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Documentary, China's First Emperor The Lost Tomb
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00:00It's one of the greatest marvels of the ancient world.
00:07China's Terracotta Army, 8,000 strong, fully armed and built for eternity.
00:16Created more than 2,000 years ago, it was lost and only recently discovered.
00:25Now this stunning treasure reveals the first empire to rule ancient China.
00:36We found amazing archaeological objects.
00:40And the implications are enormous for archaeology.
00:43It's going to be truly revolutionary.
00:46But who made this vast army? How and why?
00:52It's the creation of an amazingly advanced civilization.
00:57The Chinese crossbow is two millennia ahead of its time.
01:01Its ancient weapons excel in rigorous modern tests.
01:05You cannot make a better arrowhead than this.
01:08Archaeologists piece together clues and try to decode these ancient wonders.
01:15warriors and weapons, chariots and horses.
01:22An entire world buried for more than 2,000 years now sees the light of day.
01:30Revealed in all its original glory.
01:34The Emperor's Ghost Army.
01:37Right now on NOVA.
02:00It's been called the Eighth Wonder of the World, a vast army of almost 8,000 warriors, all over 2,000 years old, larger than life-sized, and made from terracotta or baked clay.
02:21A stunning array of infantry, cavalry, and chariots.
02:31Creating on such an epic scale must have been an extraordinary challenge.
02:38How was it done? And what can it tell us about ancient China?
02:45Now, a series of archaeological excavations shows the terracotta army is only the start.
02:54A small part of a vast complex estimated to be over 21 square miles.
03:02On the outskirts, there's chilling evidence. The mass graves of the people who built it, piled with bones.
03:15The site contains hundreds of subterranean tombs, filled not only with the clay warriors, but also birds, horses, musicians, and acrobats.
03:33All of this surrounds a huge man-made mound.
03:38The tomb of the man responsible for creating China's first empire.
03:44So far, archaeologists have excavated about 1,900 terracotta figures.
03:55Only a fraction of the number believed to be buried in three major pits.
03:59Each figure is intricately detailed.
04:05Weighs three to four hundred pounds.
04:12And is made from seven main parts.
04:20The archaeological work has taken 40 years.
04:24And much still remains to be uncovered.
04:29We found amazing archaeological objects.
04:32So, I think we cannot guess what buried beneath in the whole tomb complex.
04:41But now, archaeologists are finding new answers to many of their questions.
04:48Why was the terracotta army created?
04:53And how and when was it engineered?
04:57Who were the people who built it?
05:00And what was their fate?
05:02Scientists have dated the charcoal found in the pits.
05:15As well as the clay in the figures.
05:20All the evidence indicates that the terracotta warriors were made around 2,200 years ago.
05:27More than 200 years before the birth of Christ.
05:32It was the end of what historians call the warring states period.
05:41When for over two centuries, China was devastated by rival states fighting for dominance.
05:47Mass invasions and battles raged across the countryside.
05:55But finally, one of those states conquered all the others and created the terracotta army.
06:08And all in a single lifetime.
06:12The great mystery is how.
06:21It's a mystery because the oldest surviving literary source was written nearly a century after the terracotta army was built.
06:30By the father of Chinese history, Sima Qian.
06:35Who wrote these classic records of the warring states and later dynasties.
06:41Surprisingly, he made no mention of the terracotta army.
06:46Nor does any other source.
06:49Over 2,000 years ago, these warriors were buried and forgotten.
07:06No one knew they ever existed.
07:08Then, one day in 1974, during a drought in Shaanxi province, Mr. Yang and other local farmers started digging a well.
07:25He tells China historian Jonathan Clements what happened.
07:32I used a pickaxe to dig the hole.
07:35As they were digging down, they found what they first thought to be the rim of a pot.
07:40I said, there's bronze on the ground.
07:43They also found bronze, they find metal artifacts.
07:46So they start dragging cartfuls of broken terracotta out of this well.
07:51Then a shoulder and chest appeared.
07:56As they dug away the earth around it, they realized that they were looking at the body of a statue.
