According to legend, the ever-burning lamp made of mermaid cream in Qin Shihuang's mausoleum can burn for thousands of years, but no one has seen this ever-burning lamp. As for what mermaid cream is, it is said that it is both giant salamander oil and whale oil.

Qin Shihuang was the first emperor in history, and his mausoleum is one of the biggest mysteries in the world at present. Because of the lack of technology and other reasons, it is still unknown what the interior of Qin Shihuang's mausoleum looks like for more than two thousand years.

According to "Historical Records", mercury is a hundred rivers and seas, instilled by machine, with astronomy on the top and geography on the bottom, and mermaid cream as a candle.

Many people think that Sima Qian's talk about the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor is really exaggerated. After all, he has never seen the interior of Qin Shihuang's mausoleum with his own eyes. For example, the mausoleum of Qin Shihuang, the layout of rivers and seas is made of mercury. When the first inspection of Qin Shihuang Mausoleum was conducted, there was indeed a strong mercury reaction. What's more, what many modern people think is "impossible" was not really impossible in ancient times.

Before, people always thought that the so-called "gold" in ancient times actually meant copper, because China itself was not a country rich in gold resources, especially in ancient times when mining technology was backward. It was not until a large amount of gold was found in the tomb of the sea faint Hou that people realized that some things described by the ancients were not necessarily exaggerated.

There is also a strange thing mentioned in Historical Records, that is "mermaid cream".

Mermaid ointment, as its name implies, is lamp oil boiled with human fish oil and placed in the underground palace for lighting. However, mermaid has always been a legendary creature and has not really been discovered. What exactly is mermaid cream has always been controversial.

First of all, the giant salamander said

What exactly is a mermaid is also recorded in ancient books.

Guangxu was quoted in Historical Records: A mermaid stood on four legs.

Justice in Historical Records quoted Guang Zhi as saying: The giant fish sounds like a child's crow, with four feet and the shape of a herring.

According to the description in ancient books, there was a creature called a character in ancient times, that is, the giant salamander, also known as the giant salamander. There is also a description about using giant salamander oil as lamp oil.

In the records of foreign bodies, a mermaid looks like a human figure, more than a foot long. In the mausoleum of Qin Shihuang, mermaid cream is a candle, that is, this fish is also.

Giant salamander is one of the specialties of China. The earliest fossils appeared in Inner Mongolia. Although there are not many wild ones, they are widely distributed in the Yangtze River and Yellow River basins, and even in the Haihe River basin. And giant salamanders are rare now, not necessarily in ancient times. After all, tigers flooded in ancient Sichuan and elephants were caught in Zhejiang until the Southern Song Dynasty. The last record of rhinoceros in Henan appeared at the end of the Warring States Period.

Nowadays, giant salamander is protected, and no one has really seen or heard of using giant salamander as lamp oil. As for whether the mermaid cream of Qin Shihuang's mausoleum is a giant salamander, it is not known.

Second, the whale oil theory

In addition to giant salamander, there is also a saying that whale oil.

"Peaceful Magnolia" quoted "Saint Ji Qin": The first emperor's tomb ... burned whale paste as a lamp.

It has been inferred that the ever-burning lamp used in Qin Shihuang's mausoleum is a candle made of whale brain oil. Modern candles made of whale brain oil can burn for about 5000 days per cubic meter, which is indeed much more flame-resistant than ordinary candles.

Qin Shihuang visited Zhifu for the third time. Once he saw a giant fish in the sea, he set up a crossbow to chase it and finally shot it to death.

Zhifu is located in the northeast of Shandong Peninsula, at the junction of Bohai Sea and Yellow Sea. It is rich in bait and fish, and there are indeed many whales distributed in this sea area. Until the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there were still records of whales frequenting the nearby waters in local counties of Changli County.

There was no tradition of whaling in ancient China, but for some special purposes, occasional whaling was not without it, such as whale cartilage needed by aristocratic women in ancient court to support wigs.

Therefore, it is not impossible for the ancients to use whale oil.

However, no matter what kind of mermaid cream it is, there is an ever-burning lamp in Qin Shihuang's mausoleum, which itself has a big problem, that is, it needs enough oxygen for combustion, and the underground palace of Qin Shihuang's mausoleum is completely closed, and there is no oxygen at all, so no matter what material oil it is, it is impossible to burn for that long time.

After all, mermaid cream only appeared in various imaginary descriptions of later generations. There is no conclusive evidence to say what mermaid cream is, and no one has even seen the so-called "mermaid cream" in Qin Shihuang's mausoleum. If it really existed, why didn't the later emperors use this ideal burning material?

In other words, whether the ever-burning lamp made of mermaid cream really exists is a problem, let alone studying what mermaid cream is. All the truth is buried in the mausoleum of Qin Shihuang.