December 28, 2017 • 45 mins
We finish our tour of the best sights of the ancient world when we get deep into the history of a lighthouse that stood for 1200 years, an unsettling statue of Zeus, the world’s first mausoleum, and Chuck’s favorite, the Colossus of Rhodes!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Stuff you Should Know how the San Francisco Live Treat
Team Dingo. That was pretty good, Chuck, everyone who we
just annoyed, We're going to come see you San Francisco.
We're gonna be at Sketch Fest on January fourteen. That's right.
And hey, we're looking at you Oakland, We're looking at
you San Jose, We're looking at you Kupertino, the whole
(00:21):
Bay Area. Come out and see us Sunday, January fourteenth.
The Castro Theater is part of Sketch Fest, Plus Chuck,
You're gonna be there even earlier. Huh. That's right. At
one pm on Sunday the fourteenth, I will be doing
a Movie Crush Live, my very first one featuring the
great Tony Hale of Veep and Arrested Development, where we
will be in conversation about his favorite movie Punch Drunk
Love plus Chuck. What if people want to meet you
(00:42):
and greet you, then just come to the show because
I'm meeting in greeting before and after. And you can
get Movie Crush tickets at bit dot Lee Slash Movie
Crush and Stuff you Should Know. Live dot Com is
our touring home on the web where you can find
tickets for not only Sketch Fest at the Castro, but
the few tickets we have left for Seattle on January
the Great and More Theater. So we'll see you guys
(01:03):
out there on the West Coast in January, and until then,
Happy holidays. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House
Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's
guest producer Noel again, and that makes this Stuff you
(01:27):
Should Know Part two? That's right. Do you ever see
hot Shots? Part do the sequel? No? You know, I
didn't see a lot of those movies at all, except
for the airplane movies and the naked gun movies. The
hot Shots movies were worth seeing. Did not see those.
Did not see any of the scary movies. Oh, the
(01:50):
scary movies. You haven't seen those. All of them are good,
Like every single one of those are good. Yeah. I
did record a movie crush yesterday with for the movie
Scream though, Oh yeah, with who uh Nate Bargatsy comedian,
so we it was interesting that I had to do
Scream research and like that movie changed, like horror movies
(02:15):
were on their last legs. Yes, they were. Not to
say that in something else might not have come along.
But it was Scream that like revitalized the genre. Yep,
that's pretty cool. Yeah, it's kind of a watershed movie.
Did we talk about that in the horror movies that
changed the the genre episode? I'm pretty sure we had
to have Boy, if we didn't, we missed out. Well,
(02:35):
if we didn't, we probably just said And obviously Scream,
we don't even need to mention that. Well, it launched
the Scream franchise, It launched the scary movie franchise in
a way, and relaunched the genre. Yes, so scary movies
we're seeing hot shots is worth seeing naked guns we're seeing,
of course, although I would put either one of the
hot shots up against the third naked gun any day
(02:58):
of the week. That that's that's my bookie over the
third naked gun. Yeah, okay, that's fair. Yeah. And then
don't get me started on what was it like the
Gods Son? What the Gods Son? I don't know what
that is. It was like a Godfather spoof. Leslie Nielsen
was in with Dom DeLuise. I haven't even sen five
(03:21):
minutes of it. I don't even know what that is.
And you stomped me. Oh good, thank you. That's a
good start to this episode. As you think you're welcome,
thank you. Uh so, Chuck, We're moving on. We've already
talked about the Great Pyramids at Kufu, we talked about
the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Temple of Artemis
(03:42):
at a thesis, right, all three of them top top notch. Yeah,
And if you don't know what we're talking about now,
and this is your first episode of stuff you should know. Ever,
this is the second of a two part episode. There
you go on the Seven Ancient Seven Wonders the Ancient World,
and here's part two. Right then, we're gonna start with
(04:04):
the Statue of Zeus at Olympia. To say it like that,
there's no other way to say it. That's how well,
who's the guy's name, the the boxing guy, that guy
I don't know his name. Yeah, he used to stand
at the statue of Zeus and say that on an
hourly basis. It's pretty pretty amazing stuff. So this one
(04:29):
is one of my favorites, but not my favorite. I
promise that my favorite was in here. But this is
not quite it, although it's close, because you know that
this is this is the main deal here, Olympia Zeus.
This is no run of the mill god and some
cast off city. No, it was the site of the
(04:50):
first Olympics. So it was pretty important city, very important.
Um it was. It was nowhere near Mount Olympus though, curiously,
but it was pretty pretty important, right, yes, Um, this one,
to me is the most humble of them all. I'm
not quite sure why, but I am just kind of
like whatever about it? All right? Well, the temple. Let's
(05:11):
talk about the temple at first, Okay, And also I
should warn you that this article has the um proportions
wildly incorrect. Oh the how tall it was? All right?
What is it? For real? This thing? This article says
it was two ft tall. That's a twenty story building.
The temple was not as tall as the twenty story building.
It was sixty ft tall. How did they get it
(05:34):
that wrong? I don't know. I just don't know. It's staggering.
It's as staggering as this temple would have been had
it been two hundred feet tall. And it doesn't even
say it was somewhere between sixty eight and two D
ten feet right, it's weird, that's annoying. Everything else is
right about it though. So it was sixty eight feet tall,
(05:55):
still pretty impressive for the time. Yeah, but I would
have to say if somebody, if you were driving through
Dunwoodie he saw a sixty eight foot tall temple, you
would probably still be impressed even though somebody just built it.
So I think it's still impressive even today. Yes, so
(06:16):
the temple's fail impressive, but inside we're talking about the
statue mainly the Greek artists. Uh Phideous was commissioned. And
imagine these artists were paid pretty handsomely for these jobs. Yeah,
because you know there's only a few of them who
were capable of doing this at the time. Yeah, I
mean there are only a few people in the world
could do this now on something of this scale. So
(06:38):
they said, hey, Zeus is the man. We want a
statue of Zeus And he said, yeah, I can knock
that out. It's for b C. Shouldn't take me too long.
Eight years later he was finished, right, um, and he
used some really weird materials like so, so the temple itself,
(06:58):
it was like a standard temp pool six feet tall,
like all of them were a bunch of columns that
kind of thing. But the statue inside is apparently what
was the big draw. And one of the reasons why
it was something to see was because um Phidious used
ivory and gold, um, rather than marble, which is it
was pretty much what you used to make a statue
(07:20):
back at that time. And they think one of the
reasons why he used or not ebony, but ivory and
gold was right. But the reason why they thought that
was because, um, he he was building a statue to Zeus, right,
so you needed it needed to be special. This is
like the King of the Gods. Yeah, and ivory was
(07:41):
definitely something that people would travel to see a statue
made of ivory of Zeus. Yeah. Uh. So basically this
is sitting down in this uh statue and he's sitting
just straight up. He's not like, uh like you know
how the Lincoln Lincoln and his memorials kind of chilling
in his seat. Zeus is not chilling. He's setting up
(08:02):
ready for actions like would you say, what'd you say?
Kind of Uh. The statue itself was about high, which
is super impressive. Like when you see a a rendering
of what someone look like standing at the base of
this thing. It's really pretty striking. And one of the
things they said about it was that, um, if he
stood up, he would have his head would have burst
(08:23):
through the roof of the um of the temple, which
was probably pretty cool to see too. He was sitting down,
totally would have right, he would have just been like
Zus smash. So he's holding in one hand a statue
(08:43):
of Nike, So it's a statue holding a statue, and
Nike was a winged goddess of victory, right, so it's
kind of like his version of Tinkerbell hanging out in
his hand. And then the other hand he's holding a scepter,
which is pretty appropriate for the king of the gods.
And again he seated on this throne. And yeah, if
you if you look at artists rendering of them, we
should say here, most of this stuff by the time
(09:06):
these lists were written, um, we're already aged. And then
they they've crumbled over time, so we actually don't know
exactly what they looked like. Some people saw him firsthand,
but a lot of this this information comes from secondhand
sources or even further down the chain than that, so
we're not exactly certain of what they looked like. But
(09:28):
for most of these, because they were so widely regarded
as seven Wonders of the Ancient worldly, you have to
see that enough people wrote about him talked about him
that if you really spent some time, you could put
these sources together and come with probably an accurate description
of of what it looked like. Yeah, for sure. Uh.
And the and the remarkable thing about this one is,
(09:49):
apparently was the expression on Zeus's face. Not only is
he sitting straight up ready for action, he uh, he
just said this look on his face. It was kind intimidating.
I guess you could say you've disappointed me and your mother.
That's what it said. And uh, the legend has it.
And I don't buy this at all, But Phitti has
(10:10):
said that once I'm finished with this saying he asked
for zeus blessing on the sculpture, and a bolt of
lightning struck the temple at that very moment. I don't
believe it. No. No, as a matter of fact, if
you do believe that, right in so we can tell
you that you're wrong. So um. There were a couple
of issues with this this um statute number one. It
(10:33):
was built a couple of hundred years, a few hundred
years before Christianity began and then started to spread in
the area. Once that happened, um, the the worshippers of
Zeus who still remained, said, we need to get this
out of here. These Christians, they don't play around. They're
gonna get rid of this thing, right and um. They
moved the statue to Constantinople and it stayed there safe
(10:57):
for a while, actually apparently housed in a palace us.
