Emperor's Ghost Army Essay

In Shaanxi province China, the world’s largest ancient imperial tomb, the massive mausoleum of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang Di, lies underground. Buried within this vast complex is what has been called “the Eighth Wonder of the World”, the Terracotta Army. Since its accidental discovery in 1974 by local farmers digging a well, the Terracotta Army has enthralled modern peoples causing many questions to arise. Questions such as why was the Terracotta Army created, how and when was it engineered, and who were the people who built it? These are some questions the PBS documentary Emperor’s Ghost Army aims to answer. Filmmaker Ian Bremner follows a joint team from University College London and the Terracotta Army Museum as they hope to uncover the workings of an ancient civilization through the latest archaeological techniques. …show more content…
The experimental archaeology serves to answer the question of how Terracotta Army was engineered. When it was engineered can actually be found in China’s oldest literary source, Sima Qian’s historical records, that state that the work on the first emperor’s mausoleum began when he was enthroned in 246 BC and stopped 37 years later when he died, though the film does disclose that no mention of the Terracotta Army is made and that Sima Qian’s writings were a century after the first emperor. However, testing has been done on the charcoal found in the excavated pits as well as the clay in the figures that indicate the warriors were indeed made around 200 BC. The film doesn’t specifically state that radiocarbon dating is how these dates where found, but having the knowledge of absolute dating techniques one could presume that 14C dating was

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