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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.

29 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. Solids by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Meanwhile, liquid pyramids have been spotted on Mercury.

  2. Do not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Do not activate the gate.
    Do not activate the gate.
    DO NOT ACTIVATE THE GATE!

    1. Re: Do not by ledow · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Oh, fuck off.

      They heated cinnabar ore. You get mercury when you do that. These people had metal, mined, and could build vast structures that weigh more than any skyscraper did for millennia after them.

      You don't need a supernatural explanation that they found a liquid metal (a liquid mirror, in effect) fucking intriguing and so prized it as some kind of treasure to bury with their kings.

      That people in these ancient eras had brains seemed to be frowned upon, as if we're the only humans who could be allowed to do that. Ancient Greek, ancient Egyptian, etc. civilisations all had astounding knowledge and abilities. Just because they were never able to fully capitalise on them and then we suffered a few thousand years of poxy ignorance doesn't mean they weren't geniuses. (Just so happens that several of those millennia were dominated by religious shit, Crusades, etc.).

      Antikythera (extremes of "clockwork", gearing and mathematical technology), pyramids, battery technology, steam-powered engines, railways, they had a shit-ton of expertise, but the problem was that the insights were few and far between and hard to do, and secondary to surviving for the most part, so unfortunately they never were able to be joined together in the way we could do now.

      Fuck your aliens. Pay your respects to thousands of years of education, science, inquisitiveness, some of the greatest minds who ever lived, single individuals who knew all of established science for their time, amazing insights, and artisans capable of creating their off-the-wall ideas using some of the most difficult craftsmanships in existence.

    2. Re: Do not by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 2

      Lots of theories about the demise of these civilizations. I don't recall mercury poisoning being discussed as a contributor, but it seems plausible.

    3. Re: Do not by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.)

    4. Re: Do not by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Funny

      Fuck your aliens.

      I know, right? It wasn't aliens that built the pyramids, or anything supernatural. It's stupid to think that.

      Everybody knows it was Anunnaki, our ancestors, the Shining Ones, who gave this technology to humans over 250,000 years ago.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    5. Re: Do not by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Pay your respects to thousands of years of education, science, inquisitiveness, some of the greatest minds who ever lived, single individuals who knew all of established science for their time, amazing insights, and artisans capable of creating their off-the-wall ideas using some of the most difficult craftsmanships in existence.

      THIS!

      Ah yes, the" Ancient Aliens" mindset of some folks. It's so damn amazing how some people assume that humans are all too stupid to have ever done anything worthwhile or clever, and needed "aliens" to come teach us.

      People have their problems. We like to kill each other for fun, and we can be really nasty to each other at other times. But we're actually pretty damned smart when you think about it. Our ancestors were capable of a lot of amazing things, and there really isn't the need to invoke beings that had to come help us because humans are soooo stoopid. An intelligent person from say Pharonic times, would be able to understand modern technology after some exposure to it. They weren't stupid, not even close.

      Having watched that AA show a few times, it is just one long argument from personal incredulity. And the problem with accepting arguments from personal incredulity is that the biggest idiot in the room always wins.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    6. Re: Do not by JimSadler · · Score: 2

      Even in more modern times we see unusual abilities in those on the edges of society. One famous Hatfield from the famous Hatfield and McCoy feud era complained that people who could read had awful memories as they tended to always look things up.

    7. Re: Do not by penguinoid · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'm not jumping to conclusions, but the people who have been making the case for historical alien visitors

      Although I acknowledge that they're good workers, you should know that Mexicans aren't considered aliens in Mexico.

      --
      Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
    8. Re: Do not by peragrin · · Score: 2

      Exactly. The big trick way back when was a limited written history. When craving into stone tablets you only hit the highlights and none of the gritty details. So people ended up duplicating each other's work hundreds if not thousands of times before paper copies started getting created. And even once we had paper the data was so far separate from each other that compiling and knowing what was in the complications took another couple of thousand years.

      Even today you can't get all of human knowledge easily. you have to duplicate someone else's work a lot of the time. Just look at Operating Systems and the not invented here ideology in software. And that is with easily transmitted data.

      Useful things like making weapons, and making beer got passed down verbally, as those would save lives. but spoken and memory communication is at best a hit or miss affair. It is why I wonder why we want to talk to computers as it is a horrible method of data transmittal.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    9. Re: Do not by dbIII · · Score: 2

      lead poisoning is, though.

      Only if you do something as insane in hindsight as put lead acetate in the wine as a cheap sweetener. Lead pipes give you tiny trace amounts. Guzzling down cheap vino with a lead based sweetener like the Romans did is a few orders of magnitude more.
      The lead pipes myth came from someone who knew about the poisoning but not about the wine so made a bit of a guess - lucky for us a wrong one since there's still some lead plumbing around.

    10. Re: Do not by Irate+Engineer · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --

      Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!

      Vote for Bernie in 2016!

