How the Terracotta Army Works

Approximately 7,000 clay soldiers guard the burial site of Qin Shi Huangdi, China's first emperor. Learn more about the emperor's mysterious army in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candid Keener, joined as always by writer Jane McGrath.
Hey biggin Hey Jane. So, a couple of weeks ago,

(00:22):
one of our colleagues, Christen Conger, got to go see
the terra Cotta Army exhibition at the High Museum of
Art and share at this fantastic article about it, and
we couldn't resist sharing it with everyone today. Yeah, that's
what It's really exciting that they're able to take a
couple of these soldiers and bring them around there at
the British Museum for a while, and we're lucky enough
to be in Atlanta and they brought him here to
the High and it's really cool. Story about the Terracotta

(00:44):
Army was actually just discovered in the seventies and it
all has to do with this emperor who you unified China. Actually,
he was considered basically the first emperor of China and
his name is Chen Shi huang d And if we
go back to about the sixth century VC China, at
that time, China wasn't a unified country or kingdom at all,

(01:05):
it was fractured into about six or seven different kingdoms,
and so Jane was the first one who really brought
all of these different provinces and kingdoms together, and he
did it in a very shrewd way. First of all,
he used conscription to gather an army together, so essentially
he forced men to join his army. And then by
using this army to overpower different nations, he was able

(01:27):
to get people under his thumb, and he kept them
under his thumb by unifying a system of currency that
everyone could use. And furthermore, he systematized things like weights
and measures and written language, so he really got people
to unify not only through their submission to him, but
through the way that they exchanged goods and traded and

(01:48):
the way that they recorded their lives. So you can
see a lot of benefits from this, although I guess
it wasn't all selfless, as he did this ald to
basically build his own power. Obviously, you have like six
different kingdoms with six different currencies as difficult to build
ridges and bring things together that way. And it's funny
that he sort of tapped himself for that mission, like, oh,
I guess I'll unify China today, and so he did.

(02:08):
But it worked. And not only that, but he started
building canals and roads, and he was the first one
to really institute the first portion of the Great Wall
of China to protect his kingdom from invaders from the north.
That's right, And we've done a podcast on that as well,
Yes we have. But the funny thing is when you're
that powerful and you sort of proclaim yourself as the ruler,
you're bound to have a couple of enemies. And there

(02:30):
were a few assassination attempts on his life, but he escaped,
but he did eventually die. But before he died, he
had a certain plan that he wanted carried out for
his afterlife. We should know he had a very intense
fear of death. And I mean, like you said, to
these assassination temps, which you barely dodged that, I mean,
it's understandable that he would have a fear of death

(02:51):
after that. But um, in addition to those things, he
wanted to see if he could possibly not die, and
he did a few things of that. Yeah, I know,
he did a few things to to try to do that,
and he commissioned a task force to go to this
mythical island that's had a sort of fountain of youth
type power that they thought of in St. Augustine, Florida.

(03:12):
Because I've been there holding on, I can see it.
I can see it. But in addition to that, he
got alchemists and magicians to make him pills and potions
to try to hang on to his to his youth.
And uh, Confucian philosophers at this time actually condemned a
lot of the stuff that he was doing. They thought
it was all hocus focused and wrong. And in response,

(03:34):
this is a dangerous move because in response, Cheen had
hundreds of them killed. But yeah, it just goes to
show his intense fear of death and intense fear of
what would happen to him after death. But he also
had a very grand guest notion that if and when
he did die, he would roll the universe. And he
had a very concrete, no pun intended, I guess I
should say, terra cotta plan no pun intended for how

(03:55):
he was going to rule the cosmos in his second life.
So he essentially commissioned I guess, about a thousand different
artisans to build him this vast army that included about
seven thousand soldiers of different ranks. We're talking about everyone
from mirror archers and men holding crossbows up to various

(04:15):
team generals, um about eight hundred horses, and a band
of musicians and acrobats and bureaucrats. And he was creating
for himself an army as well as some sort of
menagerie and a circus or some sort of entertainment site
to keep him protected and amused in his afterlife. One

(04:39):
thing is interesting is they're all facing east. We have
a great article in this on slide by our colleague
Christen Conger, and she explains the one theory about this
is that he had a unified other kingdoms to the east.
So it's thought that like his enemies were to the east,
and so that's why his army is facing that way.
But also we should know that a lot of these
are estimations. Um we say like you'll, you'll, oh there

(05:00):
are seven thousand warriors, Oh there are six thousand. Oh
there were eight thousands. And that's because actually not all
of them have been excavated, and archaeologists are taking their
sweet time taking everything out because it's so precious. And
for one example, for instance, when these soldiers were originally made,
they were brightly colored, just vibrant colors and bells and
red green. Yeah, and now you look at a U

(05:23):
S pictures and they're grayish and their drab looking. And
that's because these colors didn't last well over time, and
especially even when you take them out today excavating them
from the land, when the sun hits them, it really
hurts the colors. And so they just don't have the
technology yet to really delve into the full depths of
this tomb and what they've hit so far, or what
the people who discovered a group of farmers back in

(05:44):
ur they had about thirteen feet underground in search of water.
Actually it was a total accidental discovery. They were out
on marks twenty nine looking for water and they discovered
a bunch of clay shards, and it got more suspicious
when they pulled out what looked like a head of something.
So they called a group of historians and archaeologists and
and that's when the excavations really began. But what hasn't

