As reported in
The Guardian:
An archaeologist has discovered liquid mercury at the end of a tunnel
beneath a Mexican pyramid, a finding that could suggest the existence of
a king’s tomb or a ritual chamber far below one of the most ancient
cities of the Americas...
Rosemary Joyce, a professor of anthropology at the University of
California, Berkeley, said that archaeologists have found mercury at
three other sites around Central America... Joyce said the ancient Mesoamericans could produce liquid mercury by
heating mercury ore, known as cinnabar, which they also used for its
blood-red pigment. The Maya used cinnabar to decorate jade objects.
I was fascinated by this report because it reminded me of the
reports that the first Chinese emporer's tomb contains lakes and rivers of liquid mercury. There is an extended discussion of this at
ChemistryWorld.
Most enticing of all is a detail relayed by Qian: ‘Mercury was used to
fashion the hundred rivers, the Yellow river and the Yangtze river, and
the seas in such a way that they flowed’. This idea that the main
chamber contains a kind of microcosm of all of China (as it was then
recognised) with rivers, lakes and seas of shimmering mercury had long
seemed too fantastic for modern historians to grant it credence...
In the 1980s Chinese researchers found that the soil in the burial mound
above the tomb contains mercury concentrations way above those
elsewhere in the vicinity. Now some archaeologists working on the site
believe that the body of the First Emperor may indeed lie amidst vast
puddles of the liquid metal.
Fascinating! Thank you. You always find the most interesting things.
ReplyDeleteFascinating. Also, important safety tip: Don't heat cinnabar to extract mercury unless you are absolutely sure you know what you are doing and have appropriate safety equipment in place. Liquid mercury is relatively safe since it does not absorb into the human body readily. Gaseous mercury and/or mercury compounds interacting with your lungs causes much more rapid absorption and it widely acknowledged as bad news.
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