 1: with his line of thought were buried alive or behead. Yeah,
10:00
Speaker 1: he was a piece of garbage and he was terrible. Um.
10:04
Speaker 1: He assembled a workforce of a million men to build
10:09
Speaker 1: about five thousand miles of roads, um. And the Great
10:13
Speaker 1: Wall of China. Yeah, the first Great Wall of China.
10:15
Speaker 1: So while he said he was a jerk, he made
10:18
Speaker 1: a point. He got things done. I mean he he
10:20
Speaker 1: got a monetary system that was unified. Yeah, he also
10:26
Speaker 1: unified weights and measurements. Um. He unified China from seven
10:32
Speaker 1: kingdoms into one country. And it's still that way today,
10:35
Speaker 1: two thousand years later. And if you've noticed a similarity
10:38
Speaker 1: between Chin and China, that's because the country is named
10:42
Speaker 1: after him. So he got things done, vital figure in
10:45
Speaker 1: China's history. But he did a brutal, brutal, controlling, murderous dictator. Right.
10:50
Speaker 1: He wasn't asking and he also had a really conflated
10:54
Speaker 1: view of his the empire that he'd put together, and
10:58
Speaker 1: you can see this apparently the money that he meanted,
11:01
Speaker 1: Like he there were different regions that he conquered had
11:05
Speaker 1: different kinds of money, so he did create like a
11:07
Speaker 1: single monetary system. I think you said, um, and that
11:10
Speaker 1: that money was square shaped with a hole in the center.
11:14
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a square donut. The band Liang
11:17
Speaker 1: coin and that coin at the time in ancient China.
11:21
Speaker 1: UM the square represented the earth and the circle represented
11:25
Speaker 1: the sky or the heavens. And so what he was
11:29
Speaker 1: saying is that this earth, my empire, is even greater
11:32
Speaker 1: than the heavens that surround the earth. That's how how
11:36
Speaker 1: good I'm feeling about myself right now? He felt pretty good,
11:40
Speaker 1: but he was parah annoyed, and I think that usually
11:42
Speaker 1: comes when you're on top and you get there by
11:46
Speaker 1: any means necessary, you're gonna be watching your back your
11:48
Speaker 1: whole life. Um. Specifically, he came from the west and
11:52
Speaker 1: conquered eastward. So when he was buried, he had the
11:56
Speaker 1: terracotta army facing east to protect him because of all
12:00
Speaker 1: the badness he had done. And this is after he
12:02
Speaker 1: had killed hundreds of scientists that he commissioned to try
12:07
Speaker 1: and prolong his life. Yeah, so we talked about him
12:10
Speaker 1: actually in the Bizarre Medical Treatments episode. I think without
12:13
Speaker 1: realizing it that. Um. He at the back in the
12:17
Speaker 1: day at the time, they believe mercury had some sort
12:21
Speaker 1: of like life enhancing or immortality bestowing properties, and he
12:27
Speaker 1: would take mercury pills. I think that that's ironically what
12:31
Speaker 1: killed him. Um. But he in addition to mercury, he
12:36
Speaker 1: sent out people to like find fountains of youth or
12:38
Speaker 1: whatever was the Chinese legend version of that. Um. He
12:43
Speaker 1: was obsessed with remaining alive and simultaneously, like you said,
12:48
Speaker 1: totally paranoid with dying. So he must have been a
12:51
Speaker 1: very tormented person. Yeah, he killed four eighty Um doctors
12:55
Speaker 1: and scientists were killed who could not come up with
12:59
Speaker 1: a way to make him immortal and again buried alive
13:02
Speaker 1: or beheaded. Great. Not a good die. UM. All right,
13:08
Speaker 1: you want to take a break here and talk more
13:10
Speaker 1: about the Terracott Army. Yes, right, So Chuck Um, when
13:34
Speaker 1: we uh we were talking about this guy, I think
13:37
Speaker 1: you're painting it a pretty good picture of him. I
13:40
Speaker 1: guess he comes to either he comes to grip with
13:42
Speaker 1: the idea that he's gonna die because at the time,
13:45
Speaker 1: like he's trying to chase immortality, he's concocting um like
13:50
Speaker 1: a huge burial masso lium for himself. I guess, hedging
13:54
Speaker 1: his bets in case he does die. But by this time,
13:57
Speaker 1: like Confucius and other scholars in China had basically, like
14:01
Speaker 1: philosophically debunked the idea of life after death. So this
14:05
Speaker 1: man was utterly crazy by his contemporary standards. Um and
14:12
Speaker 1: that kind of shows if you step back and really
14:14
Speaker 1: think about the attitude and the mentality behind what he
14:18
Speaker 1: was doing. But he at some point either came to
14:21
Speaker 1: grips with the factor he was gonna die, or he
14:23
Speaker 1: was just hedging his bets and thought he was going
14:25
Speaker 1: to remain immortal. But just in case, let me have
14:27
Speaker 1: this incredible grand funerary complex created, and let's build a
14:32
Speaker 1: terra Cotta army to protect me in the afterlife. Yeah,
14:35
Speaker 1: it's really neat to look at the Terracotta army now,
14:38
Speaker 1: his art, but eight thousand soldiers, Like, this guy was
14:41
Speaker 1: clearly cuckoo. He was off his rocker. Yeah, he's a batman.
