Carved Up

Published Dec 3, 2019, 11:30 AM

Today's tour through the cabinet will feature a space so large it's difficult to wrap your head around it, and a head so imperfect that it's easy to be curious. Care to get a head start?

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Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. People's devotion to a higher power is no more evident than in the structures they build to honor it. From small congregations in modest churches to vast networks of bishops and clergy that worship in great cathedrals, every religious group has a place where they can commune with their shows and God. The Hindu turn Buddhist Temple of Angor Watts in Cambodia sits on four acres. It remains to this day as the largest religious structure in the world. Prime Bannan Hindu Temple compound in Indonesia is comprised of two at forty individual temples and dates back to the eighth century, but few religious monuments are as unique as Kailasa Temple in India. Construction of the Hindu structure was started during the eighth century and it resides in Maharashtra, a region in western India, and took its name from the Himalayan home of the god Shiva. The base of the temple features enormous elephants chiseled out of rock that seemed to hold the whole thing up. When visitors step through the two story entrance into the central courtyard, they can see a stone carving of Nandi, the sacred bull of Shiva. In fact, Shiva is depicted throughout the temple as twenty three foot tall statues and within expertly carved relief panels, and there are other reliefs and panels as well, two of which depict scenes from two of the most important Sanskrit epics of ancient India, the Ramayana and the Maha Brata. The Maha Brata tells the story of a battle between two groups of cousins during a massive war, while the Ramayana is about to prince named Rama, who was exiled the forest for many years before he returned home to be crowned king. And these tales have been meticulously carved into the walls of the temple as relief permanent reminders of India's rich history. Legend has it that the temple was part of a bargain made by a worried queen. Her king had been very sick and was near death. The queen prayed to the god Shiva for a cure, making two promises as well. First, she would build a temple in Shiva's name. Second, she would fast until its completion, illustrating her dedication to the king and to her god. The queen's husband did recover, and true to her words, she commissioned builders to begin work on the temple immediately. There was just one problem. It was going to take years to complete. She couldn't starve herself for that long. But in a stroke of good fortune, an engineer came forward with the plan if he started building from the top down, he could finish the temple within a week. With the help of the engineer, workers moved between two hundred thousand and four hundred thousand tons of rock to construct the temple. But they didn't do it in a week. That's just what the legend says. A temple as big as Kailasa took more than seven days to build, no matter how many people were involved. In total, it took them roughly twenty six years to complete. The workers did, however, work their way to the ground from the top of the temple, and if that sounds physically impossible, that's because it would be if they had been using materials brought in from other places. But Cailasa Temple wasn't assembled. It was carved. The whole temple twice. The area of the Parthenon was dug out of a single mountain. Over two hundred tons of volcanic rock were excavated from the site as they worked, and being the eighth century, workers didn't have cranes or back hooes to help move things around. They carved out the whole thing, including all the sculptures and relief panels, using nothing more than hammers and chisels. Kailasa Temple is part of a collection of thirty three other cave temples known as the Alora Caves, but it stands out because of its size and method of construction. At one fifty feet from the top of the mountain and three stories tall, it's an unrecognized wonder of the world and proof that one's devotion to their faith can run deep, very very deep. You might not have heard of Diogo Alvez in the realm of serial killers. His name doesn't stoke fear or fascination the way Ted Bundy or Richard spec might. But get to know him a little and you start to see a man who deserved the same notoriety as his peers, especially in death. Alvez was born in Galicia, Spain. In His family was poor, and a childhood injury he incurred after falling off the family horse didn't help. Some think that the damage to his head, which also inspired his nickname Pankata or blow, can be attributed to the sharp turn he took toward robbery and murder later in life. When Alvez was nineteen, his parents sent him to Lisbon to find a job, but nothing seemed to take. He bounced from place to place, but his young age and modest upbringing meant work was hard to find. Eventually, he found a job working as a servant for wealthier members of Spanish society. His family naturally wanted to know how things were going for him, but he never wrote them back. Perhaps he was ashamed of where he'd ended up, or maybe he hadn't found the right line of work yet. One day he ended up at a tavern run by a woman named Maria. Rumor had it that Alvez and Maria grew close, very close. That's when he started stealing and copying the keys of the taverns patrons so that he could rob their homes. Later, one of the keys he copied allowed him to access and nearby aqueduct. This aqueduct was a massive stone structure that distributed water all across Lisbon, and it also provided Alvez with the perfect venue for robbing farmers on their way back from the city. Each night, once he had liberated each of them from their money and belongings, he would fling them off the top of the aqueduct sixty five stories to their death. Over the course of three years, he did this dozens of times, and amazingly, the police were none the wiser. By eighteen thirty seven, however, Alvez had lost his killing spot. The number of suspected suicides forced authorities to close the aqueduct to the public. As a result, he formed a gang and started breaking into people's homes to rob and kill them there instead. In eighteen forty the police finally caught him, although they were never able to tie him to the aqueduct murders. However, they did manage to convict him for the home invasions he and his gang had committed, including the depths of a family of four. It was the tavern owners eleven year old daughter, also named Maria, who testified against him and helped to cement his conviction. The jury sentenced Dieago Elvez to death, making him the second to last criminal ever executed in Portugal. But there was something about his corpse that had captured the interests of students at the Medical Surgical School of Lisbon. The rash of murders he'd committed were so out of place for the quiet communities he and his gang had terrorized for all those years, So after he was hanged for his crimes, doctors examined his head more closely. They wanted to see how a man like Alves could have ended up so depraved and devoid of morals, because remember this was eight forty one and the practice of phrenology was just beginning to gain steam within the medical community. Chronology, of course, was the study of the bumps on a person's head as indicators of their mental abilities and personality traits. Today it's recognized as complete bunk, pure pseudoscience, but at the time, scientists honestly believed that the shape of a person's skull could explain their be behavior and decisions. Researchers at the medical school in Lisbon wanted to see if defects in Alvez's cranium could explain why he murdered seventy people during his lifetime. Unfortunately, they couldn't find any evidence for his lack of a conscience. But if you're a student and you'd like to have a look, you can go visit Diego Alvez yourself and look him rights in the eyes. Well, his head, at least, it was preserved in formaldehyde immediately after his execution and looks almost exactly as it did on the day he died. His face bears the quiet, peaceful expression of a man who looks nothing like a cold blooded killer. If only disembodied heads could talk. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mank in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,

Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

From the creator of the hit podcast Lore comes a new, bite-sized storytelling experience. Each twice 
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