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In March 1974, an organization of peasants digging a well in China’s drought-stricken Shaanxi province unearthed fragments of a clay figure — the first evidence of what would prove to be one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of modern times. Near the unexcavated tomb of Qin Shi Huang, who proclaimed himself China’s first emperor in 221 BC, the Emperor of China. By 2,000 BC, it’s a run-of-the-mill underground treasure: an entire army of life-size terracotta horses and foot soldiers, buried for more than 2,000 years.
The site, once home to Qin Shi Huang’s former capital Xianyang, is a 30-minute drive from Xi’an, a traffic-congested city with a population of nine million. It is a dry land full of bushes, planted with persimmons and pomegranates. Incredibly cold in winter and sweltering in summer, and scarred through brown hills dotted with caves. But hotels and a roadside souvenir shop selling six-foot-tall ceramic figurines recommend more than just growing fruit.
Over the more than 50 years, archaeologists have discovered some six hundred pits, a complex of underground vaults, in an area of 22 square miles. Some are difficult to access, but three main pits are easily accessible, enclosed within the Qinshihuang Emperor Mausoleum Museum, built around the discovery site and opened in 1979 as the four-acre Qin Terracotta Horse and Warrior Museum. In a moat, long columns of warriors are formed, assembled in combination with damaged pieces. With their bows or caps, their tunics or bulletproof vests, with their goateeces or their shaved beards, the infantrymen demonstrate an astonishing individuality. A second hole inside the museum shows what they looked like when they were discovered: some are standing, buried shoulder-deep in the earth, while others are more comfortably on their backs. , next to fallen and cracked clay horses. The site, along with the Great Wall and Beijing’s Forbidden City, is among China’s top tourist attractions.
The specimens discovered in the Xi’an pits have astounded audiences around the world. Between 2007 and 2009, the British Museum, the High Museum in Atlanta, the Bowers Museum in California, the Museum of Natural Science in Houston, and the National Geographic Society Museum in Washington, D. C. They hosted traveling exhibitions featuring original terracotta warriors. More recently, foot soldiers have made appearances at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the World Museum in Liverpool, England.
Exhibits included statues (armed officers, infantrymen, and status and kneeling archers), as well as terracotta horses and intricately detailed bronze chariot replicas, pulled through bronze horses. These artifacts offer a glimpse into the treasure that draws visitors to the Xi’an Museum, where more than 2,000 of the estimated 8,000 warriors have been unearthed so far.
At first, this stupendous discovery seemed to traditional thought that the first emperor had been a bitter warmonger who cared only about the power of the army. However, as archaeologists have learned, this assessment was incomplete. Qin Shi Huang would possibly have conquered China with his army. It is estimated that it had more than 500,000 men, but it maintained the team spirit through a formula of civil management that lasted for centuries. Among other achievements, the emperor standardized weights and measures and brought uniform writing.
Excavations have revealed that, in addition to clay infantrymen, Qin Shi Huang’s subterranean realm, possibly a copy of the court that surrounded him during his lifetime, is also populated by delightfully realistic waterfowl, made of bronze and led by terracotta musicians. The clay ensemble includes terracotta officials and even troops of acrobats, slightly smaller than infantrymen, but created using the same methods. “We found that the underground pits are an imitation of the royal organization of the Qin Dynasty,” says Duan Qingbo, head of the mausoleum’s excavation team. “People think that when the emperor died, he took with him a giant number of foot soldiers from the potters’ army. Now they realize that he took with him a whole political formula. “
Qin Shi Huang decreed a mass-production approach; Artisans produced figures almost like automobiles in a line of rendezvous. Clay, unlike bronze, lends itself to quick and reasonable manufacturing. Workers built bodies and then custom designed them with heads, hats, shoes, mustaches, ears, etc. , made from small molds. “Some characters seem so remarkably individual that they seem modeled after other genuine people, which is unlikely. “They were probably not portraits in the Western sense,” says Hiromi Kinoshita, who helped organize the 2007 exhibition at the British Museum. Maybe they were. More aggregate portraits: You may have told potters, says Kinoshita, that you had to represent all other types of people from other parts of China.
The capital of the first emperor, Xianyang, a giant metropolis, where he is said to have erected more than 270 palaces, of which only one base has survived. Whenever Qin Shi Huang conquered a rival state, he transported his ruling families to Xianyang, housing the vanquished in replicas of palaces they had left behind. At the same time, the emperor directed the structure of his funerary complex; Some 720,000 employees are believed to have worked on those vast projects.
Following the death of his father, Yiren, in 246 BC, the future Qin Shi Huang, then a 13-year-old prince named Ying Zheng, ascended the throne of the Qin Kingdom. Famous for his horsemen, Qin was at the margen. de civilization, regarded by its eastern rivals as a semi-savage desert. His philosophy of government was as hard as his terrain. Elsewhere in China, Confucianism held that a well-administered state should be administered according to the same precepts that govern a family: mutual legal responsibility and respect. However, the Qin rulers embraced a doctrine known as legalism, which was based on the management of punitive laws.
When he was in his early twenties, Ying Zheng turned to a visionary statesman, Li Si, who is likely to blame for many of the ruler’s achievements. Under Li’s tutelage, Ying Zheng brought uniform writing (thus allowing subjects of many other dialects to communicate). a feature of the Qin state, also applied to weapons: if an arrow breaks or the cause of a repeating crossbow doesn’t work properly, the component can simply be replaced without any problems. The young leader also presided over the creation of a complex agricultural infrastructure by adding irrigation canals and garages. barns.
