Ten Discoveries That Rewrote History

by Patrick Hunt

  In their construction, the hollow ceramic heads of the warrior statues were attached to molded necks. There is far less variety in each hollow torso, all also made of standardized shapes over solid ceramic waists and legs. The bodies probably show less variation because they represented an army outfitted with government-issue uniforms, with also more regularity in featureless legs and feet sizes, although footgear differs. Even though intellectual individualism was suppressed at this time—perhaps setting a cultural tradition—there may be a philosophic statement here about the nature of imperial unity. Since unity actually implies multiple entities combined—hence the seemingly infinite individual faces which would occur in nature—this would serve one deliberate directive or common purpose, in this case military cohesion under the emperor.

  The warriors’ uniforms vary between ceramic versions of cotton padded armor and mail. They are almost all hatless or without headgear, but their stances are divided between cavalry on horses, infantry made up of foot soldiers, kneeling archers, spear-men and officers, among others. Two basic separate color schemes can be seen in Pit 1, one battle type dressed in black armor, with green coats and blue trousers, and the other group dressed in red armor with orange buttons.

  The ceramic figures’ heights are slightly staggered so that one almost never sees three adjacent soldiers of the exact same height. On the other hand, the average sizes of these ceramic figures are well over the average Chinese height in both ancient and modern history. Many are over six feet tall and some of the most important officers reach six feet, four inches. The emperor apparently wanted to proudly display a remarkable fighting force guarding his tomb, so that the seven to eight thousand warriors could be easily intimidating, both to the world they represented as well as in an afterlife. No other tomb in the world known to date has ever contained so many carefully constructed individual guards who represent such a high standard of craftsmanship. It is also unlikely that a similar number and variety of mausoleum guards will be found anywhere else, although China might yet yield additional surprises.

  This site has stimulated archaeology in China more than any other site

  Modern archaeology in China is a rigorous discipline, as practiced globally, but it must also be economically responsible by promoting tourism. China’s bureaucrats and politicians hold state archaeologists to the highest standards, so there is often less room for flexibility in field methods, and excavation or publishing schedules are tightly regulated, unlike in the West, where some archaeologists never publish their field results. This would not be easily tolerated in modern China because of a political hierarchy that closely regulates archaeological research and controls all funding accordingly. When I met the excavator and curator of the Tomb of 10,000 Warriors at Stanford this past year, I was also introduced to bureaucrat-politicians who have equal or more say in matters of archaeological research. Continuing archaeological work, reported on in the summer of 2007, shows a massive 30-meter-high mystery structure with multiple staircases in the center of the mausoleum complex, which further research will certainly elucidate.

  Because of the tomb’s archaeological importance to tourism from outside China, typically the West, as well as tourism from inside China, travelers can now either fly directly into Xi’an, a major air hub of central China, or take the Qinghai-Tibet railway, newly finished in 2006, that runs from Beijing to Lhasa over the Tibetan Plateau directly through Xi’an. This is no accident, since archaeological tourism has grown exponentially since the wider publication of this tomb’s results in the 1990s. Tour companies all over the world list this site as one of the “must-see” places in China, and it is certainly one of the top three visitor sights along with the Forbidden City of Beijing and the Great Wall. Now thousands of tourists from many countries visit the tomb nearly every day of the year. The staggering size and quantity of objects—especially the soldiers—in the tomb is indeed stunning, as well as functioning as archaeological proof underscoring the formidable power and deserved fearsome reputation of Qin Shihuangdi as China’s first emperor. In Eyewitness to Discovery (1996), Brian Fagan confirms how important the tomb is to archaeology, and not just in China: “We can confidently expect that Shihuangdi’s tomb to be one of the most spectacular excavations of the twenty-first century.” Chinese archaeologists would hardly disagree.

  The tomb provides details not previously known, such as martial arts history

  Some of the ceramic warriors are in what is usually interpreted as a martial arts stance with tightly crooked arms, stiffened flat hands and forward-bent knees. We already know that hands-only martial arts originally developed out of Asia as a military discipline accompanied by a focused mental state with high concentration and toughened pain endurance. This martial arts tradition was possibly created after the sixth century BC from the philosophy of Sun Zi (Sun Tzu), who wrote The Art of War, although no clear history of martial arts existed until after AD 200. Because their stiffened hands are too tightly clenched, with their thumbs protected inside, these individual tomb warriors cannot be construed as holding anything in their hands, certainly not archers once holding bows as some maintain, so it is hard to interpret them in any other way than as martial arts experts of around 200 BC, making this the earliest evidence to date for martial arts combatants.