08:02They had the top of the armor and they saw an arm.
08:05I told my friend, this is a temple.
08:09What if they have disturbed gods in an old temple?
08:12That is bad news.
08:14This is a temple.
08:15This is a temple.
08:17This is a temple.
08:18Of course, what he didn't know was the importance for the entire planet.
08:23Because this is the most important archaeological finding in China of the last hundred years.
08:27That you can look at and say, ancient China was amazing.
08:29Archaeologists soon found heaps of broken terracotta.
08:46Bits of legs.
08:48Headless humans.
08:50And even horses.
08:52All smashed after twenty-two centuries underground.
08:57They were buried in three large pits.
09:02Pit two has only been partially excavated and still looks as it did when first unearthed.
09:11The roof planks are thought to cover nearly a thousand warriors and scores of chariots.
09:23Pits one and three have also been partially excavated and an elaborate restoration process begun.
09:32Repairing hundreds of warriors and recovering their lances, arrowheads and swords.
09:42It astounded the world when it was first discovered and is truly unique.
09:49We have five ongoing archaeology sites in the Mausoleum.
09:54The Terracotta Army Museum has become a major international tourist attraction.
10:00Housing a vast treasure trove of ancient art, technology and information.
10:09But can it be used to clarify how a two thousand year old culture overcame all the challenges of creating such an epic masterpiece?
10:18It's a mystery that a joint team from University College London and the Terracotta Army Museum is investigating.
10:33There are two types of visitors to the Terracotta Army.
10:37Some appreciate the beauty in the detail.
10:40You can choose any of these warriors and you will immediately admire the very personal facial expression, the individual hairstyle.
10:48Other people are more taken by the sheer scale of this site, its magnitude.
10:54How was it possible to orchestrate all the technological knowledge, all the resources and all the manpower needed and to do it so quickly?
11:03It was built in an amazingly short period, all within 37 years, the length of the reign of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China.
11:18That's according to Sima Qian's historical records, which state that he was enthroned in 246 BC and that this is when work started on his mausoleum.
11:33And that 37 years later, he died and work stopped.
11:40But by then, Qin Shi Huang had built an empire.
11:51His Qin state ended over two centuries of war and conquered all its powerful neighbors.
11:58The first emperor now ruled many millions of people and an area that rivaled the size of the Roman Empire.
12:11The Qin Empire gave its name to China, along with a legal system and one currency.
12:19But the first emperor also had a reputation for extreme cruelty.
12:24What we now call China is only called China because of the first emperor.
12:29The problem that the Chinese have today is reconciling this idea that he was a cruel tyrant and that hundreds of thousands of people suffered and died under his regime.
12:40Historian Sima Qian also lists some of his crimes as massacring prisoners of war, burning books and slaughtering his critics.
12:50But also that he did some good, that he unified China, that he took these disparate states with different languages and with different writing systems and he forced them all to be Chinese.
13:03Sima Qian's accuracy has been questioned since he lived a century after the first emperor died and was a member of the succeeding dynasty.
13:11But his account describes the emperor's obsession with immortality, which may help explain the motivation behind the building of his vast tomb.
13:25What he believed when he died, he still can carry on his life in the underground kingdom.
13:34So he brought all of the things with him to the underground kingdom.
13:39The ancient Chinese saying, treat death like birth, meant he could enjoy his possessions in the afterlife.
13:49This may have inspired the elaborate planning of his vast mausoleum and overshadowing it all, the first emperor's own huge tomb mound.
13:59The grand historian said the imperial coffin was buried under the mound, which was originally 350 feet high.
14:14The mound has not yet been excavated for fear of damaging it, and it won't be until the contents can be safely preserved.
14:28But Sima Qian vividly describes how a model of the empire surrounded the bronze coffin.
14:35With miniature rivers of mercury flowing into seas, and heavenly bodies on the ceiling above.
14:50The tomb mound is the center of a mausoleum unrivaled in history.
14:57Built so the emperor's afterlife matched his luxurious life before death.
15:03Dams diverted streams around the tomb.
