The Roof of the World

Can an emperor be more important dead than alive? Around 205 BC the first Chinese emperor died. Though he had ruled for only fifteen years, he spent most of that time and most of his country’s revenue building his tomb. His mausoleum covered an area about four miles by five miles and contained more lavish treasures than one can imagine. Spreading out for more than twenty square miles, eleven stories underground, the tomb was laid out in the pattern of a miniature map of China, including two rivers and an ocean made of mercury. After two millennia they still contaminate the soil here.

He buried his army with him, or at least a replica of it. While only 1600 terra-cotta warriors have been found, researchers estimate that when all have been unearthed a century from now, there will be over eight thousand infantrymen, cavalrymen, horses, chariots, archers and officers. Each face is different. The uniforms are accurate, marking each different type of soldier. Originally their faces and uniforms were all painted in lifelike colors. All except for the snipers, that is. One archer was found with a face painted camouflage green. His hands held a crossbow with a bolt that could kill at three hundred meters. Even though the soldiers are clay dummies, the weapons they hold are the real thing. Spears, halberds, longbows and crossbows were all made with interchangeable parts. The trigger of your crossbow gets damaged, install a new one and continue to shoot. Arrows were made with arrowheads that were heavier and harder than the shaft or the fletch, though all were made of bronze and welded into one piece. A sword was found that had molecular memory. A heavy soldier lay on it bending it for two thousand years. When the soldier was removed, the sword straightened into its original shape. Another sword was found without a flake of rust upon it. Metallurgists discovered that the weapon was made of bronze clad with chromium. The western world did not learn how to marry chromium to other metals until the twentieth century. To this day the only way we know to complete this process requires electricity. We still don’t know how the Chin dynasty did it.

The outfitting of this tomb and the conscripted labor required to build it so alienated the subjects of the Chin dynasty that they rebelled. Tens of thousands of workers died building the tomb, and their bodies were simply thrown into the nearest pit. At the emperor’s death the workers rebelled, smashed the clay statues, stole the weapons and revolted. Afterwards all that remained were the fragments of the clay warriors. Only one, the green-faced bowman, was discovered intact.

The statues were found by accident in 1978 when a group of farmers dug a well. They found a clay soldier’s head and decided not to tell anyone about it. One farmer, however, did tell a local official, who notified the Chinese department responsible for archaeology and antiquities.

Another minor miracle accompanied the discovery of these artifacts in 1978. Mao Tse Tung died in 1976. Had these remarkable remains been discovered before his death, they would have been obliterated as a part of his Cultural Revolution, and neither their discovery nor their destruction would have ever been reported to the outside world.Read more