But one of the things about the statue was it
was made of gold and ivory, but those things were
overlaid on top of a wooden sculpture, which is kind
of like, it's pretty slack pitious. Maybe you should have
stuck with the marble. Maybe, but the palace and Constantinople
caught fire. Yeah, that's a problem because marble doesn't burn,
(11:22):
does No, it doesn't. Yeah, so it would have survived. Um,
but he cheaped out, let's be honest, he phoned this
one in. Yeah, and they were right to have moved
that thing, because the Christians did come in and take
care of business, shut down that temple in But by
that time the statue was gone at least, but yeah,
(11:42):
burned in a fire. So earthquakes and fires are taking
out all of the wonders. Earthquakes, fires and Christians the
great level as pretty much so um back in I
think in ninety this guy and again like this stuff
just sat in in the realm of legend for a
long time. Although I think the um, I think the
(12:06):
ruins of the temple itself are still around, aren't they that?
I'm not sure. I think they might be. I like,
over the last two days, I've seen so many pictures
of ancient temple ruins that I'm like, which, wait, which
one is that so much? Right? I think this one
may still be around in Olympia, the ruins of the temple,
(12:27):
like you can still make out a couple of steps
leading up to it, that kind of thing, and there's
like the posts of a couple of pillars or whatever.
But um, they found in nineteen fifty um the workshop
that Phidi has used beside the temple, and apparently we're
able to recreate using the molds that they found, probably
what the statue looked like, which is pretty impressive, just
(12:50):
working from old molds. Yeah, not only that, but these
were on coins right. Oh, yeah, that's right, that's the
other one. Yeah, they were on Greek coins, So this
isn't one where you really had to guess so much
what it looked like because on those coins there's a
lot of detail about what it looked like. And um,
(13:11):
because coins, you know, they were originated there, just where
they ended up eventually would give a little indication on
how far people had traveled to come see the saying
when they carried those coins back. Yeah, it made me wonder,
like where those coins currency or where they like souvenirs,
like if you go to Dollywood or Kennedy Space Center
or something like that and get a coin made. Yeah,
(13:33):
I didn't think about that. I wonder because I mean,
this was an age where they were are tourists and
they were already selling the replicas of the Temple of
Artemis as tourists mementos. I wonder if these coins were
that too, pretty pretty neat to think about ancient tourists.
Should we take a break? Yeah, all right, I'm going
to contemplate that and we'll be back right after this. Okay, Chuck,
(14:18):
here's here's my second favorite. Let's hear it, this isn't
your favorite huh. Are you sure you have a favorite?
I do, We're not there yet. Okay, all right, well
this is my second favorite, the mausoleum at Halicarnassis. Okay,
you don't like this one? Was all right? Mausoleums, I
(14:39):
don't know you've seen one, you see them all. Well,
this is the original one. Like the word mausoleum came
from the structure. Yeah, that only goes so far with me. Oh,
I love that, the original thing. Yeah, I thought I
thought you were like an etymology kind of guy. Oh,
I can be, but just not with mausolium. Yeah. I
don't know. There's something about mausoleums that bucked me because
(15:01):
there's dead people interred inside. Just a lot of a
lot of hubbub for a dead body. Oh I see,
I see, Yeah, it makes sense, you know. Yeah, I
don't want to knock it though. Well, okay, we'll just
stop right here. Then if you're if you're King Mozolus,
you deserve to to have this named after you. I
(15:21):
would say that, especially if you're married to your sister
and she's madly in love with you and you've just died. Yeah,
that was a little weird. He was the Persian king
of Kia, and he was indeed married to his sister
art Artemisia. Yeah, and she really really was in love
with her brother. Yeah and husband, and he was from
(15:45):
what I understand, he seems like a pretty successful ruler. Um.
They had the mausoleum under construction while he was still alive,
and he died UM while before it was finished, obviously,
but his sister Artemisia, sister wife Artemisia UM was so
broken up by it. She said, all right, stop, stop
(16:06):
what you're doing. This is not good enough. This has
to be the most amazing memorial anyone's ever made to
their husband. Brother. Um, I've got to I've got to
get in touch with all of the greatest sculptors of
the realm. And she did. She got in touch with
um at least five of the greatest sculptors alive at
(16:27):
the time, and they were headed by a guy named
Pitheous who not only Um was one of the sculptures,
he was the over overseeing architect of the entire project. Yeah,
So like he architected the whole thing. And then she
got a one sculptor per side to embellish the outside
scopus brexas Baxas Leo, Charis oh A, and Timotheus. That
(16:57):
one's easy, that one is easy, and this one has
often been called UM because she had all these all
these different people working on it. Uh. And not only that,
but I think for years afterward it became a place
where artists could exhibit and showcase their work. So in
the end, this thing ended up being UM. I think,
(17:18):
not as coherent is what you would think something might
be when you just hire one person to work on it. UM.
For this episode and the last one, I went to
the site on museum. Have you ever heard of it? Yeah?
I think so. They were very helpful in researching this.
And one of the things the way they put it
was that UM so during construction, Artemisia died before it
(17:39):
was completed, and the five sculptors who were running the
show looked at each other and they're like, let's keep going.
We could stop here and leave it unfinished. But it
became well, no, no, not true. Ones. It became a temple,
a monument not just to Mausoleus and Artemisia who were
entombed inside, but it became a monument to art as well,
(18:03):
that we can do whatever you want, right and they
did so, and so they went ahead and they completed it,
and it was a pretty impressive um structure. Yeah. The
structure yourself, was about a hundred and forty ft tall.
Is that right? Yes, I believe that that's a relief.
The base was about a hundred feet um twenty four
(18:23):
steps tall. Yeah, and then on either side of the steps,
flanking the steps were crouched lions, which is pretty cool.
It's always cool around the outside of the second the
second tier where you would walk into on all four
corners there were um soldiers bounted on horseback, sculptures of
(18:44):
them protecting the place. Yeah. Yeah, what else? Uh? Pliny
the Elder said, this thing is four hundred forty ft
and the perimeter was thing is four so it was large,
thirty six columns. Uh, it's a It was a big structure,
very impressive. I didn't get from the pictures that I
(19:05):
saw of renderings. It didn't look too busy to me. No,
I'm not sure. The only place I saw that kind
of shady and thrown at it was in this how
Stuff Works article. Yeah. I mean I know that there
were different people working on it, but it didn't look
like I expected. When I saw it to look like
a big mess, and it did not look like a
(19:26):
big mess. No, it looked pretty neat and tidy. Right. Yeah.
So one of the things that I love about this thing.
So again, Artemisia and Mausolus are entombed inside this thing.
But it's also like just a place you would go,
you know, take a date or something on a Sunday
afternoon in the city of Hellican Issus, Hellican Hellicarnassis. Right. Um.
(19:47):
One of the one of the cool things about this
is that um, this structure stood for hundreds and hundreds
of years after the city of Hellicarnassis all to ruin
around it. That is so cool, just the imagining this abandoned,
ruined town and in the middle of it is this
(20:09):
hundred and forty foot tall mausoleum, the world's first mausoleum,
with all these ornate sculptures around it. This is almost
completely out of context with the surroundings now that the
town is falling to ruin. Yeah, that's pretty cool for sure.
But like all these other ones, earthquakes would eventually take
care of business, uh in the fourteen hundreds and shake
(20:30):
this thing down and um and again, like a lot
of these other stories. In four they used the knights
of St. John of Malta said hey, let's let's take
all this uh scrap and use it for our own castle. Yeah,
the a city as um Hellicarnassus fell to ruin. Another
(20:51):
city nearby grew up called Boudroum, and the ruins at hellercanasses.
You would go to Boudroum today to view the ruins
of Helicarnassis. The mausoleum, I should say, um, but the
big draw apparently is the knights of St. John's castle
and to build that castle. Some of the scraps that
they used were from the mausoleum, so you can still
(21:13):
see original parts of the mausoleum, but they've been incorporated
into the structure of them the castle that you would view,
which is cool. So it's still around in some way,
shape or form. But that um earthquake that got it
in the fourteen hundreds, it actually had a weird way
of preserving some of it. Right, So there are three
(21:35):
three big things that keep coming up. Right. There is
um earthquakes that keep happening, There's people using scraps to
build other cities nearby, and then there's the British Museum.
Those three things figure into the Seven Wonders of the
Ancient World big time, because if there's a piece of it,
one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World somewhere
in the world outside of its original location, it's probably
(21:59):
in the British muse Zoum. And that's the case with
Um some a few things from the the mausoleum at Helicarnassis.