15:08Over 300 coffins were filled with horse skeletons.
15:12Other pits held models of exotic animals, and even members of the emperor's court.
15:18So we're finding musicians and acrobats and weightlifters.
15:21So we're seeing an entire culture revealed to us.
15:24This is not just a mausoleum, but an eternal pleasure palace.
15:29Two half-sized chariots, made up of over 3,400 parts.
15:36Each is pulled by four bronze horses.
15:42Their harnesses embellished with gold and silver.
15:48They got bronze chariots for his spirit to travel in the afterlife.
15:59And also he got terracotta warriors with him to protect him in the afterlife.
16:04Such beliefs may explain the creation of the Terracotta Army, and why it is located a mile to the east of his tomb.
16:15It stands guard between the emperor's grave and the states he subjugated to the east.
16:26He may have feared that the spirits of his many victims would seek revenge in the afterlife.
16:33So perhaps the Terracotta bodyguards were created to combat any threat from the underworld.
16:46The ongoing survey work has mapped the newest finds, and shows the site is far larger than originally thought, covering the area of 10,000 football fields.
17:04But how did the Qin craft so many imposing and intricately designed clay warriors?
17:22Reassembling the broken figures is the first part of their restoration, and reveals the clues to how they were made.
17:29Each figure was handcrafted from the local clay.
17:36You can see on the broken figures, how the torso was created by coiling clay around in layers, to build the upper body.
17:48That's the marks here, probably the hand holding inside, and then smith outside.
17:55Master craftsman, Mr. Han, has studied the figures with the museum curators, and worked to replicate ancient production methods.
18:08So what's the weight of an average warrior?
18:13About 200 kilos.
18:19That's over 400 pounds. Wow.
18:21So that's where I have it.
18:24Limbs, boots, hands, and heads were all cast from the local clay, which was pressed into molds shaped for each body part.
18:34Originally the legs were based upon molds used for drain pipes.
18:38The molding process creates a variety of limbs that can be combined with the various torsos in different ways to create a mix of figures.
18:49Archers, heavy infantry, cavalrymen, generals, officials, and charioteers, and even their horses.
19:00Once the hollow mold is filled out with clay, it's joined and allowed to dry, before the figure is assembled, ready for firing in a kiln or oven.
19:14Mr. Han has built a replica of an ancient Qin kiln.
19:21So it's based on the real Qin archaeology?
19:27Yeah, that's based on the Qin, real Qin archaeology.
19:31The figures are sealed up, and then fired for days to harden them.
19:40The original figures are a combination of molded parts.
19:49But are they clones or individuals?
19:57There are a variety of different faces.
19:59They are dark and light-skinned.
20:09With varying facial hair.
20:14They have many different eye shapes.
20:27And a dazzling array of hairstyles and headwear.
20:41There are clearly differences among the figures.
20:44But is each one truly unique?
20:46The scientists hope to provide a definitive answer, by making 3D models to allow precise comparisons.
21:05Each figure will need to be scanned into the computer.
21:08But 3D laser scanning is time-consuming and expensive.
21:16So Janice Lee is using a still camera as the first step in a process that will turn 2D pictures into 3D models.
21:26This is a very new technique.
21:35And the implications are enormous for archaeology.
21:39And it's going to be truly revolutionary.
21:42Back in London, Andrew Bevan is compositing the photographs to create a 3D model.
21:48What the software tries to do is to go through each photograph and define a set of features that it can recognize.
21:55It might be, for example, the tip of an ear.
21:58In humans, no two ears are the same.
22:02And Andrew Bevan wants to know if this is the case for the terracotta figures.
22:06The computer maps the features in 3D space, then joins them up to create the head.
22:17We've done this particular warrior in all of his glory.
22:21These models are designed to allow precise comparison of everything from hands to heads,
22:28arms to armor, or figure to figure.
22:32Effectively, the sky is the limit.
22:34In this particular case, I'm going to slice off the ear of the warrior so it could be compared to some others.
22:43This will show if they are all anatomically unique.
22:47The results indicate that the ears vary in shape.
