Hey everyone, welcome to World Heritage Journey.
For today's video we're at Xi'an, China, for a very special site.
Officially, it's known as the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor, but you know it as
the Terracotta Warriors. Let's go!
This World Heritage site is centred on the tomb of Qin Shi Huang Di, founder of the Qin
Dynasty and the first emperor of China.
Widely considered to be one of the most influential emperors in Chinese history, Qin Shi Huang
reigned from 221 BC until 210 BC.
Upon his death, he was buried in an enormous mausoleum about 30 kilometres outside his
capital city of Chang'an, these days the city of Xi'an.
The mausoleum itself was huge, and designed as basically a scale model of the capital
city.
According to contemporary accounts, it included palaces, lakes, canals and all of the appropriate
decorations, but the tomb itself has never been opened.
But what's fascinating is that despite not even being mentioned in the histories, the
scale model of the city's garrison was discovered by some farmers digging a well in 1974, just a few kilometres
from the main tomb.
And so, the famous Terracotta Army was uncovered.
Consisting of 6,000 life-sized clay figures in battle formation, it's one of the most
remarkable archaeological finds of the modern era.
All of the figures are slightly different, both in poses and in facial features.
There are soldiers with swords and spears,
Archers both standing, and kneeling poised to shoot,
Generals in elaborate battle dress,
and even horses and chariots as well.
All of the figures were originally brightly painted, but sadly most of the paintwork peeled
and flaked off after being uncovered.
So far only around 2000 of the figures have been uncovered and reassembled, a painstaking
task that continues right through to today.
Even when we visited, archaeologists were hard at work in the pits, digging and classifying.
Over 40,000 bronze items have been discovered as well - every warrior carried at least one
weapon, and many carried arrows as well.
But one of the most impressive displays was a pair of the emperor's bronze chariots.
These were roughly half-scale, and showed exquisite craftsmanship and technique.