With methodical zeal, Ying Zheng set out to conquer the warring states around him in the 3rd century BC. As their armies advanced, the principalities fell. After unifying the civilized world as he knew it, Ying Zheng, in 221 BC, in 221 BC, was able to save him from consolidating an empire that stretched from portions of the current empire. In 300 BC, he renamed himself, adopting the name Huangdi, or Emperor.
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He then invested in infrastructure and built large fortifications. Its road network probably exceeded 4,000 kilometers, adding 40-foot-wide highways with a center lane reserved for the imperial family. On the northern border, the emperor sent his unwavering top general to reinforce and join the existing border barriers, creating a bulwark against the nomadic marauders. Made of mudbrick and rubble, those fortifications have become the foundation of the Great Wall, most of which was rebuilt in stone and brick in the 15th century during the Ming Dynasty.
As the grandeur of his funerary complex suggests, Qin Shi Huang kept an eye on posterity. But he also sought to prolong his life on earth, perhaps indefinitely. The alchemists informed the emperor that magical herbs could be discovered in what they said were Three Islands of the Immortals in the East China Sea. The emissaries who likely gained access to this mystical realm, they claimed, were incorrupt children. Around 219 B. C. , Qin Shi Huang is said to have sent several thousand young men in search of the islands. They never returned. A few years later, the emperor sent three alchemists to retrieve the herbs. One of them came back telling the story of a giant fish that guarded the islands. Legend has it that the emperor decided to lead the next search team himself; During the expedition, he used a repeating crossbow to kill a huge fish. But instead of finding important elixirs on his journey, the emperor is said to have contracted a deadly disease.
When he died in 210 B. C. , 49-year-old Qin Shi Huang decreed that his eldest former son, Fusu, deserved to inherit the empire. The move undermined the ambitions of a tough royal adviser, Zhao Gao, who believed he could rule. the country would be the scene if a more malleable successor were installed. In order to cover up Qin Shi Huang’s death and hide the smell of a decomposing corpse until the frame returned to the capital, Zhao Gao embarked a shipment of salted fish. The delaying tactic worked. Once Zhao Gao managed to return to Xianyang, he was able to function in his territory. He managed to move the force towards Ying Huhai, a younger and weaker son.
But in the end the commission failed. Zhao Gao failed to order, and the country descended into a civil war. The Qin Dynasty outlived Qin Shi Huang by only 4 years. At the time when the emperor committed suicide; Zhao Gao was eventually killed. Several insurgent forces regrouped into a new dynasty, the Western Han.
For archaeologists, one of the signs of the sudden collapse of the Qin regime is the great damage done to the Terracotta Army. As order broke down, marauding forces attacked the moats where clay infantrymen stood guard and looted their genuine weapons. Perhaps intentionally initiated, the rampage continued, weakening the supporting pillars of the wooden roofs, which collapsed and shattered the figures. About 2,000 years later, archaeologists discovered lines of coal in the walls of a well.
Throughout Chinese history, the First Emperor’s Epang Palace, located on the Wei River south of ancient Xianyang, is synonymous with ostentation. The design is said to be the most luxurious mansion ever built, with a gallery on the top floor accommodating a further 10,000 people and a network of covered paths leading to remote mountains to the south.
“All Chinese who can read, besides high school students, have the idea that the Qin dynasty had collapsed because it had invested so much money in the Epang Palace,” Duan says. “From the paintings of the excavations carried out in 2003, we discovered that in reality, only the base had never been built. Beyond that, Duan points out that if the palace had been erected and demolished, as historians think, there would have been pottery shards and telltale changes in color. on the ground. ” But the tests didn’t find anything,” he says. It has been a well-known symbol of Chinese culture for a long time, showing how ruthless and greedy the first emperor was, and archaeologists have discovered that this was a lie. Duan also doubts the accounts of Qin Shi Huang’s expedition to locate life-prolonging herbs. His editing is more prosaic: “I think the first emperor didn’t need to die. When he was sick, he would send other people to seek special treatments. drugs.
The emperor’s tomb is located under a wooded hill, surrounded by farmland, about 800 meters from the museum. Out of respect for an imperial resting place and out of fear of preserving what might be found there, the site has never been excavated. According to a description written a century after the emperor’s death, the tomb houses a multitude of wonders, adding artificial channels whose contours resemble the Yellow and Yangtze rivers, through which flows a shimmering, bright mercury that imitates running water. (Soil tests of the mound revealed peak levels of mercury. )
It is unlikely that grave-related answers will be provided anytime soon. ” I dream that one day science can expand so that we can know what’s here without disturbing the emperor, who slept here for 2,000 years,” said Wu Yongqi, former director of the original museum of the terracotta warriors of Qin and The Horses. “I don’t think we have smart clinical techniques for what we located in the underground palace. Especially if you locate paper, silk, or textiles from plants or animals; It would be very bad if they remained in equilibrium for 2,000 years and yet suddenly disappeared in a very short time. He cites another consideration: “For all the Chinese, he is our ancestor, and because of what he did in the case of China, we can’t dig his tomb just because archaeologists or tourists need to know what’s buried there. “
Whatever long-term excavations reveal about Qin Shi Huang’s enigmatic nature, some things seem unlikely to change. The importance of the emperor as a prominent figure in history will not diminish. And the mysteries surrounding his life will never be fully resolved.
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