Liquid Mercury Found Under Mexican Pyramid

An anonymous reader writes: 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. Mexican researcher Sergio Gómez ... has spent six years slowly excavating the tunnel, which was unsealed in 2003 after 1,800 years. Last November, Gómez and a team announced they had found three chambers at the tunnel’s 300ft end, almost 60ft below the the temple. Near the entrance of the chambers, they a found trove of strange artifacts: jade statues, jaguar remains, a box filled with carved shells and rubber balls.

Comments

Hmmm

[koan]

Near the entrance of the chambers, they a found trove of strange artifacts: jade statues, jaguar remains, a box filled with carved shells and rubber balls.

What's strange about any of that?

Re: Do not

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

In addition to being cool stuff, mercury also has a very long history of use in gold extraction. I don't know about the people who built this particular structure; but mercury-amalgamation gold extraction is known to have been in use in South America well before the Spanish showed up. Given the human enthusiasm for gold, that's another point in mercury's favor as a funerary good, along with being weird and cool looking.

(Large scale extraction is now usually done by cyanide leaching, since that's somewhat less nasty than mercury amalgamation; but small scale miners often still use mercury. As one might imagine, the 'now heat the amalgam with a blowtorch to drive off the mercury and recover the gold' step is about as good for you as it sounds, possibly worse.)

Re:Burial site of the first emperor of China

[Anonymous Coward]

While there are high levels of mercury there, it isn't at a level that is particular unsafe and not the reason they've yet to open it. Various other tombs had been devastated by half-ass archeology attempts several decades ago, and the Chinese don't want to mess up something so important. They've been working on some more minor tombs in the area and want to make sure that one is done right.

Re: Do not

[Irate Engineer]

I think you're thinking of pewter; tin, often (in the past) alloyed with lead.

Of course, for decades we burned leaded gasoline in our engines since it reduced knock so wonderfully, so there are several hundred ppm of lead in the atmosphere that didn't used to be there. It's still there, even though tetraethyl lead has been phased out of use.

Read up on Thomas Midgley Jr . He was a chemist and a prolific inventor, but sadly he set loose some of the nastier industrial chemicals into the world in the last century, somewhat unwittingly.