A Silent Army and an Underground City

A Silent Army and an Underground City One of the greatest archaeological discoveries, the life-size terracotta army was discovered by peasants who were digging a well in 1974. This treasure was located near the tomb of Shi Huangdi, China’s first emperor. The entire army consisted of soldiers, horses and chariots in the style of 221BCE. This epic tomb was one that had been planned since Shi Huangdi was only thirteen years old. His tomb was the biggest and the best ancient China had ever had, for there were thousands of unbreakable warriors dedicated just for his protection, as well as an entire underground city studded with jewels devoted to his afterlife. The fashion of the life-size warrior is highly admirable in that it does not leave out any details, from the mustache hair to the head caps and ornate armors, which are the same pattern in detail that can be seen in the figures of the horses that accompanied the men in their great battles. With their tunics or armors and their goatees or close-cropped beards, each terracotta warrior had their own astonishing individuality. Archaeologists today believe that these warriors were modeled by separate people. These soldiers that had an average height of 6 foot 2 inches, which was considered as fairly gigantic at the time and, an average mass up to 600 pounds, stood exactly 5 foot 8 inches apart. The clay that was used is as strong as today’s cement, which meant that Shi Huangdi’s skilled artisans developed revolutionary new technology: blast furnace kilns that fired statues at temperatures up to 2,000oF. There were three pits in total that held the many terracotta figures; in the three vast pits, the first pit alone contained over 6,000 terracotta warriors and horses lined up neatly in battle formation. The second pit contained 13,000 of Shi Huangdi’s elite military forces including archers, chariots, and cavalry. The third pit contained only 68 figures and one chariot; this third pit was the command center of the