They think that what happened was the earthquake toppled the
sculpture of Mausolus and Artemisia riding a chariot pulled by
four horses. It was very famous um that was on
the top of the mausoleum, that it fell and was
(22:22):
covered by rubble so that it was protected until it
was finally excavated in the nineteenth century when they found
um huge old chariot wheel. And then they think the
the two sculptures of Artemisia and Mausolus and now they're
all in the British Museum. But they think that earthquake
had a weird way of protecting it from being looted
(22:43):
and re used by the Knights of St. John later on. Amazing,
I'm telling you that's why it's my second favorite. Well,
we're coming upon my favorite. I wondered if this was it,
the Colossus of Rhodes. It's a good way to say it. Yeah,
I like this one. This was ancient Greece, and this
(23:04):
one was the granddaddy of them all statue wise, this
one was even bigger than the statue of Zeus at
Olympia UM. Third century. And Rhodes was an island, uh,
still as an island, and Macedonians came knocking on the door,
and they were angry, and they wanted the help of
(23:24):
the people of Rhodes because told me, was told me
one that is was was was conquering, and they said,
we need your help here. And the people of Rhad said, hey,
we're not really, we don't want to get involved in
all that. We kind of like it here on the island,
living our peaceful lifestyle here. Well. Plus, if there was
anybody they were allied with, it was Ptolemy. Yeah. Yeah,
(23:47):
they but they wanted to stay out of any wars.
They just weren't into it. So they rebuffed the Macedonians
uh and they left, but they left behind a bunch
of supplies and equipment UM I'm not sure why they
did that actually, So the this article is so bizarre. Man, Um,
the the Macedonians besieged roads for over a year. Um
(24:11):
and they they had these huge war machines that were
made of like um, bronze and wood and metal, and
they would pull these huge machines up to the city
walls and like they had catapults on top, and they
were trying to crush the city for a year. And
when the road the Roodians finally overcame the Macedonians, they
were like, well, we're just leaving the stuff behind. It's
(24:32):
too big to move. It didn't work anyway, so we'll
leave it. Yeah, that's why they left it. This This
this article puts it in a really weird way. Yeah,
I agree. Uh so they ended up using like selling
away that stuff right to make the money to build
in part the statue. Yeah, and they reused some of
it directly for the statue. Like like that huge thing
(24:54):
that they used to besiege the city they pulled up
to the walls, they actually used that as scaffolding to
build the statue. Heck, yeah, yeah, it's making plowshares out
of I don't know guns. So they used the sculptor
Charras of Lindos, and he said, I got this one
under control, and he is um all these different materials, iron, bronze, stone, Uh,
(25:19):
and this one I'll have wrapped up, oh in about
twelve years when they said that's about right. Yeah, that's
not bad for what they did here. Yeah, I mean
this one was a tin feet tall. Yeah, it had
a skeleton of iron um, and inside the skeleton for structure,
it had huge stone columns running through it. And yeah,
it was like the actual statue itself was about as
(25:41):
big as the Statue of Liberty as today and followed
like a pretty similar structure, um, but like a thousand
or so years before, a couple of thousand years before. Yeah,
people think from written accounts that it was holding a
torch like Lady Liberty does, and that the face was
modeled after Alexander the Great. Some say, and here's where
(26:02):
it gets interesting to me is if you look up
pictures of this thing, you will likely see it standing
a straddle um the entrance to the harbor, So literally
standing there like kind of with his legs spread, and
you would have to sail a ship between his legs
to get into the harbor. You shouldn't look up, don't
(26:22):
look on. The detail was really amazing, very amazing, and
a hundred ten feet I like, you know what you're
going to be staring at. So, uh, there are accounts
and there are plenty of illustrations and other things that
support this, and it looks trust me, if you look
it up, it looks very cool. Like you know, they
(26:43):
were into, uh, they were into making things this tall,
just because it was so mind blowing. But also they
were saying they were thanking their patron god Helios for
spending them from having to go to war. Um, which
is pretty cool. Like that's one of the reasons I
like this one is they were saying, like, you know what,
we stayed out of war, we managed to remain at peace.
(27:05):
We're gonna build a monument to our god, who we
assume helped this out. Yeah. But when they did these things,
like with most of these, I loved it. They were
just like, well, you know, twenty ft high statue would
be great. That's impressive. Like they would try and build
things as large as humanly literally possible engineering wise at
the time. I see your point. Yeah, that is pretty neat.
(27:27):
So when you look at pictures of this straddling the harbor,
it's just like it's enormous, it's huge. Unfortunately, that's probably
not what he how he stood, right, That's that's the
downer here, is that they didn't really have the the
materials or the knowledge or the skill, uh to do
(27:48):
something like that. Like the reason that statues back then
we're basically straight up and down is because that you
needed that those legs to support the rest of the statue. Yeah,
and they were a top of pet stoles that could
hold the weight of the statue above it. Um. They
would also if the if the if each foot was
on either side of the harbor, that's usually not the
(28:10):
strongest solid ground you can find, So they wouldn't have
had any means of reinforcing the ground beneath it, so
it would have just sunk or fallen right over. Yeah.
And Plus the other thing to chuck was that it
would have closed the harbor down. And they relied on
the harbor for their economy, so it's probably unlikely that
it looked as cool as it looks in pictures. Uh.
(28:32):
And what happened to this one three years later? Yes,
earthquake fifty three years that is so quick that didn't
last long at all. No, So this the thing fell
and they think that it probably was located closer to
the center of town somewhere inland Um, but that when
it fell, it crushed a bunch of people's houses and businesses,
(28:54):
and some of it probably fell into the harbor itself.
That's right. And this one was notable because I think
because it was so young when it fell. It's still
it's not like they were like, oh, let's get rid
of this thing. They let it lay there as a
tourist attraction in its prone state for many, many years,
and people would come far and wide to go visit
(29:15):
the fallen statue. Yeah, for almost a thousand years. It's easy. Yeah,
it's still stayed a tourist attraction. Like apparently the cool
thing to do was to try to put your arms
around the thumb. Yeah. The thumb was bigger than most statues, right,
Like like people couldn't get their arms, they couldn't touch
their hands around the thumb. Amazing. And apparently also the
(29:36):
arms fell off pretty pretty They may have even fallen
off first during the earthquake. But did you say it
broke off at about the knees just below the knees. Um,
so those probably stayed for a while. But the they
like from the knee down, Yeah, yeah, I'm sure, which
looks a little weird, like that picture of the person
who suffered spontaneous combustion all that was left with their
(29:59):
one leg. I'll bet it look kind of like that.
But the stuff that was on the ground, like you
could see into, like the armholes, and apparently even that
was just his breathtaking cavern. It was just such a
massive structure. They're like, have you seen in those armholes? Yes?
I have. I've seen all the armholes all over the world.
And the best tourist ever have he tried to hug
that thumb? I have a subscription to Monocle magazine. I'm
(30:22):
just as cool as they come. And so the final
nugget on this one that I thought was pretty fun
was in six fifty three, Um, these invading Arabs sold,
like all the rest of these stories, sold the scrap metal. Uh,
they sold it to a Jewish merchant who apparently used
nine hundred camels to take this stuff away. Good lord,
(30:44):
So how about that? So nine hundred camels or like
just a few camels who had to make nine hundred
trips total. I don't know, nine hundred camels. This is plus.
I mean, if this is a Jewish merchant buying the
scrap metal Colossus of Rhodes, he probab like camels, you know.
And think of all the poop that generated around there. Man,
(31:06):
it's a lot of camel poop. All right, Well, let's
take one more break. We'll come back and we'll finish
up with the final wonder of the Ancient worlds right
after this. M all right, chuck, we're at the last one.
(31:43):
This one's pretty neat too. I don't think we ever
said when the Classes of Rose was built, did we? Oh? Jeez,
did we not? So it would have been in the
fourth now the third century, now, the fourth century BC
is when it was built. So this this is my
but we've been going chronologically through all of these, and um,
(32:04):
this is then the youngest of the ancient wonders. Yeah,
the little baby of the of the group, the Lighthouse
of Alexandria. And you know I've got a lighthouse thing, sure, uh.
And this one is a pretty great one. This was, um,
this was notable as one of the angers wonders in
the ancient world because it was the only one that
actually had a practical use and it wasn't just some
(32:25):
monument or temple, you know, right, it served a purpose.
Who was it that said nothing useless can ever truly
be beautiful? It was that just a movie line that
I remember? I think that was John Cusack. Okay, what
nothing useless can never be beautiful? Yeah? Man, I wish
I could remember what that's from, because I'm sure we're
(32:46):
going to get a lot of email about it. But
they said in the movie, they say somebody said nothing
useless can ever truly be beautiful. I don't buy that. Yeah,
I miss an opinion. There's a well an opinion. It's
just how it ends up in a movie, you know
what I'm saying. So this one, this one did have utility,
and it was kind of beautiful too from the artists
(33:08):
renderings I've seen. I liked it. Yeah, pretty pretty sweet lighthouse.
So the Lighthouse at Alexander is supposedly it's got a
pretty cool backstory to it. Allegedly, Alexander himself had a
dream and in the dream, they said, Alexander, you need
to go find the island of Pharaohs, And he said, why.
(33:30):
They said, it doesn't matter, just do what we say.
And he woke up in a cold sweat and he
like trembling, lit a cigarette and he said, I gotta
find Pharaohs. And that's how it started. Yeah, pretty much.
Uh located off the coast of ancient Egypt. He said, um,
you know what told me. Since we're told me it's
(33:53):
such a cool name, I'm gonna choose you as one
of my generals to go inhabit and settle this place.
Take care of it for me, and told them he said,
I'm all over it. But yeah, I I you know
what Pharaohs needs though, It needs like an identify er,
something that you can see from a long way, something symbolic,
something that literally helps you identify it because it's you know,
(34:17):
tough navigating around the shores. And Alexander said, well, I
don't know if it was Ausanader. In my mind it was.