  It helps us understand why the Han dynasty followed this first unification of China

  The great Han dynasty (roughly 200 BC to AD 200) used to be considered a mystery arising out of the chaos of the Warring States period. In part because of imperial mandates seen even in this massive private tomb, now the beginning of the Han dynasty in China is no longer a shadowy period with more questions than answers. However short-lived its dynasty, the Qin Tomb of 10,000 Warriors—one that so manifested the unprecedented power of its emperor—made it obviously apparent to the next generations, the Han dynasty, that China could be unified into a centralized empire. This happened again and again in Chinese history, partly based on the model of Qin Shihuangdi’s immense state reorganization and enormous imperial bureaucracy.

  Later emperors could learn from Qin Shihuangdi, and even the much later mandarins could understand what it would take to run a vast country like China. Following his example they rationalized their sometimes brutal control of large populations and resources. Values and virtues could be taught over generations to slowly mold a diverse population into a workforce that would turn out the finest ceramics, metals and textiles both the ancient and the modern world would ever see. Such a workforce could also produce an agricultural bounty through careful planning and requisitioning. State support could nurture craftspeople who would develop innovative and lucrative imperial industries. Centralized government has always had its terrible weaknesses, usually at the cost of colorful regionalism and even more often at the expense of individualism. On the other hand, China’s long history frequently showcases the strengths of wisely administered centralization, begun under Qin Shihuangdi over two thousand years ago. Where would the West be without China’s inventive genius in silk, fine bone china and porcelain; where would Western technology be without gunpowder or paper inked with type-script or credit currencies that foreshadowed modern currencies? These were all carefully controlled state and imperial crafts. Marco Polo’s astonishment at Chinese technology and conquest in the Khan period and at the wonders of the Yuan dynasty is understandable. After seeing the massive Xi’an mausoleum, these technologies are now more understandable in light of the vast numbers of people who were controlled under a ruthless regime seeking the widest production of goods for state and imperial benefit, a pattern started under the unification of the first true emperor, Qin Shihuangdi, around 221 BC.

  Conclusion

  The Tomb of 10,000 Warriors was (and still is) not only a poetic equation representing imperial strength—its “uncountable” guards stretching to the horizon of the tomb’s underground pits—but it was also a prediction of China’s future. Here, without any known precedent, the first emperor of China, Q
in Shihuangdi, achieved the marvelous amalgamation of China’s most important resource—its population. These thousands of individual ceramic warrior faces over a standardized set of uniforms and highly organized military regimentation are somehow a philosophic statement of a unity achieved at great cost, but also one with great state potential, redirecting the individual to empower the state. Perhaps this is one of many possible reasons that modern China has paradoxically imbibed the best of both Marxism and Capitalism while still maintaining the philosophic legacy of Emperor Qin Shihuangdi. This emperor and his tomb changed perceptions in both ancient and modern China as well as the world at large, but his tomb connects the present to the past with an astonishing statement of power.

  Selected Bibliography

  GENERAL

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  Fagan, Brian. Quest for the Past: Great Discoveries in Archaeology. 2nd ed. Long Grove, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1994.

  ———, ed. The Oxford Companion to Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

  Palmer, Douglas, with Paul Bahn and Joyce Tyldesley. Unearthing the Past. Guilford, Conn.: The Lyons Press, 2005.

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  Renfrew, Colin. Virtual Archaeology: Great Discoveries Brought to Life

  Through Virtual Reality. London: Thames and Hudson, 1997. Robbins, Lawrence. Stones, Bones and Ancient Cities: Great Discoveries in Archaeology. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990.

  Romer, J., and E. Romer. Great Excavations: John Romer’s History of Archaeology. London: Cassell, 2000.

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  ROSETTA STONE

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  Reeves, Nicholas. Ancient Egypt: The Great Discoveries. London: Thames and Hudson, 2000.

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  Vercoutter, Jean. The Search for Ancient Egypt. New York: Harry Abrams, 1992.

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  NINEVEH AND THE ASSYRIAN LIBRARY

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  KING TUT’S TOMB

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  Reeves, Nicholas. The Complete Tutankhamun: The King, the Tomb, the Royal Treasure. 1990. Reprint, London: Thames and Hudson, 1995.

  ———. Ancient Egypt: The Great Discoveries. London: Thames and Hudson, 2000.

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  Moseley, Michael. T
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  Wright, Kenneth, Alfredo Zegarra, Ruth Wright, and Gordon MacEwan. Machu Picchu: A Civil Engineering Marvel. American Society of Civil Engineers, 2000.

  POMPEII

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  Etienne, Robert. The Day a City Died. New York: New Discoveries, Thames and Hudson, 1992.

  Grant, Michael. Eros in Pompeii: The Secret Rooms of the National Museum of Naples. New York: William Morrow, 1975.

  Jenkins, Ian, and Kim Sloan. Vases and Volcanoes: Sir William Hamilton and His Collection. London: British Museum Press, 1996. Laurence, Ray. Roman Pompeii. London: Routledge, 1996.

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  Sontag, Susan. The Volcano Lover. 1992. Reprint, New York: Picador, 2004.

  Varone, Antonio, and Eric Lessing. Pompeii. New York: Terrail, 1997.

  Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew. Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.