April 8, 2022

The dark history behind the record-breaking Terracotta Army

48 years ago, a horde of life-size clay figures were unearthed near Xi’an, in the Shaanxi province of China. They had been buried there for over 2,200 years.
Known as the "Terracotta Army", they are part of an expansive mausoleum complex built for Qin Shi Huang (259-210 BCE), founder of the Qin dynasty, and first emperor of a unified China.
There are an estimated 6,000 - 8,000 statues in total, making it the largest group of life-size statues in the world.
Not only are they life-size, they are also extremely lifelike. Produced using moulds, each figure was hand-finished with unique facial features.
By a cruel twist of fate, the workers who gave life to these statues lost their own, after allegedly being sealed inside the tomb along with their creations.
Read on to learn about the dark history of one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the 20th century.
Sima Qian (145–90 BCE) wrote about the tomb’s construction a century after its completion, as part of a history of ancient China, titled Shiji (??) aka Records of the Grand Historian.
He wrote that "more than 700,000 conscripts from all parts of the country" laboured on the grand funerary tomb.
According to Sima Qian, the tomb was filled with models of palaces and other official buildings, as well as precious jewels and rarities. China's waterways and rivers were represented by liquid mercury.
Automatic crossbows were ordered to be installed so that any grave robber would be slain.
Following Emperor Qin Shi Huang's unexpected death in 210 BCE, his son decreed that it would be inappropriate for his father's childless concubines to be free, so they were ordered to follow the First Emperor into the grave.
The live burials didn’t end there though.
Soon after, it was suggested that the artisans responsible for making the tomb's mechanical devices knew too much about the secrets of the treasure hidden inside.
Sima Qian wrote that "the middle gate was shut and the outer gate closed to imprison all the artisans and labourers, so that not one came out."
Trees and grass were then planted over the pyramid-shaped mausoleum to make it look like a hill.
Because the tomb is largely unexcavated – and is likely to remain that way for the foreseeable future – the accuracy of Sima Qian's writings cannot be confirmed.
However, some of his claims have been supported by survey work conducted in the late '90s by archaeologist Dr. Duan Chingbo and his team.
Soil samples they took from the site revealed high contents of mercury, while a magnetic scan also revealed a large amount of coins scattered around the unopened inner tomb of the emperor.

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