He said, how about a lighthouse, Well, supposedly it was
either Ptolemy or the um Um mause In, which is
the predecessor to the museum, which is basically like a
brain trust to think tank and the early prototype of
(34:39):
the university where the library exact Alexandria was housed. Um
either Ptolemy came up with it or the Mausean came
up with it. That's right, And it's a great idea.
Put a lighthouse because it serves a function, and it
can be tall and grand, and the island will then
be known for this, and it most certainly was. I
(34:59):
have say one of the things that I love about
these is how some of them are tied together. Like
this is the same Tolomy that the Macedonians were fighting
and tried to bring roads into Rhodes, had been conquered
by King um muzzles Uh and then was later reconquered
by Artemisia. Like all of these things kind of fit together,
and when you start to learn about one, you learn
(35:21):
about the story of the people who built them, and
how they relate to the stories of people who build
other amazing wonders of the ancient world. It's just such
a cool history. Lesson. Have you seen the new Noah
Bombach movie on Netflix. No, it's called The Meerwit Stories. No,
I haven't seen it. It's on Netflix. It's funny. It's
Adam Sandler, his Adams the guy's not in the movie,
(35:42):
but Adam Sandler's neighbor. He references a lot. His name
is Toleomy. Yeah, so he just keeps saying, well, you know,
told him. He says this and that thought about the movie.
It's pretty funny and a reminder that Adam Sandler should
only play these roles. Yeah, he definitely. Well that or
the original Billy Madison Happy Gilmore role. He was pretty
(36:04):
good that too. Man, he's so good in these kinds
of movies. I know, Punchdrunk so good. And this character
is sort of like a grown up version of that
punch drunk love character. A little bit to me. Good movie.
Check it out. Yeah, thanks, so uh it told me
which has got a silent p by the way, Yeah,
(36:27):
it's a cool name, which is why it's such a
great name. It's Potolemy. Um So, Potolemy is on the island.
They get this thing built around b C they begin construction. Uh,
there's a dude name so stratise of Nidos And they
(36:48):
don't know what part he played other than the fact
that it was important. He could have been the architect,
could have been the financier, could have been both. Yeah,
absolutely could have been both. But he was he was
definitely important into that project. So supposedly this project they
actually have a monetary value for how much it costs.
They said it costs um eight hundred talents, which are
(37:11):
is a word for bars of silver. And apparently that's
about three million dollars today, which is not bad for
this lighthouse. Three million, not bad at all. You couldn't
build half a lighthouse today for that, No, no, not
one like this. So so apparently it was um about
four hundred and fifty ft tall. And one of the
reasons they built this too is not just to to
(37:34):
put Pharaohs on the map um or Alexandria on the map.
Alexandria was already like a pretty important city or it
was becoming an important city, um ports city, but having
a lighthouse there just helped navigation, which only helped the
economy boom. And actually after the lighthouse came into operation,
(37:54):
the economy did boom as a result of that. Right, Yeah,
is really really tall. Yeah, they said that you could
see this thing's light from a hundred miles away. Yeah,
I saw the ones that said it was more like
thirty or forty still, but yeah, that's it's a that's
a pretty high functioning lighthouse a hundred miles away is
more believable than the Temple of Zeus being struck by
(38:15):
a bolt of lightning after it was completed. Agreed, So
you could see this thing thirty miles away, We'll even
go with twenty miles away. Okay, I'm i'm, I'm not
even going above that. And the reason why you could
see that is because atop this four hundred and fifty
foot structure there was a polished disc of some sort
they think it was probably bronze, and during the day
(38:37):
they moved it so it would reflect the light of
the sun so you could see it then, uh, and
then at night they had a fire going all the time. Um.
And there were structures within this amazingly tall structure that
we're basically what you would call dumb waiters or that
type of elevator on pulleys where you could raise and
lower um to to get to bring like firewood, animal
(39:00):
dried animal dung up to it. Yeah, and I don't
think we said that. One of the things that makes
this so cool to me is it's not not just
a big cylindrical lighthouse like most of them you see. Uh,
it is three different levels of three different shapes. So
you've got your huge rectangular base, then you have the
second level, which is octagonal, and then that third is cylindrical.
(39:22):
So it's just really cool looking. And um apparently you
could even up to that first level, which I mean
it had to be over a hundred feet high in itself.
You could bring carts and work horses and stuff all
the way up to that level because they had a
bunch of storage up there. This is pretty cool. And
then dumb waiters to take stuff to the highest hours, right,
(39:44):
and they had like those ramps and like kind of
circular or spiral staircases going around it to help to
to maximize the space that you use to get things up. Yeah,
it was very clever structure, for sure. It's very you
can there are some cool renderings of this online as well.
So this thing was a solid piece of work. Apparently
(40:07):
it's it's survived a tsunami in three sixtie but what
got it Chuck earthquake earthquake in thirteen oh three, so
it's after dozens of earthquakes. Yeah, so it was. It
was built around two eighty b c E. It stood
(40:28):
until thirteen hundred UM and Finally some earthquakes took it down,
and the other thing that happened they reused some of
it as a fort which is still around today. But um,
the cool thing about it is there was an underwater
expedition around Pharos and they found what they're almost positive
(40:49):
are original blocks from the from the lighthouse itself, original blocks,
and I think statues too. Yeah, sculptures, I should say, yeah,
did I did look at some of the underwater pictures?
Is pretty cool. Oh yeah, it's just as cool as
it gets. Man, anything that's underwater now that used to
be and was meant to be above water, it's so cool,
(41:11):
so creepy. I was reading this really interesting article about
the Andrea Doria, you know, the luxury liner family that
that Um, I think it's sunk in the fifties or
early sixties, but it's like this incredible wreck site that
people dive and they call it like the underwater Everest
because if you're an underwater wreck diver, that's like, it
(41:32):
doesn't get any better than that. Um. But you know,
it's it's also extremely dangerous. And I've read this really
well written article about I can't remember who wrote it,
but to start reading Andrea Doria articles everybody, and you'll
find the one eventually. Well, we'll do a podcast on it,
how about that. Okay, let's do it. And that's it.
We did the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World finally. Huh,
(41:52):
that's the last one. That's That's it, everybody. That's the
big one. That's a Chevy Chase quote, is it? Yeah?
From Christmas Vacation when he reveals the pool. Right, it's
so awkward the way he says it's perfect. That's it.
That's a big one. Oh. At any rate, Um, Christmas
is coming gone, chuck. But this is the last episode
(42:13):
that we're going to release this year. So I think
we should wish everybody a happy new year. Yeah, happy
new Year everybody. Thanks for sticking with us this two
thousand seventeen, and we'll see you two thousand and eighteen.
On a personal note, happy happy birthday to my sweet wife.
You me and uh, we'll see you guys next year, right,
I sure hope. So. So in the meantime, it's time
(42:36):
for listener mail. That's right, We're gonna finish out this
two parter with a single listener mail about bath salts
appropriately because why not? Hey, guys, I'm not wanting to
take hard drugs often, but my friend and I were
going to an d M festival and decided to take
(42:56):
what we believed was molly. The drugs are crystalline, and
we took them orally he yuck. The experience did not
go as planned. A few days later, we use a
drug testing kit on the remaining crystals and find out
dant dana bats salts. That's scary, Like, I'll take that.
That looks like a drug. It's crystaline. Yeah, sure, Unlike
(43:21):
any other party drug that might make you feel ready
to dance. This stuff gave my friend and I this
sensation that our feet were stuck to the ground via
magnetic force, and lifting them was almost impossible. Was made
dancing very difficult, as all we could do was awkwardly
move around with the top half of our bodies. Additionally,
we felt super paranoid that everyone around us was watching
us and judging and laughing at our pitiful attempts to dance. Uh.
(43:44):
By the way, Anonymous, no one noticed you. I can
go ahead and tell you that right now, it was
impossible to enjoy the music with my mind raising these
unpleasant thoughts and The feeling lasted for the full day.
After the disappointing day, we headed back to the apartment,
ready to get some rest. Tackled the next day drug free,
but no, the bass Salts would not let us sleep,
try as we might. All night long, we laid there
(44:04):
a wide awake, part of the song turned down for
what by DJ Snake, laid over and over in my
mind for eight hours straight. This sounds really bad, it does.
My eyes were closed and it felt as though I
was watching a show of squiggly neon colored shapes pulsating
in rhythm to the incessant music in my mind. Somehow
we managed to get to the festival the next day,
but we felt like zombies and we were not even
(44:25):
at the cannibalism stage yet. I'm not sure what that
even means. Well, you know the whole face eating bath
salts legend. Oh gotcha. She's like, we weren't even there yet.
It still was terrible. She didn't even get the pleasure
of eating someone's face, right, Uh so just from experience.
Alo second, when Josh and Chuck said and urged steer clear,
that is from Anonymous. Thanks a lot, Anonymous appreciate that.
(44:48):
As um the bore you know or know. That's one
to grow on. That's one to grow on. If you
want to send us one to grow on, hit us up.
I'm at josh um Clark on Twitter. I also have
a website called Are You Serious Clark dot com. There's
an official Twitter s y s K podcast. There's an
official s y s K Facebook page. There's a Chuck
Facebook page. It's Facebook dot com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
(45:12):
You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at
how stuff Works dot com and as always, joined us
at our home on the web but Stuff You Should
Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of
other topics, is it how stuff Works dot com.