22:51With different sized earlobes.
22:56What we've discovered so far through these 3D models is that no two ears are demonstrably the same.
23:04These warriors seem to be very individual in the same way as a typical human population.
23:11Some archaeologists suggest that they are even portraits of real people.
23:16So this was an army of individual warriors, each strikingly real and unique.
23:25The product of the skill, dedication, and technique of the craftsmen creating them.
23:37The Han's work really reflected the processes of making tarry cameras 2,000 years ago.
23:47There's three thousand years ago.
23:50Yeah, so it normally takes three days for Han to craft the details.
23:58Even today, the individual style of the craftsman clearly shows up in his work.
24:05shows up in his work mr. Hans here's yeah it's really a big earlobe there yeah
24:15but years of careful restoration preservation and analysis have given
24:21rise to clues that the terracotta army was originally quite different from what
24:26we see today
24:28you
24:32flakes of bright pigments still cling to the surfaces of torsos hands and heads
24:39showing the warriors were once highly decorated
24:42and suggesting a colorful even gaudy array when first created
24:58we can now see how the warriors may have looked over 2200 years ago a dazzling
25:16display of colors with painted figures and ornate chariots all fully armed and
25:25intimidating
25:34but were they carrying sharpened war-grade weapons or merely symbolic
25:39representations
25:41after the wooden parts rotted away all that was left on the floor of the bronze
25:46weapons once placed in the warriors hands
25:55and
26:02but how are these weapons made
26:06and how were they used
26:10to analyze them janice lee is creating silicon casts
26:17of the ancient weapons using a technique originally developed for dentists
26:24we use this silicon mode to get very clear impression on the surface
26:31by putting the silicon impression under a scanning electron microscope janice lee avoids any damage to the original weapon and can examine the blades in extreme close-up
26:39the screen
26:46the screen is filled by tiny section of the blade
26:53so it was originally sharp and still is today
27:00and that's what i marked show that's really massive effort for sharpening these functional lethal weapons
27:07so consistent
27:14the identical parallel lines on so many weapons show this is mechanical sharpening on an industrial scale
27:22only one type of machine could make these fine even lines
27:29a rotary lathe
27:36a rotary lathe that uses a spinning stone to sharpen blades
27:44all the swords all the lances all the halberds and every one of the forty thousand arrowheads have been sharpened in the same way
27:51combat
27:53combat
27:54damages the edges of bronze weapons
27:58but the terracotta army ones are unmarked
28:01there's no sign whatsoever of them having been used
28:08these are freshly made weapons delivered directly to the terracotta army
28:13i think it's obvious these are not representations for religious purposes
28:19these are real lethal weapons made to kill
28:22this is the earliest evidence of rotary lathes
28:27being used for sharpening weapons on an industrial scale anywhere in the world
28:32really well done this is fantastic
28:34i think we are on to something exciting
28:37so the terracotta army was fully armed
28:45the heavy infantry carried the deadly g or halberd
28:50some were over six feet long
28:53military historian mike loads demonstrates how it was a highly flexible weapon
29:00and the chin armies best defense against their greatest foe
29:05cavalry
29:12a major threat to all chinese armies of all states was cavalry
29:20both horsemen and charioteers
29:23and the principal defense against them
29:26was the halberd
29:38the wool
29:42now obviously i had to stop the horse there or he would have impaled himself on the spear
29:47and that's really the first function of the halberd
29:51and you'll see it's got this cross piece this transverse bar
29:54so if i had gone hurtling into a line of halberds
29:58this would have skewered the poor horse here
30:00but it would have stopped
30:02so the halberdier himself doesn't get trampled
30:04he can also use the spike to take out the horse's legs
30:08but what if the animal gets past the point of the halberds
