The Discovery of the Terracotta Warriors
By William Budd, Second Year History
On 29th March 1979, on a small farming commune in Lintong Village on the outside of Xi’an, farmer Yang Zhifa and his five brothers had a job to do. The area they resided within was known for its numerous underground water streams, and a well to tap into these streams would be a great asset to the community. Nearby stood the large hill within which stood the burial ground of the first of the Chinese dynastic emperors, Qin Shi Huang, whose name is forever associated with the first period of China’s 2000 years of dynastic history. This small team of diggers was about to discover his grand army for the afterlife.
There had been discoveries of small pieces of chipped terracotta within the soil for centuries, but these men had stumbled across a huge underground necropolis. Archaeologists were immediately brought in to investigate, and their findings were astonishing. The entire area of the site is estimated to be around 98 square kilometres, or around 13,700 standard football pitches, made up by a mixture of burial tombs and pits for the soldiers. The warriors themselves stand at the eastern end of the burial mound, guarding the entrance which still to this day has never been opened for fear of irreparable damage to the artifacts by the inhospitable, dry air.
Qin Shi Huang died in 210BC, following years at the helm of a Qin Dynasty having conquered all other waring states and regions in China. He is regarded by many as the father of 2000 years of Chinese history, establishing a precedent for millennia of imperial rule. The Qin emperor had a reputation as a tyrant, but in recent years this has been reconsidered as this reputation largely came from the Han dynasty which followed his rule and left many scathing assessments of his period of leadership. Long before he died, in 246 BC, he ordered the creation of the mausoleum, warriors inclusive. 36 years later of constant work, the grand construction was completed for his death.
The craftsmanship required to create the individual elements for each warrior is nothing short of fascinating. Not just soldiers, but scale model terracotta weapons were created for them to bear. Historians and archaeologists together have uncovered the leadership structures of those working on the construction projects, with individual makers marks on tools allowing for an understanding of who reported to on the construction project. With the extremely long-term nature of the process, sons often succeeded their fathers as supervisors, and inscriptions on various weapons indicating who made them and who was responsible for this person confirm this understanding.
Records of the craftsmen who worked on the project are scant from after Qin Shi Huang’s death, because of the simple reason that they were buried alive along with the emperor. The secrets of the terracotta warriors were to go to the grave with Qin Shi Huang and his subjects, to sit beneath the earth at the end of the Silk Road for over 2000 years until their ultimate discovery.
Edited by Shujiao Guo, MA History