14:46
Speaker 1: He was a bad man. Alright, So shall we start
14:49
Speaker 1: with the army. Yes, let's because it's not all that
14:52
Speaker 1: is that he had commission, But the armies are very
14:55
Speaker 1: it's pretty significant it is significant. Um, Like you said,
14:58
Speaker 1: they are information. So the front dudes are Um, they're
15:03
Speaker 1: kneeling down their bowmen and they were famous the armies
15:06
Speaker 1: they had then, and this is one of the reasons
15:08
Speaker 1: he took over. They figured out the crossbow, and they
15:10
Speaker 1: figured out how to shoot while riding a horse. And
15:13
Speaker 1: that was basically all she wrote. Yeah, everybody else is
15:15
Speaker 1: like mother. Yeah, like down here with a sword on
15:19
Speaker 1: the ground and you're shooting at me from twenty ft
15:22
Speaker 1: away with some weird metallic bolt. I guess not metallic,
15:25
Speaker 1: but wouldn't. Yeah, they weren't Fortune steel back then. I
15:31
Speaker 1: wonder when they did start. I don't know, something like
15:34
Speaker 1: a podcast it does how steel works. Yeah, it'd be
15:38
Speaker 1: a good one. I could see that. Um. So you
15:41
Speaker 1: have these bowmen they have on their armor, Um, their
15:44
Speaker 1: fingers on the trigger there, incredibly detailed down to the
15:48
Speaker 1: soles of their feet. Yeah. They have their shoes they're
15:51
Speaker 1: wearing have like treadmarks on the bottom. It's all. They
15:54
Speaker 1: took great pride, these artists, clearly because they probably didn't
15:57
Speaker 1: want to get killed. Because each of them had to
15:59
Speaker 1: sign in case there was a flaw. I could be
16:02
Speaker 1: traced back to who built this one. Yeah, they were
16:05
Speaker 1: killed that they didn't like it. They most decidedly were.
16:07
Speaker 1: There were eighty three. They found the stamps, which were
16:11
Speaker 1: ultimately the signatures of eighty three different foreman, and each
16:15
Speaker 1: foreman had a team of apprentices working under him, and
16:18
Speaker 1: the reason that they did assign those stamps so that
16:20
Speaker 1: he could have them killed if he didn't like how
16:23
Speaker 1: slow work was progressing, if he didn't like what it
16:26
Speaker 1: looked like. Um. And at first, chuck, they were like, well,
16:30
Speaker 1: this is clearly they just set up an assembly line.
16:33
Speaker 1: Molds were known to the Chinese back then, and um,
16:37
Speaker 1: that's the only way you could possibly create seven thousand
16:41
Speaker 1: figures from a terra cotta army. And they found that yes,
16:44
Speaker 1: actually the heads were um created through molds. I think
16:48
Speaker 1: the arms were and stuff like that, but the bulk
16:51
Speaker 1: of them were created by this thing called coiling. Okay,
16:55
Speaker 1: so what is that like? Three D printing? Very much so.
