Warriors

Most people are vaguely familiar with the famous terra-cotta warriors. Constructed in 210BC, they were discovered by a farmer in 1974. The area had long seemed strange because the fields above it would not grow crops, an interesting problem in intensively cultivated China.

Current estimates are that over 8,000 soldiers and 500 horses are buried here. Actually, buried is not quite accurate as the army was originally entombed in carefully constructed tunnels, which you can see excavated here.

They were entombed holding the latest weapons technology of the day. The large cache caused a rebellious general named Xiang Yu to break into the tunnels and steal most of the bronze swords and crossbows, starting a fire in the process which was said to have burned for months. The clay troops guard the tomb of the first Qin emperor, Qin Shi Huang. The tomb itself is supposed to be intact, supposedly guarded by the fact that the crypt was placed in a lake of liquid mercury, i.e. it's a major toxic waste site (the Chinese invented everything, even toxic materials).

For those who want to see the big picture, here's a mosaic. This is one of three excavation sites.

A small area inside the pit. As you can see, the hands were intended to hold things, usually weapons. You can read much more here, but the bodies were made from molds that pertained to rank or position, i.e. archers or officers. The hands and heads were added later; in the foreground is a figure without a head. Supposedly, the heads were made from 8 different molds. The faces were then sculpted to be unique, which is what makes the figures unique. The figures are hollow and made from clay obtained locally. They stand on a tile floor. They are all life-sized to larger.

This shows a variety of ranks, indicated by the hat or hairstyle.

A view of the front ranks. The soldiers were laid out in various formations, i.e. groups or archers and charioteers, just like a real army.

The oven-looking hole near the center is a burial crypt. For millennia the locals used the area as a graveyard, since it wouldn't grow crops. They had no idea what was underneath.

If you're wondering how it was that people were unaware, consider what the warriors looked like when originally found. That's right, just a pile of debris. Almost every soldier you see in these pictures were painstakingly reassembled from shards. Very painstakingly.

Here's the top of the tunnels before being excavated. If you look in the upper right corner you'll see a pile of charcoal. That's 2,000 year-old charcoal from the fires, described above, that destroyed the roof and caused the tunnels to collapse.

This is a picture from another pit in much dimmer light. Here you can see fairly intact roof timbers that have sagged and almost certainly crushed the figures still buried underneath. The roof was actually constructed quite well, not only with a ceiling of solid logs but with matting and other materials. It's just that after 2,000 years buried wood will not hold up (so to speak) in this climate.

Here's a more extreme example of sagging roof beams.

This reproduction shows how the figures were originally painted.

Original painted figures as found.

An original painted head. Remember, there were over 8,000 of these, all hand-painted.

Ranks of the newly reconstructed.

Detail.

Horses. The guy next to them wasn't holding ski poles, but reins to a chariot.

This shows the variations in the body armor.

A side view showing missing pieces.

A horse and rider on display, with original reins and bridle. You can see some paint on the rider's armor.

A side view showing saddle (stirrups hadn't been invented yet). Photographer shows scale.

A couple of fairly intact wagons were found. They are 1/2 scale.

Here's one as reassembled, complete with bronze reins and umbrella. The latter was for protection from arrows.

A more bronze-armored wagon, though the horses may not have agreed. It's blurry because the light was very dim and the shutter speed long, not to mention jostling by thousands of other visitors.

Finally a bronze sword. What was interesting about it is that it was originally chrome-plated, yet another Chinese invention.

We could share hundreds more pics we took here, but figure this gives you a fairly good tour of the site and perhaps shows things that most coverage doesn't. We hope you've found it interesting.

Speaking of interesting, our next visit was to the stunning Shaanxi provincial museum. However, we won't fill it in until we finish our last stop, which is around the ancient city of Datong in nearby Shanxi (confusing, huh?).