What is going on everyone? Or should I say que pasa today I thought we would do
what so many people have been asking me to do some videos about outside of the
United States today we'll be tackling Mexico
I get all forms of communication to this channel comments emails Twitter
Instagram DMS i even get traditional mail to my peel Box occasionally one of
the most frequent subjects is why do I call it world according to Briggs when I
only do things about the u.s. well because I really didn't have a plan when
I started this and kind of named it that I thought I would eventually branch out
of the US but I really haven't felt much of a need truth be told I currently have
about two years worth the list ideas already and every week we add a couple
more and 95% of them are about the United States but since international
videos get requested so much a couple months back I did one on Vancouver
British Columbia and Canada now it did okay but not great but it was okay I did
have one guy email me about how he unsubscribe because I must hate America
because I'm making videos about Canada almost all of you right now we're going
huh yeah that's exactly what I did I was like what I didn't follow his logic
either anyway so he's gone because of a Vancouver Canada video who knew
seeing that we did a video about our neighbors to the north we should
probably take a look at our neighbors to the south Mexico Mexico is right here
it's home to a hundred and twenty six million people that's a lot of people
and has some incredibly interesting history a couple of ancient
civilizations a handful of revolutions a war with the United States back in the
mid 1800s today we're not gonna look at the history or statistics about Mexico
we're looking at the weird stuff about our neighbors to the south so grab a
margarita and watch my top ten strange things about Mexico
number ten sacrifice back in the aztec days in order to appease and worship
their gods these people would sacrifice their own people during certain rituals
every year it's believed they would sacrifice up to one percent of the
population which is equal to about 2,000 2,500 people somewhere in that
neighborhood some scholars believe it was more like two hundred and fifty
thousand in total over the span of the civilization that were sacrificed during
these rituals I did a paper about the Aztecs when I was in college and some
believe that the number of sacrificed was more like 200 thousand a year most
researchers and most scholars chalk those guys up to crazy-ass tech fanboys
because it's it's really that's that's too many people it's it just seems
impossible you would be knocking off 550 Aztecs a
day for 365 days that's tiring you know when you're sacrificing people and you
get winded you know you just can't be doing that all day long I think if I saw
this happening down at the temple I would quietly go home pack up my family
and tell them we are going to live as Aztec nomads for now on we're just going
to wander the jungle until we meet friends that don't have a hankerin to
dispatch thy neighbor up to 1% every year
number nine volcanoes Mexico has many volcanoes and is home to
one of the smallest volcanoes in the world Kwek schemata is only about 43
feet high and 75 feet in diameter this is an inactive volcano located in Puebla
which makes it the perfect place to go visit
I mean it's south of Mexico City so you're probably gonna be touristing
there anyway might as well go down and see the world's smallest volcano the
volcano even has a spiral staircase inside of it so you can go down and see
what's cracking downstairs like I said it's an inactive volcano but keep in
mind also that I think Mount st. Helens wasn't in active volcano for a while
right before it blew up I don't think it's very dangerous because they built a
playground right around it there's a whole little park there and a playground
but it is Mexico and it might be dangerous and nobody clued in that a
playground next to a volcano is a bad idea this thing's really so small it's
like a pimple on the earth it's really not that big
number eight an underground river below the Yucatan Peninsula is the Sackett une
River system or white caves as it translates this is the longest
underground river known to man like of course it's known to man I
probably didn't say that if it wasn't known to man how would we be talking
about it anyway I mean it was known to fish for a long time anyway moving on it
flows through 95 miles of limestone caves prior to 2018 it wasn't the
longest a subterranean river in the Philippines was thought to be the
longest underground river in the world but in 2018 a discovery of a link
between thus a tune system and the dose ano system you know kind of cannot
combine those two together one made it way longer than the one in the
Philippines the combined system is now considered the largest underwater cave
system in the world these rivers and cano days are crazy
they look like something from a ride at Disneyland like Pirates of the Caribbean
or something like that it's really neat
number seven language diversity although it's common knowledge that Spanish is
the official language of Mexico there's a total of 68 official languages
recognized in the country and possibly even more unofficial ones some of the
top languages besides Spanish cards know wat which is spoken by 1.7 million
citizens Mayan yeah they're still sticking around
at least these days you know they're not like the Aztecs and they're knocking
people off anyway Mayan is spoken as well as mixtec mixtec is a great story
it has been around forever so don't think the text sound means it's new it's
not and I've heard it pronounced differently to not mix tech and I'm not
even getting into it I'm struggling enough on this video with pronunciations
and stuff I'm just gonna let it go but this guy like has spoken in the mountain
regions of central Mexico there wasn't much known about it outside of Mexico
and pretty much this mountain region until the 1990s a graduate student from
the u.s. went down and actually wrote it down some say it was never actually
documented prior to this graduate student in the nineteen late 1990s I
guess it was and this is where we get some kind of language nerd leave it in
comments so just stop typing nobody likes a grammar cop they sure as
hell don't want to have a language history cop but yeah they got a lot of
languages spoken in this country no word if the Aztecs loved their language
around I don't know if they spoke hex I don't know
number six Chihuahua Taco Bell isn't the only
reason most people associate chihuahuas with Mexico chihuahuas are originally
from Mexico they are the smallest breed of dog and is named after the area in
Mexico Chihuahua oddly enough - ah WA is the biggest
state in Mexico malls dog big Satan kind of weird
speaking of Taco Bell a comedian is the voice of that dog his name is carlos