Stuff you Should Know how the San Francisco Live Treat
Team Dingo. That was pretty good, Chuck, everyone who we
just annoyed, We're going to come see you San Francisco.
We're gonna be at Sketch Fest on January fourteen. That's right.
And hey, we're looking at you Oakland, We're looking at
you San Jose, We're looking at you Kupertino, the whole
(00:21):
Bay Area. Come out and see us Sunday, January fourteenth.
The Castro Theater is part of Sketch Fest, Plus Chuck,
You're gonna be there even earlier. Huh. That's right. At
one pm on Sunday the fourteenth, I will be doing
a Movie Crush Live, my very first one featuring the
great Tony Hale of Veep and Arrested Development, where we
will be in conversation about his favorite movie Punch Drunk
Love plus Chuck. What if people want to meet you
(00:42):
and greet you, then just come to the show because
I'm meeting in greeting before and after. And you can
get Movie Crush tickets at bit dot Lee Slash Movie
Crush and Stuff you Should Know. Live dot Com is
our touring home on the web where you can find
tickets for not only Sketch Fest at the Castro, but
the few tickets we have left for Seattle on January
the Great and More Theater. So we'll see you guys
(01:03):
out there on the West Coast in January, and until then,
Happy holidays. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House
Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's
guest producer Noel again, and that makes this Stuff you
(01:27):
Should Know Part two? That's right. Do you ever see
hot Shots? Part do the sequel? No? You know, I
didn't see a lot of those movies at all, except
for the airplane movies and the naked gun movies. The
hot Shots movies were worth seeing. Did not see those.
Did not see any of the scary movies. Oh, the
(01:50):
scary movies. You haven't seen those. All of them are good,
Like every single one of those are good. Yeah. I
did record a movie crush yesterday with for the movie
Scream though, Oh yeah, with who uh Nate Bargatsy comedian,
so we it was interesting that I had to do
Scream research and like that movie changed, like horror movies
(02:15):
were on their last legs. Yes, they were. Not to
say that in something else might not have come along.
But it was Scream that like revitalized the genre. Yep,
that's pretty cool. Yeah, it's kind of a watershed movie.
Did we talk about that in the horror movies that
changed the the genre episode? I'm pretty sure we had
to have Boy, if we didn't, we missed out. Well,
(02:35):
if we didn't, we probably just said And obviously Scream,
we don't even need to mention that. Well, it launched
the Scream franchise, It launched the scary movie franchise in
a way, and relaunched the genre. Yes, so scary movies
we're seeing hot shots is worth seeing naked guns we're seeing,
of course, although I would put either one of the
hot shots up against the third naked gun any day
(02:58):
of the week. That that's that's my bookie over the
third naked gun. Yeah, okay, that's fair. Yeah. And then
don't get me started on what was it like the
Gods Son? What the Gods Son? I don't know what
that is. It was like a Godfather spoof. Leslie Nielsen
was in with Dom DeLuise. I haven't even sen five
(03:21):
minutes of it. I don't even know what that is.
And you stomped me. Oh good, thank you. That's a
good start to this episode. As you think you're welcome,
thank you. Uh so, Chuck, We're moving on. We've already
talked about the Great Pyramids at Kufu, we talked about
the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Temple of Artemis
(03:42):
at a thesis, right, all three of them top top notch. Yeah,
And if you don't know what we're talking about now,
and this is your first episode of stuff you should know. Ever,
this is the second of a two part episode. There
you go on the Seven Ancient Seven Wonders the Ancient World,
and here's part two. Right then, we're gonna start with
(04:04):
the Statue of Zeus at Olympia. To say it like that,
there's no other way to say it. That's how well,
who's the guy's name, the the boxing guy, that guy
I don't know his name. Yeah, he used to stand
at the statue of Zeus and say that on an
hourly basis. It's pretty pretty amazing stuff. So this one
(04:29):
is one of my favorites, but not my favorite. I
promise that my favorite was in here. But this is
not quite it, although it's close, because you know that
this is this is the main deal here, Olympia Zeus.
This is no run of the mill god and some
cast off city. No, it was the site of the
(04:50):
first Olympics. So it was pretty important city, very important.
Um it was. It was nowhere near Mount Olympus though, curiously,
but it was pretty pretty important, right, yes, Um, this one,
to me is the most humble of them all. I'm
not quite sure why, but I am just kind of
like whatever about it? All right? Well, the temple. Let's
(05:11):
talk about the temple at first, Okay, And also I
should warn you that this article has the um proportions
wildly incorrect. Oh the how tall it was? All right?
What is it? For real? This thing? This article says
it was two ft tall. That's a twenty story building.
The temple was not as tall as the twenty story building.
It was sixty ft tall. How did they get it
(05:34):
that wrong? I don't know. I just don't know. It's staggering.
It's as staggering as this temple would have been had
it been two hundred feet tall. And it doesn't even
say it was somewhere between sixty eight and two D
ten feet right, it's weird, that's annoying. Everything else is
right about it though. So it was sixty eight feet tall,
(05:55):
still pretty impressive for the time. Yeah, but I would
have to say if somebody, if you were driving through
Dunwoodie he saw a sixty eight foot tall temple, you
would probably still be impressed even though somebody just built it.
So I think it's still impressive even today. Yes, so
(06:16):
the temple's fail impressive, but inside we're talking about the
statue mainly the Greek artists. Uh Phideous was commissioned. And
imagine these artists were paid pretty handsomely for these jobs. Yeah,
because you know there's only a few of them who
were capable of doing this at the time. Yeah, I
mean there are only a few people in the world
could do this now on something of this scale. So
(06:38):
they said, hey, Zeus is the man. We want a
statue of Zeus And he said, yeah, I can knock
that out. It's for b C. Shouldn't take me too long.
Eight years later he was finished, right, um, and he
used some really weird materials like so, so the temple itself,
(06:58):
it was like a standard temp pool six feet tall,
like all of them were a bunch of columns that
kind of thing. But the statue inside is apparently what
was the big draw. And one of the reasons why
it was something to see was because um Phidious used
ivory and gold, um, rather than marble, which is it
was pretty much what you used to make a statue
(07:20):
back at that time. And they think one of the
reasons why he used or not ebony, but ivory and
gold was right. But the reason why they thought that
was because, um, he he was building a statue to Zeus, right,
so you needed it needed to be special. This is
like the King of the Gods. Yeah, and ivory was
(07:41):
definitely something that people would travel to see a statue
made of ivory of Zeus. Yeah. Uh. So basically this
is sitting down in this uh statue and he's sitting
just straight up. He's not like, uh like you know
how the Lincoln Lincoln and his memorials kind of chilling
in his seat. Zeus is not chilling. He's setting up
(08:02):
ready for actions like would you say, what'd you say?
Kind of Uh. The statue itself was about high, which
is super impressive. Like when you see a a rendering
of what someone look like standing at the base of
this thing. It's really pretty striking. And one of the
things they said about it was that, um, if he
stood up, he would have his head would have burst
(08:23):
through the roof of the um of the temple, which
was probably pretty cool to see too. He was sitting down,
totally would have right, he would have just been like
Zus smash. So he's holding in one hand a statue
(08:43):
of Nike, So it's a statue holding a statue, and
Nike was a winged goddess of victory, right, so it's
kind of like his version of Tinkerbell hanging out in
his hand. And then the other hand he's holding a scepter,
which is pretty appropriate for the king of the gods.
And again he seated on this throne. And yeah, if
you if you look at artists rendering of them, we
should say here, most of this stuff by the time
(09:06):
these lists were written, um, we're already aged. And then
they they've crumbled over time, so we actually don't know
exactly what they looked like. Some people saw him firsthand,
but a lot of this this information comes from secondhand
sources or even further down the chain than that, so
we're not exactly certain of what they looked like. But
(09:28):
for most of these, because they were so widely regarded
as seven Wonders of the Ancient worldly, you have to
see that enough people wrote about him talked about him
that if you really spent some time, you could put
these sources together and come with probably an accurate description
of of what it looked like. Yeah, for sure. Uh.
And the and the remarkable thing about this one is,
(09:49):
apparently was the expression on Zeus's face. Not only is
he sitting straight up ready for action, he uh, he
just said this look on his face. It was kind intimidating.
I guess you could say you've disappointed me and your mother.
That's what it said. And uh, the legend has it.
And I don't buy this at all, But Phitti has
(10:10):
said that once I'm finished with this saying he asked
for zeus blessing on the sculpture, and a bolt of
lightning struck the temple at that very moment. I don't
believe it. No. No, as a matter of fact, if
you do believe that, right in so we can tell
you that you're wrong. So um. There were a couple
of issues with this this um statute number one. It
(10:33):
was built a couple of hundred years, a few hundred
years before Christianity began and then started to spread in
the area. Once that happened, um, the the worshippers of
Zeus who still remained, said, we need to get this
out of here. These Christians, they don't play around. They're
gonna get rid of this thing, right and um. They
moved the statue to Constantinople and it stayed there safe
(10:57):
for a while, actually apparently housed in a palace us.
