Farmers digging a well found China's buried clay army
In March 1974, near Xi'an, local farmers struck clay fragments while digging for water. Archaeologists then uncovered thousands of life-size terracotta warriors buried with Qin Shi Huang around 210–209 BCE—an afterlife guard that still mostly sleeps underground today.
The Terracotta Army depicts the forces of Qin Shi Huang, China's first emperor, as funerary art meant to protect him after death. The figures date from roughly the late 200s BCE. Discovered on 29 March 1974 by farmers including Yang Zhifa and neighbor Wang Puzhi, about 1.5 kilometers east of the Mount Li tomb mound in Lintong County, Shaanxi, the find launched excavation of the largest pottery figurine group ever found. A 2007 survey suggested three pits together hold well over eight thousand infantry, more than a hundred war chariots, hundreds of draft horses, and a separate cavalry contingent—most still buried in situ.
Historian Sima Qian wrote a century later that work began in 246 BCE, when the future emperor was thirteen, and eventually involved 700,000 conscripted workers. He described mercury rivers and a ceiling of heavenly bodies—claims once doubted, then partly supported when high mercury levels appeared in the tomb mound's soil. The terracotta army itself goes unmentioned in his account. Ground-penetrating radar and core sampling suggest a necropolis of about 98 square kilometers. The emperor's actual sealed tomb, roughly 100 by 75 meters, remains unopened, partly because painted lacquer on excavated figures can curl in fifteen seconds and flake within four minutes in Xi'an's dry air.
Four main pits lie about 1,500 meters east of the mound. Pit 1 alone stretches 230 by 62 meters and holds the main army of more than 3,000 figures in eleven brick-paved corridors. Pit 2 mixes cavalry, infantry, and chariots; Pit 3 is a command post; Pit 4 is empty. Fire damage and missing weapons hint at later looting and burning. Life-size warriors range from about 1.75 to 2 meters, taller for officers, with varied uniforms and hairstyles; scholars describe ten base facial forms individualized further. Originally painted with pigments including iron oxide, cinnabar, malachite, azurite, and Chinese purple, they once looked vividly real. Sculptors signed names in the figures' armpits.
Source: Terracotta Army