16:58
Speaker 1: Actually they take clay and hammer until it's soft impliable,
17:03
Speaker 1: and then you wrap it in like a rope around it,
17:06
Speaker 1: and then you mold it. And the thing it really
17:10
Speaker 1: took these there's people who are recreating it to try
17:13
Speaker 1: to figure out how they did it, and they've examined
17:16
Speaker 1: like broken pieces so they can see the inside and
17:18
Speaker 1: they can see the coiling evidence very clearly, and they're like,
17:23
Speaker 1: it doesn't make any sense, Like you can't quickly make
17:27
Speaker 1: um all these figures in an efficient way by coiling.
17:31
Speaker 1: Why would they not just use molds? And finally somebody realized,
17:34
Speaker 1: like this emperor was a bloodthirsty tyrant. He didn't care
17:38
Speaker 1: about efficiency. He cared about differences distinctions. So while so
17:43
Speaker 1: while the heads just the actual shape of the heads
17:46
Speaker 1: were made in mold, the bodies were made by hand,
17:51
Speaker 1: each one through this coiling method. So where you could
17:54
Speaker 1: make like a molded body and maybe a week, it
17:57
Speaker 1: would take a month to do one body by coiling.
18:02
Speaker 1: And that's what they were doing because he wanted them different.
18:05
Speaker 1: That's crazy. Yeah, he just didn't want to carbon carbon
18:07
Speaker 1: copies soldiers. So each one of these the body was
18:12
Speaker 1: made by hand through this incredibly intensive coiling method. So
18:16
Speaker 1: they're starting from the ground up obviously with the base,
18:19
Speaker 1: and then coiling their way up. The legs then were
18:21
Speaker 1: molded and affixed, uh, as well as the arms and torsos.
18:26
Speaker 1: No not the um okay, gotcha, but then the heads.
18:32
Speaker 1: They said they found eight different head molds. Yes, and
18:35
Speaker 1: that's just the big mold, not the faces. Right. The
18:38
Speaker 1: faces were done by hand individually as well, right, each face. Yeah,
18:44
Speaker 1: the hair and expressions, yeah yeah, and the hair. Uh.
18:47
Speaker 1: You know, warriors who had had the most kills had
18:50
Speaker 1: longer hair and a bigger up right big and um,
18:56
Speaker 1: so they would. You know, they took great care into making,
18:59
Speaker 1: you know, the the most revered soldiers have their hair
19:02
Speaker 1: matched as it should basically as realistic as they could. Yea.
19:07
Speaker 1: If you're just an infantry man, you'd be wearing like
19:09
Speaker 1: one of one of those beanies beanie hat probably um,
19:13
Speaker 1: with maybe like your bun just kind of sticking up
19:16
Speaker 1: off to the side underneath. If you're a general, you
19:19
Speaker 1: might be wearing a huge hat with a pheasant feather
19:22
Speaker 1: and a bow tying the whole thing underneath you. Yeah,
19:26
Speaker 1: very fancy. So these things were incredibly detailed. They weren't
19:29
Speaker 1: like a knockoff Star Wars figure that you would find
19:35
Speaker 1: in Bulgaria or something like that, you know, or China. Yeah,
19:41
Speaker 1: sure that was way more appropriate than Bulgaria. They probably
19:44
Speaker 1: make the real thing too. Um. Yeah, these were very detailed.
19:48
Speaker 1: Not you know, you wouldn't want to say life like.
19:51
Speaker 1: They're still artistic slightly, but they were pretty detailed still. Yeah,
19:56
Speaker 1: and they the ones you see now when they see
19:59
Speaker 1: him in the museum where you look it up on Google. Um,
20:01
Speaker 1: they're not colored, but that is because of humidity and time.
20:05
Speaker 1: But um, originally they fired him in the killing and
20:07
Speaker 1: they painted and lacquered them as well. That's right. I'd
20:10
Speaker 1: love to see those. Look at watch that National Geographic thing.
20:13
Speaker 1: They've redone one in the original colors that they think,
20:16
Speaker 1: and they're almost garish. They're so different like colorful wise
20:21
Speaker 1: and um, lots of surprising lavenders and blues and purples
20:28
Speaker 1: and things. Reds colors used to be way more garish, right, Um,
20:33
Speaker 1: but so okay. They were doing some assembly line stuff.
20:40
Speaker 1: Most of the bulk of it, though, was coiled by hand.