But one of the things about the statue was it
was made of gold and ivory, but those things were
overlaid on top of a wooden sculpture, which is kind
of like, it's pretty slack pitious. Maybe you should have
stuck with the marble. Maybe, but the palace and Constantinople
caught fire. Yeah, that's a problem because marble doesn't burn,
(11:22):
does No, it doesn't. Yeah, so it would have survived. Um,
but he cheaped out, let's be honest, he phoned this
one in. Yeah, and they were right to have moved
that thing, because the Christians did come in and take
care of business, shut down that temple in But by
that time the statue was gone at least, but yeah,
(11:42):
burned in a fire. So earthquakes and fires are taking
out all of the wonders. Earthquakes, fires and Christians the
great level as pretty much so um back in I
think in ninety this guy and again like this stuff
just sat in in the realm of legend for a
long time. Although I think the um, I think the
(12:06):
ruins of the temple itself are still around, aren't they that?
I'm not sure. I think they might be. I like,
over the last two days, I've seen so many pictures
of ancient temple ruins that I'm like, which, wait, which
one is that so much? Right? I think this one
may still be around in Olympia, the ruins of the temple,
(12:27):
like you can still make out a couple of steps
leading up to it, that kind of thing, and there's
like the posts of a couple of pillars or whatever.
But um, they found in nineteen fifty um the workshop
that Phidi has used beside the temple, and apparently we're
able to recreate using the molds that they found, probably
what the statue looked like, which is pretty impressive, just
(12:50):
working from old molds. Yeah, not only that, but these
were on coins right. Oh, yeah, that's right, that's the
other one. Yeah, they were on Greek coins, So this
isn't one where you really had to guess so much
what it looked like because on those coins there's a
lot of detail about what it looked like. And um,
(13:11):
because coins, you know, they were originated there, just where
they ended up eventually would give a little indication on
how far people had traveled to come see the saying
when they carried those coins back. Yeah, it made me wonder,
like where those coins currency or where they like souvenirs,
like if you go to Dollywood or Kennedy Space Center
or something like that and get a coin made. Yeah,
(13:33):
I didn't think about that. I wonder because I mean,
this was an age where they were are tourists and
they were already selling the replicas of the Temple of
Artemis as tourists mementos. I wonder if these coins were
that too, pretty pretty neat to think about ancient tourists.
Should we take a break? Yeah, all right, I'm going
to contemplate that and we'll be back right after this. Okay, Chuck,
(14:18):
here's here's my second favorite. Let's hear it, this isn't
your favorite huh. Are you sure you have a favorite?
I do, We're not there yet. Okay, all right, well
this is my second favorite, the mausoleum at Halicarnassis. Okay,
you don't like this one? Was all right? Mausoleums, I
(14:39):
don't know you've seen one, you see them all. Well,
this is the original one. Like the word mausoleum came
from the structure. Yeah, that only goes so far with me. Oh,
I love that, the original thing. Yeah, I thought I
thought you were like an etymology kind of guy. Oh,
I can be, but just not with mausolium. Yeah. I
don't know. There's something about mausoleums that bucked me because
(15:01):
there's dead people interred inside. Just a lot of a
lot of hubbub for a dead body. Oh I see,
I see, Yeah, it makes sense, you know. Yeah, I
don't want to knock it though. Well, okay, we'll just
stop right here. Then if you're if you're King Mozolus,
you deserve to to have this named after you. I
(15:21):
would say that, especially if you're married to your sister
and she's madly in love with you and you've just died. Yeah,
that was a little weird. He was the Persian king
of Kia, and he was indeed married to his sister
art Artemisia. Yeah, and she really really was in love
with her brother. Yeah and husband, and he was from
(15:45):
what I understand, he seems like a pretty successful ruler. Um.
They had the mausoleum under construction while he was still alive,
and he died UM while before it was finished, obviously,
but his sister Artemisia, sister wife Artemisia UM was so
broken up by it. She said, all right, stop, stop
(16:06):
what you're doing. This is not good enough. This has
to be the most amazing memorial anyone's ever made to
their husband. Brother. Um, I've got to I've got to
get in touch with all of the greatest sculptors of
the realm. And she did. She got in touch with
um at least five of the greatest sculptors alive at
(16:27):
the time, and they were headed by a guy named
Pitheous who not only Um was one of the sculptures,
he was the over overseeing architect of the entire project. Yeah,
So like he architected the whole thing. And then she
got a one sculptor per side to embellish the outside
scopus brexas Baxas Leo, Charis oh A, and Timotheus. That
(16:57):
one's easy, that one is easy, and this one has
often been called UM because she had all these all
these different people working on it. Uh. And not only that,
but I think for years afterward it became a place
where artists could exhibit and showcase their work. So in
the end, this thing ended up being UM. I think,
(17:18):
not as coherent is what you would think something might
be when you just hire one person to work on it. UM.
For this episode and the last one, I went to
the site on museum. Have you ever heard of it? Yeah?
I think so. They were very helpful in researching this.
And one of the things the way they put it
was that UM so during construction, Artemisia died before it
(17:39):
was completed, and the five sculptors who were running the
show looked at each other and they're like, let's keep going.
We could stop here and leave it unfinished. But it
became well, no, no, not true. Ones. It became a temple,
a monument not just to Mausoleus and Artemisia who were
entombed inside, but it became a monument to art as well,
(18:03):
that we can do whatever you want, right and they
did so, and so they went ahead and they completed it,
and it was a pretty impressive um structure. Yeah. The
structure yourself, was about a hundred and forty ft tall.
Is that right? Yes, I believe that that's a relief.
The base was about a hundred feet um twenty four
(18:23):
steps tall. Yeah, and then on either side of the steps,
flanking the steps were crouched lions, which is pretty cool.
It's always cool around the outside of the second the
second tier where you would walk into on all four
corners there were um soldiers bounted on horseback, sculptures of
(18:44):
them protecting the place. Yeah. Yeah, what else? Uh? Pliny
the Elder said, this thing is four hundred forty ft
and the perimeter was thing is four so it was large,
thirty six columns. Uh, it's a It was a big structure,
very impressive. I didn't get from the pictures that I
(19:05):
saw of renderings. It didn't look too busy to me. No,
I'm not sure. The only place I saw that kind
of shady and thrown at it was in this how
Stuff Works article. Yeah. I mean I know that there
were different people working on it, but it didn't look
like I expected. When I saw it to look like
a big mess, and it did not look like a
(19:26):
big mess. No, it looked pretty neat and tidy. Right. Yeah.
So one of the things that I love about this thing.
So again, Artemisia and Mausolus are entombed inside this thing.
But it's also like just a place you would go,
you know, take a date or something on a Sunday
afternoon in the city of Hellican Issus, Hellican Hellicarnassis. Right. Um.
(19:47):
One of the one of the cool things about this
is that um, this structure stood for hundreds and hundreds
of years after the city of Hellicarnassis all to ruin
around it. That is so cool, just the imagining this abandoned,
ruined town and in the middle of it is this
(20:09):
hundred and forty foot tall mausoleum, the world's first mausoleum,
with all these ornate sculptures around it. This is almost
completely out of context with the surroundings now that the
town is falling to ruin. Yeah, that's pretty cool for sure.
But like all these other ones, earthquakes would eventually take
care of business, uh in the fourteen hundreds and shake
(20:30):
this thing down and um and again, like a lot
of these other stories. In four they used the knights
of St. John of Malta said hey, let's let's take
all this uh scrap and use it for our own castle. Yeah,
the a city as um Hellicarnassus fell to ruin. Another
(20:51):
city nearby grew up called Boudroum, and the ruins at hellercanasses.
You would go to Boudroum today to view the ruins
of Helicarnassis. The mausoleum, I should say, um, but the
big draw apparently is the knights of St. John's castle
and to build that castle. Some of the scraps that
they used were from the mausoleum, so you can still
(21:13):
see original parts of the mausoleum, but they've been incorporated
into the structure of them the castle that you would view,
which is cool. So it's still around in some way,
shape or form. But that um earthquake that got it
in the fourteen hundreds, it actually had a weird way
of preserving some of it. Right, So there are three
(21:35):
three big things that keep coming up. Right. There is
um earthquakes that keep happening, There's people using scraps to
build other cities nearby, and then there's the British Museum.
Those three things figure into the Seven Wonders of the
Ancient World big time, because if there's a piece of it,
one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World somewhere
in the world outside of its original location, it's probably
(21:59):
in the British muse Zoum. And that's the case with
Um some a few things from the the mausoleum at Helicarnassis.
They think that what happened was the earthquake toppled the
sculpture of Mausolus and Artemisia riding a chariot pulled by
four horses. It was very famous um that was on
the top of the mausoleum, that it fell and was
(22:22):
covered by rubble so that it was protected until it
was finally excavated in the nineteenth century when they found
um huge old chariot wheel. And then they think the
the two sculptures of Artemisia and Mausolus and now they're
all in the British Museum. But they think that earthquake
had a weird way of protecting it from being looted
(22:43):
and re used by the Knights of St. John later on. Amazing,
I'm telling you that's why it's my second favorite. Well,
we're coming upon my favorite. I wondered if this was it,
the Colossus of Rhodes. It's a good way to say it. Yeah,
I like this one. This was ancient Greece, and this
(23:04):
one was the granddaddy of them all statue wise, this
one was even bigger than the statue of Zeus at
Olympia UM. Third century. And Rhodes was an island, uh,
still as an island, and Macedonians came knocking on the door,
and they were angry, and they wanted the help of
(23:24):
the people of Rhodes because told me, was told me
one that is was was was conquering, and they said,
we need your help here. And the people of Rhad said, hey,
we're not really, we don't want to get involved in
all that. We kind of like it here on the island,
living our peaceful lifestyle here. Well. Plus, if there was
anybody they were allied with, it was Ptolemy. Yeah. Yeah,
(23:47):
they but they wanted to stay out of any wars.
