It was a time of drought. That’s why they dug deep into their lands to find water. But the hoes found something hard. Something unexpected. Something they would have rather not even found. Warriors who had been hidden underground for centuries. Protecting their emperor. To Qin Shi Huang.
Today is the 50th anniversary of one of the most important archaeological finds of the 20th century. Perhaps the second after the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb. But the famous warriors of Xi’an did not fall into the hands of a Howard Carter, at least at the beginning, but of peasants who were fighting for their livelihood and the first thing they did was sell them for scrap Terracotta Army Bronze Arrowheads. Their lands were confiscated.
The warriors had better luck with the presence in the area of ??a former farmer turned curator of a local museum who was alerted almost immediately. He knew how to see the importance of the find, protected it, began the excavations and recomposed the first fragments. Zhao Kangmin was that necessary Howard Carter.
Half a century later, the enormous work continues and soldiers, carts, horses and other objects still appear. The necropolis that the first emperor of China had built some 2,200 years ago covers tens of square kilometers. And as things are, his tomb remains intact. And opening it is, without a doubt, the site’s great challenge in the 21st century.
The arrival of the necessary technological advances that allow access to the great burial chamber without damaging it and without archaeologists falling into ‘death traps’ has been awaited for decades, according to the existence of a text written only a hundred years after the death of the emperor. The presence of mercury, which was used to simulate a hundred rivers and the sea, is also influential, guaranteed by the analyzes carried out. Qin was a fan of this metal, to which he attributed immortality and which, paradoxically, could cause his death. But above all, there is the possibility that the excavation and the subsequent exposure of external elements will irreparably damage the tomb.
We hope that the emperor will start to wake up from his millennial lethargy with non-invasive alternatives already applied in Egypt, such as the use of muons to ‘scan’ hidden rooms. His wars await him.
