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Selects: How the Terracotta Army Works · Stuff You Should Know

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