this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
311 points (95.9% liked)

World News

38188 readers
1978 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago (4 children)

They mention high mercury levels as a trap or from wine that the emperor drank, but neither is likely (they often used to add lead to wine as a sweetener, but not mercury AFAIK). But, mercury contamination in tombs, especially in Asia, is very common from the heavy use of the deep red pigment cinnabar, also called vermillion, which is mercury sulfide.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago

Faik the worry isn't from wine the emperor drank (though I think the consensus is he did take a hell of a lot of mercury as medicine believing it'd give immortality). It's the described artistic floor map of China (at the time) with the rivers of liquid mercury suggested as being real by the high mercury readings.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They mention that they think rivers were recreated in the tomb using mercury.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I’ve heard of lead being used as sweetener for the Romans but never the Chinese

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Dude the emperor used to take his boat out on a lake of mercury.