20:43
Speaker 1: The faces, the hair all done by hand, and then
20:48
Speaker 1: each one was painted by hand and then given a
20:52
Speaker 1: coat of lacquer. That's insane. It's insane that the sky
20:58
Speaker 1: would have had an assembly line of seven thousand of
21:01
Speaker 1: these things built and unpainted. But he didn't. He went
21:04
Speaker 1: even more detailed and apparently also I learned from that documentary.
21:08
Speaker 1: At the time, lacquer was an extremely expensive um product
21:14
Speaker 1: and he was using it on his terra cottas soldiers.
21:16
Speaker 1: It still ain't cheap, uh, and that they there wasn't
21:20
Speaker 1: just the soldiers, there were also um some uh, there
21:24
Speaker 1: was a strong man in another room and some what
21:28
Speaker 1: do you call him? That circus performers, Yeah, acrobats. And
21:31
Speaker 1: I looked up the strong man and he was noted
21:33
Speaker 1: for the detail of his biceps. And he had a gut,
21:36
Speaker 1: he did, he had a gut and some guns, gutting guns.
21:39
Speaker 1: He's missing his head, right, Yeah, I didn't see a head. Yeah,
21:43
Speaker 1: but yeah, he's got he's a big boy. He's like um,
21:46
Speaker 1: he was built like Andre the Giant. Yeah, kind of
21:49
Speaker 1: all right, you want to take another little rest here,
21:52
Speaker 1: We'll take a quick nap and then I'll I'll let
21:55
Speaker 1: you awake very gently. Alright you well, we'll finish up
22:22
Speaker 1: what cup buddy? Huh, it's time to finish the terracout army?
22:26
Speaker 1: Oh man, Oh, I got crusted in my eyes, look
22:30
Speaker 1: at you. Okay, I'm back, Chuck. Okay. So Jean wasn't
22:34
Speaker 1: the only ruler to do this, right, No, he wasn't.
22:39
Speaker 1: Who else did it well? Do you remember in our
22:41
Speaker 1: Pyramids episode, although if it hasn't come out yet, no
22:45
Speaker 1: one will know what I'm talking about, but you will eventually. Um,
22:49
Speaker 1: we talked about how the Pyramid of Cufu was the
22:52
Speaker 1: pinnacle of pyramid building in dynastic Egypt, and then the
22:56
Speaker 1: pyramids got smaller because the rulers um cred I guess
23:01
Speaker 1: went down as people started to worship the sun instead.
23:04
Speaker 1: Great point that I had never considered. Very similar thing
23:07
Speaker 1: happened in China as people as the well. The Ching
23:11
Speaker 1: dynasty only lasted for another four years after chen or
23:15
Speaker 1: huangdi Um died, and then the Han dynasty started, and
23:19
Speaker 1: the Hans apparently had much um easier hand with their subjects,
23:25
Speaker 1: and so as a result, even though they had terracotta
23:28
Speaker 1: armies buried with them, they were like a third to
23:31
Speaker 1: a sixth of the size of cheens terracatta army, and
23:35
Speaker 1: they take that as a sign that this um might
23:39
Speaker 1: empower over people. UM had diminished tremendously. Yeah. I think
23:45
Speaker 1: it was symbolic of a kinder um regime UM and
23:50
Speaker 1: one that was not also booby trapped with like very
23:54
Speaker 1: much like Raiders of the Lost Arc apparently Cheens to
23:57
Speaker 1: them or the whole complex booby trapped with like blow
24:01
Speaker 1: darts and stuff ready to go. And also we did
24:07
Speaker 1: we um. One of the reasons why this thing was
24:09
Speaker 1: booby trapped was to prevent looters. Because remember there's a
24:12
Speaker 1: historian that was that came along not too long after.
