1975: Archeologists complete excavation of the necropolis of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a unified China, and discover 8,000 terra-cotta warriors and their horses guarding his tomb.
Qin is a paradoxical figure in Chinese history. On the one hand, he consolidated many of the far-flung provinces to unify the country under the Qin Dynasty in 221 B.C. He also began connecting the defensive perimeters to form what would become the Great Wall, and carried out reforms in the legal, economic and cultural spheres, including the standardization of currency and the development of a common Chinese language.
On the other hand, Qin used his superior military strength to crush all political resistance, killed many of the Confucian scholars who opposed him and employed conscript laborers to work on the Great Wall.
You can also add to the negative side of the ledger the fact that the craftsmen who constructed his vast tomb and produced his terra-cotta army were sealed alive inside the necropolis to help keep the location a secret. Despite those ghastly precautions, there is evidence that the tomb was raided over the years and a number of the figures were destroyed or damaged.
The figures themselves, meant to serve as Qin's army in the afterlife, are life-size and detailed. They were fashioned during the construction of Qin's tomb (which reportedly took 38 years to complete) by local craftsmen and by laborers supplied by the government. The artisans appear to have used an assembly-line production technique to construct this army, firing individual pieces and then putting them together at the end of the process.
The so-called Terracotta Army is one of China's most popular tourist attractions.
(Source: Wikipedia, China.org)
This article first appeared on Wired.com July 11, 2007.