alazraqui if you remember the show Reno 911 he played deputy James Garcia he has
also done all kinds of voice-over work from Disney's planes Happy Feet Fairly
OddParents SpongeBob SquarePants and the American Dad he even reprised his role
as the Taco Bell Chihuahua and a Geico commercial with the little lizard dude
kind of neat the dude has gotten a lot of work and I
would say his big break came from playing the Chihuahua from Taco Bell
kind of cool I met him once he's really nice guy doesn't know me we just met
shook his hand told my loved his Taco Bell commercials and he lifted his
eyebrows at me and looked at me like you're crazy and walked away it was kind
of cool
number five happiness Mexicans have been proven to be one of the happiest people
in the world according to the world happiness report it's a thing the world
happiness report in 2018 Mexico was ranked 22nd out of 156 countries on
their happiness this is up one from the previous year where they were 23rd of
course that would be one up out of a hundred 56 countries the reason this is
strange and on this list most of my viewers are from the United States and
in the United States we seem to just see the negatives in the news about Mexico
now Mexico does have a big list of negatives a very big list all countries
have some sort of you know negativities but we get you know them on blast here
in the United States but once you get past all the things that have to do with
the border and border towns and the crime and you get into central Mexico
you will find that most the Mexican people care about their religion and
their families and they're really good people there was a documentary on
Netflix called happy in the documentary they explored happiness in case the
title didn't tip you off to that one thing that jumped out was that people
that are close to their families and usually have some religious views are
happier than other people no matter what their financial situation is
number four folklore Mexican children are some of the most well-behaved
children on the planet this is because in Mexican culture they scare the crap
out of their kids with folktales to make them behave
it's like scared-straight bedtime stories you have tales like that of the
man who whistles which basically he's a Mexican boogeyman who wanders around
with a big bag of bones he sneaks in the kids room and takes out the bones and
starts counting them if you don't wake up during the counting you never wake up
if you wake up scares them away and you never see him but anyway then you have
el Cucuy and of course the alley of hands which these floating hands from
some teenagers that parently killed a priest and now if you go down this alley
the hands trying show it's weird they trying to choke people apparently anyway
so these are all gory and horrible stories that try and scare your kids
into doing things like staying in at night you got the chupacabra the goat
sucker if you get caught out at night you could get caught by him and you know
he's gonna kill you so yeah it's all just really weird and really demented
but hey that's the how they keep their kids in line that's fine in the United
States we just threatened to shut down there for tonight account and you know
then threaten our daughters of buying them nothing but turtleneck sweaters
number three silver for the past several years Mexico has become the best country
for silver mining in the world while the global silver production is down by
about four point one percent Mexico's silver production is up by five percent
or about ten million ounces a year in 2017 the country was able to produce 196
million ounces of silver now I'm sure that would have been far better news in
1980 when silver was going for about a hundred fourteen dollars an ounce
currently it's about fifteen dollars an ounce the people of Mexico are really
hoping Kodak and Polaroid go back to using film and cameras they're like
praying for that every day at one point photography consume massive amounts of
silver due to its light-sensitive
characteristics as non silver photography has come to dominate the
field there's less of a demand likewise there's a large stockpile of you know
old film that they actually are recycling getting silver out of so
silver these days is relatively speaking dirt cheap which kind of sucks for
Mexico but at least they're getting something
number two yucca tan yucca tan is an area in southeast Mexico along the Gulf
at the very tip of the country the area got its name from a misunderstanding
when the Spaniards came they asked the natives what the area was called and
they responded by saying Yucatan which is translated into their native language
as I don't understand you the Spaniards thought that they were responding with
the name of the place but no there are the hell are you talking about that's
what you're saying home so ever since it's been called Yucatan and that story
reminds me of my grandmother ordering Chinese food nothing like seeing an
elderly Irish woman an elderly Chinese woman argue over the size of egg rolls
for 20 minutes when you're 12 years old just go back and forth and neither of
them understood what either one was saying it was incredible
and number one Mexico City's sinking the demand for water is so high in Mexico
that is actually causing Mexico City to sink up to 3 feet per year in some areas
underneath the city is an aqua fire basically it's a space underground which
contains water from nearby lakes and rivers since the demand is so high water
has been taken from this area making the city sink into the empty space now I've
also seen that some areas have dropped on average between 8 and 19 inches in a
year it's not just thinking the same rate everywhere it's like a giant Tetris
game for building planners that must suck you buy your house in 1988 steps up
to the front door now it's three steps down you had a place with a nice view of
the park and now your front door looks three feet up to the sidewalk just since
the 1960s the city is sunk over 32 feet in some areas that's a lot of ground
this is a city of just under nine million people that is slowly sinking
and could potentially collapse into itself that's kind of scary it's a
beautiful city too you never been in Mexico City it has some beautiful old
buildings it's an amazing place it really is
all right so that's my top ten strange things about Mexico I hope you guys
enjoyed - hope you got some information out of it
I hope you like the international ones I'm not gonna do them all the time just
occasionally so I hope you guys enjoy him uh and to all the people that have
been buying the black and pink to be nice to each other t-shirt Thanks
I didn't think adding you know pink lettering to it would sell that many
t-shirts but thank you anyway don't forget all the links below buy a
t-shirt if you want there's links in my description area everybody have a great
day be nice to each other