They just weren't into it. So they rebuffed the Macedonians
uh and they left, but they left behind a bunch
of supplies and equipment UM I'm not sure why they
did that actually, So the this article is so bizarre. Man, Um,
the the Macedonians besieged roads for over a year. Um
(24:11):
and they they had these huge war machines that were
made of like um, bronze and wood and metal, and
they would pull these huge machines up to the city
walls and like they had catapults on top, and they
were trying to crush the city for a year. And
when the road the Roodians finally overcame the Macedonians, they
were like, well, we're just leaving the stuff behind. It's
(24:32):
too big to move. It didn't work anyway, so we'll
leave it. Yeah, that's why they left it. This This
this article puts it in a really weird way. Yeah,
I agree. Uh so they ended up using like selling
away that stuff right to make the money to build
in part the statue. Yeah, and they reused some of
it directly for the statue. Like like that huge thing
(24:54):
that they used to besiege the city they pulled up
to the walls, they actually used that as scaffolding to
build the statue. Heck, yeah, yeah, it's making plowshares out
of I don't know guns. So they used the sculptor
Charras of Lindos, and he said, I got this one
under control, and he is um all these different materials, iron, bronze, stone, Uh,
(25:19):
and this one I'll have wrapped up, oh in about
twelve years when they said that's about right. Yeah, that's
not bad for what they did here. Yeah, I mean
this one was a tin feet tall. Yeah, it had
a skeleton of iron um, and inside the skeleton for structure,
it had huge stone columns running through it. And yeah,
it was like the actual statue itself was about as
(25:41):
big as the Statue of Liberty as today and followed
like a pretty similar structure, um, but like a thousand
or so years before, a couple of thousand years before. Yeah,
people think from written accounts that it was holding a
torch like Lady Liberty does, and that the face was
modeled after Alexander the Great. Some say, and here's where
(26:02):
it gets interesting to me is if you look up
pictures of this thing, you will likely see it standing
a straddle um the entrance to the harbor, So literally
standing there like kind of with his legs spread, and
you would have to sail a ship between his legs
to get into the harbor. You shouldn't look up, don't
(26:22):
look on. The detail was really amazing, very amazing, and
a hundred ten feet I like, you know what you're
going to be staring at. So, uh, there are accounts
and there are plenty of illustrations and other things that
support this, and it looks trust me, if you look
it up, it looks very cool. Like you know, they
(26:43):
were into, uh, they were into making things this tall,
just because it was so mind blowing. But also they
were saying they were thanking their patron god Helios for
spending them from having to go to war. Um, which
is pretty cool. Like that's one of the reasons I
like this one is they were saying, like, you know what,
we stayed out of war, we managed to remain at peace.
(27:05):
We're gonna build a monument to our god, who we
assume helped this out. Yeah. But when they did these things,
like with most of these, I loved it. They were
just like, well, you know, twenty ft high statue would
be great. That's impressive. Like they would try and build
things as large as humanly literally possible engineering wise at
the time. I see your point. Yeah, that is pretty neat.
(27:27):
So when you look at pictures of this straddling the harbor,
it's just like it's enormous, it's huge. Unfortunately, that's probably
not what he how he stood, right, That's that's the
downer here, is that they didn't really have the the
materials or the knowledge or the skill, uh to do
(27:48):
something like that. Like the reason that statues back then
we're basically straight up and down is because that you
needed that those legs to support the rest of the statue. Yeah,
and they were a top of pet stoles that could
hold the weight of the statue above it. Um. They
would also if the if the if each foot was
on either side of the harbor, that's usually not the
(28:10):
strongest solid ground you can find, So they wouldn't have
had any means of reinforcing the ground beneath it, so
it would have just sunk or fallen right over. Yeah.
And Plus the other thing to chuck was that it
would have closed the harbor down. And they relied on
the harbor for their economy, so it's probably unlikely that
it looked as cool as it looks in pictures. Uh.
(28:32):
And what happened to this one three years later? Yes,
earthquake fifty three years that is so quick that didn't
last long at all. No, So this the thing fell
and they think that it probably was located closer to
the center of town somewhere inland Um, but that when
it fell, it crushed a bunch of people's houses and businesses,
(28:54):
and some of it probably fell into the harbor itself.
That's right. And this one was notable because I think
because it was so young when it fell. It's still
it's not like they were like, oh, let's get rid
of this thing. They let it lay there as a
tourist attraction in its prone state for many, many years,
and people would come far and wide to go visit
(29:15):
the fallen statue. Yeah, for almost a thousand years. It's easy. Yeah,
it's still stayed a tourist attraction. Like apparently the cool
thing to do was to try to put your arms
around the thumb. Yeah. The thumb was bigger than most statues, right,
Like like people couldn't get their arms, they couldn't touch
their hands around the thumb. Amazing. And apparently also the
(29:36):
arms fell off pretty pretty They may have even fallen
off first during the earthquake. But did you say it
broke off at about the knees just below the knees. Um,
so those probably stayed for a while. But the they
like from the knee down, Yeah, yeah, I'm sure, which
looks a little weird, like that picture of the person
who suffered spontaneous combustion all that was left with their
(29:59):
one leg. I'll bet it look kind of like that.
But the stuff that was on the ground, like you
could see into, like the armholes, and apparently even that
was just his breathtaking cavern. It was just such a
massive structure. They're like, have you seen in those armholes? Yes?
I have. I've seen all the armholes all over the world.
And the best tourist ever have he tried to hug
that thumb? I have a subscription to Monocle magazine. I'm
(30:22):
just as cool as they come. And so the final
nugget on this one that I thought was pretty fun
was in six fifty three, Um, these invading Arabs sold,
like all the rest of these stories, sold the scrap metal. Uh,
they sold it to a Jewish merchant who apparently used
nine hundred camels to take this stuff away. Good lord,
(30:44):
So how about that? So nine hundred camels or like
just a few camels who had to make nine hundred
trips total. I don't know, nine hundred camels. This is plus.
I mean, if this is a Jewish merchant buying the
scrap metal Colossus of Rhodes, he probab like camels, you know.
And think of all the poop that generated around there. Man,
(31:06):
it's a lot of camel poop. All right, Well, let's
take one more break. We'll come back and we'll finish
up with the final wonder of the Ancient worlds right
after this. M all right, chuck, we're at the last one.
(31:43):
This one's pretty neat too. I don't think we ever
said when the Classes of Rose was built, did we? Oh? Jeez,
did we not? So it would have been in the
fourth now the third century, now, the fourth century BC
is when it was built. So this this is my
but we've been going chronologically through all of these, and um,
(32:04):
this is then the youngest of the ancient wonders. Yeah,
the little baby of the of the group, the Lighthouse
of Alexandria. And you know I've got a lighthouse thing, sure, uh.
And this one is a pretty great one. This was, um,
this was notable as one of the angers wonders in
the ancient world because it was the only one that
actually had a practical use and it wasn't just some
(32:25):
monument or temple, you know, right, it served a purpose.
Who was it that said nothing useless can ever truly
be beautiful? It was that just a movie line that
I remember? I think that was John Cusack. Okay, what
nothing useless can never be beautiful? Yeah? Man, I wish
I could remember what that's from, because I'm sure we're
(32:46):
going to get a lot of email about it. But
they said in the movie, they say somebody said nothing
useless can ever truly be beautiful. I don't buy that. Yeah,
I miss an opinion. There's a well an opinion. It's
just how it ends up in a movie, you know
what I'm saying. So this one, this one did have utility,
and it was kind of beautiful too from the artists
(33:08):
renderings I've seen. I liked it. Yeah, pretty pretty sweet lighthouse.
So the Lighthouse at Alexander is supposedly it's got a
pretty cool backstory to it. Allegedly, Alexander himself had a
dream and in the dream, they said, Alexander, you need
to go find the island of Pharaohs, And he said, why.
(33:30):
They said, it doesn't matter, just do what we say.
And he woke up in a cold sweat and he
like trembling, lit a cigarette and he said, I gotta
find Pharaohs. And that's how it started. Yeah, pretty much.
Uh located off the coast of ancient Egypt. He said, um,
you know what told me. Since we're told me it's
(33:53):
such a cool name, I'm gonna choose you as one
of my generals to go inhabit and settle this place.
Take care of it for me, and told them he said,
I'm all over it. But yeah, I I you know
what Pharaohs needs though, It needs like an identify er,
something that you can see from a long way, something symbolic,
something that literally helps you identify it because it's you know,
(34:17):
tough navigating around the shores. And Alexander said, well, I
don't know if it was Ausanader. In my mind it was.