30:12and i'm coming in with a lance
30:15he could use his halberd to lift the point
30:18so that it's done that
30:20and that's pushed it onto my throat
30:23and he has pushed me
30:25and where he can obviously be quickly dispatched
30:33as well as the halberd
30:35the chin deployed a range of bronze weapons
30:38including spears
30:40lances
30:41and long swords
30:43but the ancient chinese led the world
30:47in one particular branch of warfare
30:50archery
30:51a variety of preaching sources
30:56show the chinese invented the crossbow
30:59centuries before the first emperor
31:01but how and why did it evolve to become the most efficient
31:06offensive weapon of the age
31:09the chinese battlefield was full of arrow storms
31:15storm after storm of arrows
31:19but that takes skill and training
31:21how could you do that with an army full of peasant conscripts
31:25that were there for a few months
31:27well the answer was in the chinese crossbow
31:29just a simple stock of wood easily mounts any bow
31:33so the bow is already made
31:36it fits onto there
31:38and just with putting a cross piece in there
31:40you could lash that into position
31:42none survive
31:45this is a working replica
31:47its importance is shown by the ranks of terracotta archers
31:52armed with crossbows
31:54and ready for battle
31:55but all that is left of the chin crossbows after the wooden parts have rotted away
32:02are clusters of strange bronze objects found in the pits
32:07this is a bronze crossbow trigger
32:10one of the most sophisticated three-dimensional engineering mechanisms of ancient times
32:14they were mass produced with all the parts made to fit together precisely as historians of the day recorded
32:26the annals of luboi who date to around the time of the first emperor claimed that if there's any misalignment in the parts of a trigger it will not function
32:36using a replica mike loads demonstrates the design of the trigger
32:55the real genius was the trigger
32:58the bronze the cast bronze trigger produced to a standardized form in their hundreds of thousands
33:05so it's got its very simple interchangeable component parts
33:09it comes apart very easily and it goes together very easily
33:13and this whole assembly just drops into a pre-carved slot in the bow
33:21and you have got a bow ready to shoot
33:25the trigger locks tightly
33:27and can securely hold
33:29and smoothly release
33:32the power of the bow
33:34it is an ingenious bit of mass-produced standardized military equipment
33:41but any crossbow is only as deadly as its arrows
33:50over 40,000 arrowheads have been excavated from the pits
33:56this is just one bundle of a hundred
34:01a quiver full
34:03discovered here in the middle of pit one
34:07so what were these arrowheads made of?
34:12a portable x-ray fluorescence spectrometer is used to explore the details of chin metalworking
34:19this is today the simplest, fastest, even cheapest way we have of determining the chemical composition of something
34:30it's only recently that we are beginning to use it in archaeology
34:34bringing about a revolution in the way we can characterize materials
34:38it shows the terracotta army's weapons are nearly all made from bronze
34:43an alloy that's a mixture of copper, lead and tin
34:47at first the researchers assume that every part of the arrow will be a single blend of bronze
34:54this is telling us the recipe that the weapon makers had for each of the parts of their weapons
35:01there's the head proper and then what we call the tang
35:06which would be inserted in the longer bamboo shaft
35:09the tang contains 3% tin, 1% lead and the rest is copper
35:15so it tells us that this is a bronze with relatively low amounts of lead and tin
35:21we can now turn it over
35:25we can immediately see a relatively high thin content that's around 20%
35:30this is an alloy that we know would be extremely hard
35:34more tin makes for a harder sharper arrowhead
35:38but less tin makes the tang more flexible and less likely to snap
35:44when you only have bronze you cannot make a better arrowhead than this
35:53this is as good as a bronze weapon is going to get
35:57so they use two different alloys of bronze in one fused section of the weapon
36:03the arrowhead and the tang
36:06the part connecting the arrowhead to the shaft
36:09but how?