(06:06):
been touched so far is what people think is a
series of palaces and ships and very big structures that
would have been built from the same type of material. Yeah.
And one thing that's interesting is that the tomb which
these soldiers are protecting, Uh, they're taking their sweet time
escapating that because some say that it's actually booby trapped

(06:27):
and like they set cross bows. Yeah, and so I
would take my sweet time too, Yeah, definitely. And we
know for a fact that people have broken well, I
guess I shouldn't say we need for a fact. We
have pretty good evidence to suggest that people broke into
the tomb shortly after Team died. That's right. There's evidence
of fire, right, yeah, fire and toppled soldiers, which may

(06:49):
indicate that they just settled with time, but more likely
they were toppled when someone was breaking in. And we
should know too that after Team died in to ten
b C. His his kingdom didn't last for much longer.
A new ruler ushered in a new age, and so
his trim went fastly unprotected. But ancient manuscripts described that
he was buried with um all sorts of extravagant pieces

(07:10):
of gold and pearls and fine gems, which could still
be down there, we don't know, but great fodder for
a raid obviously exactly, and so text like this suggests
that there's a lot waiting to be unearthed. But let's
talk a little bit about how these soldiers were made.
What's interesting about how the soldiers were made was that
they actually had a variety of molds, so that you had,

(07:33):
um a sense of realism in these soldiers. Some were smaller,
some we're bigger. But you know, then they use different
kinds for for different ranks in the army as well,
and they had about twenty five different styles of beard,
and like the way their hair is tied up a
knock on the back of their head um often askew.
It's very it's very different new changes. And another interesting

(07:54):
part is that there's a sense of racial diversity among
these different soldiers and they actually reflect interestingly the kind
of racial diversity that is present in modern day China,
which I find fascinating. And so one example of this
would be the about the soldiers have square ear lobes
and um, so that means more than half have like
round ear lobes, and that's the same kind of percentage

(08:16):
or proportion from modern day Chinese. So the very similariat
is just amazing. And you may be wondering, why would
the laborers have cared enough to go to all this effort.
And we should mention that long, long, long before Henry
Ford had his assembly lines making cars, the ancient Chinese
had their own assembly lines making these figures. And like
Jane said, they used molds to at least form the bodies,

(08:38):
and we know that they range in general from about
six to six and a half feet tall. And the
assembly workers would have started by building basis for them,
and they were very heavy, so they had to be
very well constructed solid basis. And then they would have
made their different types of bodies according to whether the
soldier would be kneeling or standing, if he had a

(08:58):
very fierce stance, if he was sending get attention, or
maybe he was creating an acrobat or a musician. But
where the handiwork really came into play with the individualized
details of the face. Yeah, every artisan or individual labor
and not all of them were artisans. They were just
sort of slaves who were forced to do this. They
took great I guess pride in making the different individual

(09:20):
facial expressions. Some look fierce or some some look serene.
Here's the catch. All of the laborers names were stamped
on the bottom of the statues. And this wasn't like
Van Gogh as signing his name to a masterpiece he'd made.
It was to hold labor accountable for any flaws and
craftsmanship that there may have been. That's right. In these
assembly lines, I can'dice mentioned were about a thousand people big,

(09:43):
so like you have this a thousand person assembly line,
and I think the foreman had to sign his name
to each individual soldier. And what I find really cool
is that these soldiers you see them today and they
look like they have their hands out and they're holding
something and it's not there. And whether they we're holding
were actual, re real weapons made out of bronze that right, yeah,
bronze and would the wood has actually um not stood

(10:05):
the test of time and so they're not there anymore,
but there are there are lots of evidence and remains
of the metal that was kind of ahead of its
time because it didn't corrode over time. And it's just
shocking to me that why would she, you know, have
these clay armies but give them real weapons. And also
I think they had armor made out of lines down,
so he really had them all decked out. And what

(10:26):
this does, I think is is paints a picture of
a very talented and very capable ruler, but shows his
very human and almost childlike side, with his superstition and
his great fears. And I wonder what was going through
the mind of such a great and intelligent man who
thought he could rule in his afterlife, and who thought

(10:46):
he needed protection. And he wasn't alone, you know. I mean,
obviously there are examples in ancient Egypt of people being
buried with their things for the purposes of afterlife, but
in China as well. This one Emperor han lin D
actually he took the thrown about fifty three years after Chain,
and he made a similar burial site not too far

(11:06):
away from Chains. And the soldiers are actually smaller in stature, uh.
And all different kinds of animals are there as well
um statues of animals. Overall, it's not as vast as Cheens.
And some people say that this is a reflection of
a nicer ruler, because he was actually much nicer than Cheen,
and he certainly would have had to have commissioned less
artists to work on the army. So I guess that

(11:28):
the fact less slave flavor exactly. So this is such
an interesting example of not only history, but art history too,
And you can learn so much about a culture judging
by the artifacts that it produces. You know how it
values proportion and color and detail, and so I think
it's just fascinating. It fascinating example of art and of

(11:49):
historical narrative and a glimpse into the mind of a
interesting and strange man. I can't wait to see it.
So if you want to learn more about the terra
Cotta Army, be sure to check got the article how
the terra Cotta Army Works on how stuff works dot com.
While you're there, be sure to check out or blog
the stuff you missed in history class, which Candice and
I both wrote on every day, and we'll see you there.

(12:10):
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