He said, how about a lighthouse, Well, supposedly it was
either Ptolemy or the um Um mause In, which is
the predecessor to the museum, which is basically like a
brain trust to think tank and the early prototype of
(34:39):
the university where the library exact Alexandria was housed. Um
either Ptolemy came up with it or the Mausean came
up with it. That's right, And it's a great idea.
Put a lighthouse because it serves a function, and it
can be tall and grand, and the island will then
be known for this, and it most certainly was. I
(34:59):
have say one of the things that I love about
these is how some of them are tied together. Like
this is the same Tolomy that the Macedonians were fighting
and tried to bring roads into Rhodes, had been conquered
by King um muzzles Uh and then was later reconquered
by Artemisia. Like all of these things kind of fit together,
and when you start to learn about one, you learn
(35:21):
about the story of the people who built them, and
how they relate to the stories of people who build
other amazing wonders of the ancient world. It's just such
a cool history. Lesson. Have you seen the new Noah
Bombach movie on Netflix. No, it's called The Meerwit Stories. No,
I haven't seen it. It's on Netflix. It's funny. It's
Adam Sandler, his Adams the guy's not in the movie,
(35:42):
but Adam Sandler's neighbor. He references a lot. His name
is Toleomy. Yeah, so he just keeps saying, well, you know,
told him. He says this and that thought about the movie.
It's pretty funny and a reminder that Adam Sandler should
only play these roles. Yeah, he definitely. Well that or
the original Billy Madison Happy Gilmore role. He was pretty
(36:04):
good that too. Man, he's so good in these kinds
of movies. I know, Punchdrunk so good. And this character
is sort of like a grown up version of that
punch drunk love character. A little bit to me. Good movie.
Check it out. Yeah, thanks, so uh it told me
which has got a silent p by the way, Yeah,
(36:27):
it's a cool name, which is why it's such a
great name. It's Potolemy. Um So, Potolemy is on the island.
They get this thing built around b C they begin construction. Uh,
there's a dude name so stratise of Nidos And they
(36:48):
don't know what part he played other than the fact
that it was important. He could have been the architect,
could have been the financier, could have been both. Yeah,
absolutely could have been both. But he was he was
definitely important into that project. So supposedly this project they
actually have a monetary value for how much it costs.
They said it costs um eight hundred talents, which are
(37:11):
is a word for bars of silver. And apparently that's
about three million dollars today, which is not bad for
this lighthouse. Three million, not bad at all. You couldn't
build half a lighthouse today for that, No, no, not
one like this. So so apparently it was um about
four hundred and fifty ft tall. And one of the
reasons they built this too is not just to to
(37:34):
put Pharaohs on the map um or Alexandria on the map.
Alexandria was already like a pretty important city or it
was becoming an important city, um ports city, but having
a lighthouse there just helped navigation, which only helped the
economy boom. And actually after the lighthouse came into operation,
(37:54):
the economy did boom as a result of that. Right, Yeah,
is really really tall. Yeah, they said that you could
see this thing's light from a hundred miles away. Yeah,
I saw the ones that said it was more like
thirty or forty still, but yeah, that's it's a that's
a pretty high functioning lighthouse a hundred miles away is
more believable than the Temple of Zeus being struck by
(38:15):
a bolt of lightning after it was completed. Agreed, So
you could see this thing thirty miles away, We'll even
go with twenty miles away. Okay, I'm i'm, I'm not
even going above that. And the reason why you could
see that is because atop this four hundred and fifty
foot structure there was a polished disc of some sort
they think it was probably bronze, and during the day
(38:37):
they moved it so it would reflect the light of
the sun so you could see it then, uh, and
then at night they had a fire going all the time. Um.
And there were structures within this amazingly tall structure that
we're basically what you would call dumb waiters or that
type of elevator on pulleys where you could raise and
lower um to to get to bring like firewood, animal
(39:00):
dried animal dung up to it. Yeah, and I don't
think we said that. One of the things that makes
this so cool to me is it's not not just
a big cylindrical lighthouse like most of them you see. Uh,
it is three different levels of three different shapes. So
you've got your huge rectangular base, then you have the
second level, which is octagonal, and then that third is cylindrical.
(39:22):
So it's just really cool looking. And um apparently you
could even up to that first level, which I mean
it had to be over a hundred feet high in itself.
You could bring carts and work horses and stuff all
the way up to that level because they had a
bunch of storage up there. This is pretty cool. And
then dumb waiters to take stuff to the highest hours, right,
(39:44):
and they had like those ramps and like kind of
circular or spiral staircases going around it to help to
to maximize the space that you use to get things up. Yeah,
it was very clever structure, for sure. It's very you
can there are some cool renderings of this online as well.
So this thing was a solid piece of work. Apparently
(40:07):
it's it's survived a tsunami in three sixtie but what
got it Chuck earthquake earthquake in thirteen oh three, so
it's after dozens of earthquakes. Yeah, so it was. It
was built around two eighty b c E. It stood
(40:28):
until thirteen hundred UM and Finally some earthquakes took it down,
and the other thing that happened they reused some of
it as a fort which is still around today. But um,
the cool thing about it is there was an underwater
expedition around Pharos and they found what they're almost positive
(40:49):
are original blocks from the from the lighthouse itself, original blocks,
and I think statues too. Yeah, sculptures, I should say, yeah,
did I did look at some of the underwater pictures?
Is pretty cool. Oh yeah, it's just as cool as
it gets. Man, anything that's underwater now that used to
be and was meant to be above water, it's so cool,
(41:11):
so creepy. I was reading this really interesting article about
the Andrea Doria, you know, the luxury liner family that
that Um, I think it's sunk in the fifties or
early sixties, but it's like this incredible wreck site that
people dive and they call it like the underwater Everest
because if you're an underwater wreck diver, that's like, it
(41:32):
doesn't get any better than that. Um. But you know,
it's it's also extremely dangerous. And I've read this really
well written article about I can't remember who wrote it,
but to start reading Andrea Doria articles everybody, and you'll
find the one eventually. Well, we'll do a podcast on it,
how about that. Okay, let's do it. And that's it.
We did the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World finally. Huh,
(41:52):
that's the last one. That's That's it, everybody. That's the
big one. That's a Chevy Chase quote, is it? Yeah?
From Christmas Vacation when he reveals the pool. Right, it's
so awkward the way he says it's perfect. That's it.
That's a big one. Oh. At any rate, Um, Christmas
is coming gone, chuck. But this is the last episode
(42:13):
that we're going to release this year. So I think
we should wish everybody a happy new year. Yeah, happy
new Year everybody. Thanks for sticking with us this two
thousand seventeen, and we'll see you two thousand and eighteen.
On a personal note, happy happy birthday to my sweet wife.
You me and uh, we'll see you guys next year, right,
I sure hope. So. So in the meantime, it's time
(42:36):
for listener mail. That's right, We're gonna finish out this
two parter with a single listener mail about bath salts
appropriately because why not? Hey, guys, I'm not wanting to
take hard drugs often, but my friend and I were
going to an d M festival and decided to take
(42:56):
what we believed was molly. The drugs are crystalline, and
we took them orally he yuck. The experience did not
go as planned. A few days later, we use a
drug testing kit on the remaining crystals and find out
dant dana bats salts. That's scary, Like, I'll take that.
That looks like a drug. It's crystaline. Yeah, sure, Unlike
(43:21):
any other party drug that might make you feel ready
to dance. This stuff gave my friend and I this
sensation that our feet were stuck to the ground via
magnetic force, and lifting them was almost impossible. Was made
dancing very difficult, as all we could do was awkwardly
move around with the top half of our bodies. Additionally,
we felt super paranoid that everyone around us was watching
us and judging and laughing at our pitiful attempts to dance. Uh.
(43:44):
By the way, Anonymous, no one noticed you. I can
go ahead and tell you that right now, it was
impossible to enjoy the music with my mind raising these
unpleasant thoughts and The feeling lasted for the full day.
After the disappointing day, we headed back to the apartment,
ready to get some rest. Tackled the next day drug free,
but no, the bass Salts would not let us sleep,
try as we might. All night long, we laid there
(44:04):
a wide awake, part of the song turned down for
what by DJ Snake, laid over and over in my
mind for eight hours straight. This sounds really bad, it does.
My eyes were closed and it felt as though I
was watching a show of squiggly neon colored shapes pulsating
in rhythm to the incessant music in my mind. Somehow
we managed to get to the festival the next day,
but we felt like zombies and we were not even
(44:25):
at the cannibalism stage yet. I'm not sure what that
even means. Well, you know the whole face eating bath
salts legend. Oh gotcha. She's like, we weren't even there yet.
It still was terrible. She didn't even get the pleasure
of eating someone's face, right, Uh so just from experience.
Alo second, when Josh and Chuck said and urged steer clear,
that is from Anonymous. Thanks a lot, Anonymous appreciate that.
(44:48):
As um the bore you know or know. That's one
to grow on. That's one to grow on. If you
want to send us one to grow on, hit us up.
I'm at josh um Clark on Twitter. I also have
a website called Are You Serious Clark dot com. There's
an official Twitter s y s K podcast. There's an
official s y s K Facebook page. There's a Chuck
Facebook page. It's Facebook dot com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
(45:12):
You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at
how stuff Works dot com and as always, joined us
at our home on the web but Stuff You Should
Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of
other topics, is it how stuff Works dot com.
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