They were times of drought. That’s why they dug deep into their land to find water. But their hoes hit something hard. Something unexpected. Something they would have even preferred not to find. Warriors who had been hiding underground for centuries. Protecting his emperor. To Qin Shi Huang.
These days mark 50 years of one of the most relevant 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 rather of some peasants who were fighting for their subsistence and who the first thing they did was sell the bronze arrowheads of the army of terracotta. Their lands were confiscated.
The warriors were luckier with the presence in the area of ??a former farmer turned curator of a local museum who was notified almost immediately. He knew how to see the importance of the discovery, 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, chariots, horses and other objects still appear. The necropolis that the first emperor of China ordered to be built about 2,200 years ago covers tens of square kilometers. And what things are, his grave is still intact. And opening it is, without a doubt, the great challenge of the site in this 21st century.
The arrival of the necessary technological advances that would allow access to the great funerary chamber without damaging it and without archaeologists falling into ‘death traps’ has been expected for decades, according to a text written only one hundred years after the death of the emperor. . Also influencing is the presence of mercury that was used to simulate one hundred rivers and the sea, guaranteed by analyzes carried out. Qin was a fan of this metal, to which he attributed immortality and which, paradoxically, could have caused his death. But, above all, there is the possibility that the excavation and subsequent exposure of external elements will irreparably damage the tomb.
Let’s hope that the emperor begins to wake up from his millennia-long slumber with non-invasive alternatives already applied in Egypt, such as the use of muons to ‘scan’ hidden rooms. His warriors await him.
