

Liquid mercury found under Mexican pyramid could lead to king's tomb - benbreen
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/24/liquid-mercury-mexican-pyramid-teotihuacan

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Jun8
Interesting parallel to the flowing rivers is mercury in the best known
Chinese tomb:

[http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2015/01/flowing-rivers-
mer...](http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2015/01/flowing-rivers-mercury)

Speaking of using robots to investigate mysterious tunnels in tombs, one of
the most publicized one must be the discovery of doors in a tunnel within the
Great Pyramid: [http://www.sciencealert.com/robot-captures-first-images-
of-g...](http://www.sciencealert.com/robot-captures-first-images-of-great-
pyramids-secret-chamber)

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s_q_b
That mercury is designed to kill anyone who enters. It's probably the source
of a lot of myths surrounding raiding ancient tombs, and it's found across the
globe, most prominently in China. These guys knew someone would come for their
treasure someday.

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ChuckMcM
While we think of it as a hazard today, references to quicksilver in history
don't connect it with killing people, see
[https://books.google.com/books?id=nCKxSwUlX-
AC&printsec=fron...](https://books.google.com/books?id=nCKxSwUlX-
AC&printsec=frontcover&dq=quicksilver&hl=en&sa=X&ei=wNM7VfrONou5oQSBpYDoBg&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=quicksilver&f=false)
for example.

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s_q_b
Fascinating, I love being wrong here. I looked into it for an hour and you're
absolutely right. Sincerely, thank you for educating me about that. I was
always told it was a defensive mechanism, even by archaeology professors. I
wonder how that myth became so widespread in academia.

~~~
s_q_b
May I also say that this is the only place on the Internet, of which I know,
where an admission of being incorrect is greeted by a torrent of support
rather than mocking or denigration?

Academic discovery includes being wrong, and the fact that this is still
understood here makes it an extremely rare place.

Please, please no upvotes to this comment, as I'm simply trying express my
gratitude for all of your support for an essential element of academic
inquiry.

From the deepest part of my heart, thank you, HN.

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darkhorn
At that antient times where on earth they find so much mercury? And how they
place it there without killing themselves? And how they learned that it was
lethal?

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Eupolemos
In Cinnabar. They (most likely) didn't know it was unhealthy.

~~~
jjoonathan
It's worth mentioning that Hg extraction isn't very complicated. Its the kind
of thing that we might expect people fooling around with putting stuff in
fires would discover by accident. Just roast the ore (Cinnabar, HgS) at the
relatively modest temperature of 350˚C or higher and the mercury will
evaporate off, likely condensing on a nearby surface. Bam, liquid mercury.
Control the condensation and you've got liquid mercury on a large scale.

By comparison, smelting iron is much more complicated (higher temperatures +
it's a chemical reaction not just "bake and go" \+ residual carbon content
must be controlled for strength + annealing strategy significantly affects its
desirable properties).

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hughes
I would hope it's liquid mercury. Finding mercury in any other state at
ambient conditions would be quite unlikely.

~~~
teraflop
The headline was probably intended to specify that it was elemental mercury,
as opposed to mercury-containing compounds or minerals.

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Jolijn
Mercury actually concentrates into little beads on cinnabar ore, and is not
very reactive. I can imagine drops of it surviving for a few thousands years.

