How Did Humans Discover Mercury?

China's first emperor is said to lie beside rivers of mercury, and a 2016 laser scan detected mercury vapor rising from his unopened tomb. So how did humans discover mercury? What You Will Learn in This Video: The Red Rock: How cinnabar colored skulls and tombs thousands of years before anyone wrote about the liquid metal. The Drop in the Fire: Why nobody discovered mercury, what the earliest recipes say, and how a 2022 lab replicated one. Silver That Flows: The emperor's tomb, Chinese alchemists, elixir legends, and what is really known versus repeated. The Metal That Built an Empire: How mercury turned Potosi and Mexico's silver into a global economy and what it cost at Almaden and Huancavelica. Everyday Quicksilver to Minamata: Mirrors, hats, medicine, oxygen, superconductors, and the tragedies that led to the Minamata Convention. If you enjoyed this video, hit like, subscribe to Grind Ladder, and drop a comment telling us what we should cover next.