    11. Re: Do not by pwizard2 · · Score: 2

      Actually, no. The Arabs preserved most of the learning from the Greco-Roman era, and added some of their own. Moorish Spain was more technologically advanced than the rest of Europe at the time.

      --
      "It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
  3. Hmmm by koan · · Score: 4, Informative

    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?

    --
    "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
    1. Re:Hmmm by SeaFox · · Score: 4, Funny

      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?

      After 1800 years of solitude, the rubber balls were still bouncing!

    2. Re:Hmmm by ChrisMaple · · Score: 5, Funny

      Jaguar branded cars didn't appear until about 1948. This is proof of time travel.

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
    3. Re:Hmmm by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

      What's strange about any of that?

      The carved shells? They were from a Mossberg 500 Tactical Persuader pump action shotgun.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    4. Re:Hmmm by Livius · · Score: 2

      Frankly a rubber ball bouncing on its own for even a full minute would have me nervous.

  4. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    A real king has Freddy Mercury in his tomb. (Or preferably all of Queen.)

  5. Burial site of the first emperor of China by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 2

    You'd know him from the Terracotta warriors uncovered. The Burial site is close to being a wonder of the world and it's known where it's at. They won't dig there due to the high levels of Mercury measured at the site, a vast simulated area of water was created using Mercury in the tomb (as claimed by legends). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q...

    All of the early civilizations of pre-Columbian America used Cinnabar (a source of Mercury) in their rituals and almost always at burial sites due to it's red color.

    1. Re:Burial site of the first emperor of China by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

  6. I hate these archaeology posts lately by __aasehi2499 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They don't show any photos of the items the headline brought you in with. How hard is it to take a photo?!?

  7. Emergency by ChrisMaple · · Score: 2

    Call the E.P.A. to deal with mercury pollution. This must become a cleanup supersite, and the polluters brought to court and sued out of existence.

    --
    Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
  8. Re:Not nerdy enough by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This shouldn't have been let out of the firehose. WTF is nerdy about this?

    You're joking. Liquid mercury? Come on, show of hands: Who among us has not at some point in our lives broken open a thermometer in order to play with the mercury inside? That's a nerd rite of passage.

    Hell, I'm old enough to remember when they made little maze puzzles with a blob of mercury inside that you'd try to get from one corner to the other. Those were the days before parents raised kids like veal. We had pocket knives, for chrissake. Can you imagine millennial parents giving their precious offspring pocket knives? I had my own .22 rifle by the time I was 10. All the liquid mercury I handled in my life, it's no wonder I'm half an imbecile.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  9. Re:Not nerdy enough by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    "Those were the days before parents raised kids like veal."

    The above is THE most awesome ( and true ) phrase I have ever seen on Slashdot.

    I doff my hat to you, sir !

  10. What did they expect? by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 3, Funny

    Of course it would be liquid mercury. Now I'd be surprised if they found solid mercury down there!

  11. But you didn't eat it by dbIII · · Score: 2

    From mucking about with it professionally (foundry sand packing test - pump mercury under a little bit of pressure through a sand sample) and reading a lot about mercury safety at the time it's the fumes that are the problem. Don't breath in mercury fumes and you'll be as fine as the gold miners working outdoors that used to stick their hands in the stuff and far better off than the hatters indoors that were poisoned by the fumes from heating the stuff up.
    Washing it down the drain to where it can end up in small organisms then concentrated into top level predators that people eat is also very bad news.

  12. Re:crap by kanweg · · Score: 2

    OK, I now see it. Amazing how the brain fixes things for you. It is like reading msaehd up wrdos and still being able to make sense of that.

    Bert

  13. Re:Not nerdy enough by sudon't · · Score: 2

    I would not let my children handle mercury, or lead, or really any heavy metals.

    Glad you weren't my parent, (although, I'm sure you're a fine parent)! I would never have had a lead melting kit, (with cowboy molds!), a wood burning kit, (I forget what you were supposed to do with that, but it was great for melting army men, and burning my name into anything wooden), nor likely a dissecting kit, (and all the formaldehyde-soaked creatures I carved up), all while my age was in the single digits. And then, my dentist once gave me a nice blob of mercury to take home and play with - a little reward for being a brave patient. You would've taken that away from me? Yet, somehow, I turned out ok, and suffered no ill effects to my health.
    Having grown up in the sixties, (high school in the early seventies), I find it really shocking what a short leash kids are kept on nowadays. I spent my Summer days in complete, day-long freedom, and explored everything, via my Schwinn Stingray, within a ten-mile radius of home before I was nine. I lived in the city, not a remote rural area.
    My little sister's kids, OTOH, never went anywhere on their own, their activities all being planned, monitored, and scheduled - even play. Apparently, this is not merely common, but enshrined in law, as children left to simply walk themselves places have been picked up by police, the parents threatened with the taking of their children by Social Services. I wonder what the result of this type of child-raising will be, (for myself), when these children are themselves old enough to make laws.

    --
    -- sudon't

    Air-ride Equipped