24:15
Speaker 1: He's a part of the early Han dynasty. From what
24:17
Speaker 1: I understand, the name as Sema kion Um and Seema
24:23
Speaker 1: kion is the one who first described cheens mausoleum. And
24:27
Speaker 1: one of the things he described is that um on
24:30
Speaker 1: the ceiling was a constellation made of pearls and gems,
24:34
Speaker 1: mountains had been chiseled out of gold, and that um
24:38
Speaker 1: that Cheen's tomb itself was surrounded by a river of
24:41
Speaker 1: mercury because remember again they since they said that um
24:45
Speaker 1: it bestowed immortality. And from what I understand, a lot
24:50
Speaker 1: of what Sima Kian was talking about a writing has
24:54
Speaker 1: been proven correct. So UM, and they've also found that
24:57
Speaker 1: in the soil around che tomb where they think he's buried,
25:02
Speaker 1: there's higher than unusually high mercury levels, like super high. Yeah,
25:07
Speaker 1: so they think like, yeah, these crazy people buried him
25:10
Speaker 1: around a river of mercury, and who knows if there's
25:13
Speaker 1: a constellation of pearls and Gempson's maybe seem Kian is right. Yeah,
25:17
Speaker 1: and that also makes it super dangerous to excavate still um,
25:22
Speaker 1: which is one of the reasons why they haven't done
25:24
Speaker 1: more there. Um there are six hundred pits that they
25:28
Speaker 1: have unearthed thus far, which is, like I said, I
25:31
Speaker 1: think only about one percent. And um, they're sort of
25:36
Speaker 1: afraid to look elsewhere because of the booby traps in
25:39
Speaker 1: the mercury. I don't blame them. Uh So a few stats.
25:42
Speaker 1: Thirty six years to complete this army or the tomb
25:46
Speaker 1: I guess, um, seven hundred thousand laborers. They estimate eight
25:51
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty thousand square feet a hundred feet deep
25:55
Speaker 1: with I saw eight thousand warriors. This is seven. I've
25:59
Speaker 1: seen different numbers. Two let's just say between six and
26:02
Speaker 1: eight um forty weapons. And apparently these weapons are in
26:08
Speaker 1: really good shape. Well yeah, I mean they're like bronze
26:10
Speaker 1: swords and stuff like that. They weren't made of like, um,
26:14
Speaker 1: paper mache, so I guess he did have metal, Yeah, bronze.
26:19
Speaker 1: At least that answers that in each one of these
26:22
Speaker 1: terracotta soldiers weighs about three thirty pounds, which is crazy
26:26
Speaker 1: because they're not even solid. Oh yeah, it wouldn't be right.
26:31
Speaker 1: So what is the coil on the inside and then
26:32
Speaker 1: they smooth out the outside? Right? Okay, that makes sense.
26:35
Speaker 1: So um we did mention that um Emperor han ling D,
26:41
Speaker 1: who came fifty three years after Cheen, had his smaller
26:45
Speaker 1: terracotta soldiers. There's also the Wei Shan site um which
26:51
Speaker 1: they found in two thousand two, another terracotta army. But
26:54
Speaker 1: they're all just a football they they they might as
26:58
Speaker 1: well not even be there. Symbolic cute. That also symbolic
27:02
Speaker 1: again of a kinder. What was the one quote from
27:06
Speaker 1: do nothing in order to govern? Yeah, not quite the
27:10
Speaker 1: same as Cheen. That was the Emperor han ling D's quote.
27:14
Speaker 1: He was the motto Cheen was a little more do
27:16
Speaker 1: whatever you need to do to squatch any disruption. Well yeah,
27:21
Speaker 1: and Han ling D came along and said, you know what,
27:24
Speaker 1: we're going to not text you guys that much, and
27:26
Speaker 1: we're gonna do away with forced labor. So uh, let's party.
27:31
Speaker 1: He was like the Rodney danger Field of the han
27:33
Speaker 1: dymondsty I think he got respect though. Sure that's true.
27:42
Speaker 1: So that's he was the Rodney Dangerfield post death because
27:46
Speaker 1: Rodney has tons of respect. What was Rodney Dangerfield's epitaph?
27:50
Speaker 1: Do you remember? It's like one of the best ever.
