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> Yet even if this mercury was indeed used for fantastical landscaping, Duan doubts that there can have been much of it... he thinks the chamber might have cont
by kijin 7y ago
> Yet even if this mercury was indeed used for fantastical landscaping, Duan doubts that there can have been much of it... he thinks the chamber might have contained at most 100 tons of the liquid metal: around 7m3.
That's a LOT of mercury. 7 cubic meters of a liquid can cover an area the size of a football field to a depth of 1.3 millimeters. Concentrated in a few narrow channels representing rivers and peripheral seas, the depth could be increased to several inches.
Why do historians go to such lengths to try to argue that ancient records are fantastical exaggerations? These people had the technology, resources, and political will to build a football field-sized map of China with rivers of mercury. If there are records saying that they built one, chances are they actually did.
By the way, it's also enough mercury to poison millions of people. That tomb should be a Superfund site.
- tyingq 7y ago"it's also enough mercury to poison millions of people. That tomb should be a Superfund site." It's a bit terrifying to imagine if the tomb is intact, that someone could drill, pump, and dump it all in a river. On a relatively low budget.
- partialrecall 7y agoThen maybe for their next act of senseless mustache twirling villainry , they could put razor blades in Halloween candy.
- tyingq 7y agoIt's 7 cubic meters of poison. That's pretty unique.
- partialrecall 7y agoMy point is why would anybody other than a Captain Planet villain go through the effort of pumping several tons of mercury out of a historic site into a river just for shits and giggles? The environmental terrorism angle to this story is just fear mongering paranoia.
- tyingq 7y agoRajneeshees did mass poisoning, and not as "environmental terrorism". Non-state actor sarin gas attacks happen. As do ricin, anthrax, etc. There's no shortage of terrible people that want to do terrible things with terrible stuff.
- partialrecall 7y agoExceptionally rare events. You may as well fear that somebody could put razor blades in apples and give them to kids. Opportunities to hurt other people are abundant but psychos who'd want to are not.
- dosy 7y agobecause "historians" are more preservers of the myth leading to the present, than chroniclers of any actual past. their job is to not upset the delicate notions of present dwellers, not to record how things actually were for people in the past. revealing a true past beyond the common capacity of present dwellers to understand it would be extremely dangerous. it might upset their notions about many things. the control of history is incredibly important to the preservation of the status quo culture.