Terra Cotta Army

The Terra Cotta Army (兵马俑) is the greatest Archeological discovery of the 20th century. It is located near Xi'an, the ancient Chinese capital, also the capital of Qin Dynasty.[1]

The characters stand for:

• 兵-Soldier
• 马-Horse
• 俑-Wooden Figure

Terra Cotta Warrior head by Rachel Lara Davis.

How the discovery was made

Some of the statues were discovered in the grounds.

In 1970's China one of the greatest discoveries of all time came about. In 1976, in the province of Shaanxi (China) farmers were digging in the ground for water wells. Unfortunately not finding much success with water, farmers stumbled on somethings little more solid then water. In fact the farmers found small bits of terra cotta buried in the ground, the farmers continued to dig and to their astonishment the small bits of terra cotta turned out to be human size ancient Chinese soldiers. The initial discovery of one soldier turned out to be hundreds then thousands. Eventually the farmers passed this discovery over in the hands of professional Archeologists.

Who were the Terra Cotta Warriors

During the Qin Dynasty in China from 259 BC to 210 BC the First Emperor of China named Qin Shi Huangdi ruled the greater part of China. Qin Shi Huangdi became emperor at a young age, and as soon as he was in power he commanded the construction of his tomb. Unfortunately the construction of his tomb was one of the biggest most demanding constructions of all time and require an outrageous amount of man power to construct. Unfortunately many lives were taken in the construction of his tomb. He believed that when we died he was crossing over to the after life, and therefore needed to be prepared with all the required needs to continue his journey. Aside from all his lavished goods he needed an army to protect him, and because he couldn't actually take the lives of his soldiers to the grave because if he indeed did to that, he would have no one finish constructing his tomb. Instead what the emperor did was he created an army of clay, every soldier was constructed in exactness, complete with clothes, armor, hair, real life weapons and even facial expression, and to add to that every soldier had a different face.

Archeologist began uncovering hundreds of soldiers.

What was discovered

What archeologist considered to perhaps be an average discovery, turned out to be a very large scale discovery. More and more soldiers were being dug out, it didn't seem to end. What is interesting is that not only soldiers were being uncovered, in fact horses and chariots were also found. In addition these soldiers were not just found in a random order, on the contrary they were found in a precise order. The soldiers were found according to military rank and file.

.

References

[1] ...

Presentations

Watch this article as a powerpoint presentation.