27:55
Speaker 1: Someone I was on the Mark Maron's interview show w
27:58
Speaker 1: t F was interviewed and they were talking about the
28:01
Speaker 1: old days hanging out with Rodney and just what a
28:03
Speaker 1: beast that guy was. What do you mean just party beast? Oh? Yeah,
28:07
Speaker 1: like legendary. Um, you hang out with Rodney and you're
28:11
Speaker 1: in for a long night. I can imagine. Yeah, but
28:14
Speaker 1: a really good guy. I found it. Chuck. What his
28:18
Speaker 1: epitaph on Rodney danger Fields grave stuff? There goes the
28:22
Speaker 1: neighborhood so classic awesome? Yeah, but I had like that
28:30
Speaker 1: you get a free bowl of soup. Oh that was
28:32
Speaker 1: pretty good man. You were like the rich little of
28:35
Speaker 1: this podcast. Uh, you got anything else? Nope. If you
28:39
Speaker 1: want to know more about the terra Cotta army, go
28:41
Speaker 1: see it. And while you're doing that, you can type
28:43
Speaker 1: those words into the search bar at how stuff works
28:45
Speaker 1: dot com. Terracotta is one word, by the way, one
28:49
Speaker 1: word Smithsonian Magazine. Oh did they goop it? Uh? And
28:54
Speaker 1: since I Shames Smithsonian Magazine. That means it's time for
28:57
Speaker 1: listener mail. I'm gonna call this uh animal imprint feedback.
29:04
Speaker 1: Hey guys, I'm currently listening to how animal imprinting works
29:07
Speaker 1: and could not even finish it because I had to
29:08
Speaker 1: write you My godmother's Dorsey. Uh and Susan live on
29:13
Speaker 1: own and run an urban farm in Austin, Texas on
29:16
Speaker 1: the east side. They have several animals such as chickens, bunnies, geese,
29:19
Speaker 1: miniature donkeys, boy and ducks. Um. Recently, a mother duck
29:25
Speaker 1: had no interest in her babies uh, and they got
29:28
Speaker 1: adopted by a chicken. That chicken got sick of them
29:31
Speaker 1: trying to play in all of the rain and we
29:33
Speaker 1: have all the rain we've been getting and left them
29:36
Speaker 1: on their own. A male goose named Gustavo took the
29:41
Speaker 1: baby ducks in and treats them as his own. On
29:44
Speaker 1: top of that, the next batch of baby ducks born
29:47
Speaker 1: he went and took as his own. Now Gustavo has
29:51
Speaker 1: about ten baby ducks that follow him around the nest.
29:53
Speaker 1: With them, he has his own private army. That's right, um.
29:57
Speaker 1: And they're not terra cotta. They're made of baby feathers
30:01
Speaker 1: the softest army. I failed to mention that Gustavo is
30:04
Speaker 1: the face of the farm, greets people, follows around my godmothers,
30:07
Speaker 1: and gives tours whoever stops by, So she says, she
30:12
Speaker 1: finishes with I started listening to y'all about five months
30:14
Speaker 1: ago and cannot stop start many of my sentences now
30:17
Speaker 1: with this podcast, I was listening to say many random
30:20
Speaker 1: facts that I learned from You also teach high school
30:23
Speaker 1: world history and on the days I need to uh
30:26
Speaker 1: the students not to talk um a k A. The
30:29
Speaker 1: days that I don't have a lesson plan that I
30:36
Speaker 1: talked to all, I play one of your episodes that
30:38
Speaker 1: applies to what we're learning and have them do bookwork.
30:41
Speaker 1: I find many of them not working and listening to
30:43
Speaker 1: your show instead. Nice. So that is from Christina, Maudie
30:48
Speaker 1: and Christina, thank you for your work as a teacher,
30:51
Speaker 1: and hello to all your students. And hello, Hello are
30:55
Speaker 1: your godmothers and Gustavo. Hello miss Maudie's class, Thanks for listening.
31:01
Speaker 1: Miss Maudie. That's so nice. Yeah, I'm sure that's what
31:04
Speaker 1: they call her. That'd be great callor Christina, that's way
31:07
Speaker 1: too modern of a school for me and big ups
31:10
Speaker 1: to Gustavo. That's pretty cool. I want to take a
31:14
Speaker 1: Gustavo to her someday. And she sent a picture of
31:16
Speaker 1: gustav on the ducks too. Uh well, we should post
31:19
Speaker 1: that somewhere alright, unless it's copyrighted. Let us know. If
31:24
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us, you can
31:25
Speaker 1: tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You
31:27
Speaker 1: can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you
31:30
Speaker 1: Should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff
31:32
Speaker 1: podcast at how stuff works dot com and has always
31:34
Speaker 1: joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you
31:36
Speaker 1: Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands
31:44
Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com