36:11master forger Andy Lacy is experimenting
36:15trying to reproduce the casting techniques developed in China over 2,000 years ago
36:22you have your tang precast already exists
36:26you just insert it into the mold
36:28you can see that it sits within the space that's the arrowhead
36:31and then put the top part on and clamp it together
36:36then you see the tang just sticks out there
36:39and that's the funnel that would take the metal in
36:55it's got these two components beautifully together
36:57so that's welded on very tightly
37:01very tightly
37:03joining the two bronze alloys reveals the chin's impressive technical sophistication
37:08and innovative production skills
37:10but only a test can show if the replica arrowheads perform in practice
37:16ancient Chinese sources give clues to how the bows that shot them were loaded
37:23we have some evidence that the chin laid on their backs to span their bows
37:33that would suggest pretty powerful bows of about 200 pounds
37:36which is more powerful than a hand bow is going to be
37:40Mike's demonstration bow replicates the mechanism of an authentic chin bow
37:47but only creates a quarter of the force
37:55and we're now shooting with more than four times the power
37:59to test the replica arrows to the limit
38:01he's using a modern bow with the 200 pound draw weight of the original chin bows
38:07it's devastating against ballistic gel
38:12but how will it fare against Chinese armor?
38:18this is the level of armor that an arrow has to defeat
38:22it's lamella armor
38:24that means you've got scales which overlap each other
38:27and then behind that is soft textile armor
38:30and you can see on the terracotta warriors
38:34they're wearing quite bulky clothing
38:36and armor is a composite defense
38:38of hard exterior with soft padding
38:41and they've probably got felt coats under that
38:44deep inside here is a piece of pork
38:46to represent the human being inside
38:49so that's the challenge an arrowhead has
38:52delivering that crucial thump to the target
38:55safety off
39:00well it's stuck in
39:05it's done something
39:07by god and it's gone right through the pork
39:12that is a dead enemy
39:13it's actually gone right through
39:15and it's come out the other side
39:17through the pork
39:18through three layers of hardened leather
39:21of hardened leather
39:22through multiple layers of gathered silk
39:25through a thick piece of felt
39:27through a side of pork
39:29and here it is out the other side
39:32the chin used the crossbow to powerful effect
39:39in 223 BC
39:41the chin faced the vast Chu army
39:44on the banks of the Yangtze river
39:46the chin tricked them
39:48and then attacked with their devastating archers
40:00this seemingly simple mechanism
40:03is two millennia ahead of its time
40:09it would take over 1500 years
40:12for European crossbows
40:14to surpass the Chinese ones in power
40:17and only then
40:19with cumbersome levers
40:20and pulleys
40:21making them far slower to use
40:23and difficult to master
40:29you can learn to use this
40:31in less than two minutes
40:33and it enabled
40:35a peasant army
40:36to be converted into state-of-the-art troops
40:39the chin army
40:42had become so well organized
40:44and equipped
40:45it conquered all its rivals
40:47and ended two centuries of war
40:52the chin leader now ruled all China
40:55as the first emperor
41:00the historian Sima Qian
41:02writing a century later
41:04from the perspective of a succeeding dynasty
41:06describes a frenzy of book burning
41:08all of the books in his kingdom were destroyed
41:13possibly thousands of Chinese documents
41:15that we will never get back
41:16a terrible cataclysm
41:18for Chinese history
41:19and for Chinese historians
41:20it was according to Sima Qian
41:24a descent into complete tyranny
41:26as 700,000 workers were forced to expand the tomb complex
41:30on the far western edge of the site
41:37chilling evidence has revealed the dark secret behind the making of the terracotta army
41:47Janice Lee is heading into the orchards
41:49where mass graves have been excavated
41:57filled with the bodies of workers
42:00including women and children
42:03worn down by the relentless toil
42:08archaeologists also found leg and neck irons
42:12while Sima Qian refers to some workers as convicts
42:15and men condemned to castration
42:19the all-controlling chin bureaucracy
42:24gave each body an inscribed death certificate
42:29or dog tag
42:30each is a moving testimony
42:33to an individual story of hard labour
42:36Bu Gengju is the builder's name
42:42Ju zi means like he own the government money
42:46so he need to work here
42:48instead of paying off the money to the government
42:52The story of worker Bu Gengju is typical
42:57he was forced to work
42:59because he couldn't pay a crippling debt he owed the government
43:02It was this forced labour
43:09that enabled the Qin to create the Chinese Empire
43:14Protect it with the earliest stages of the Great Wall
43:20Connect it with intercity highways
43:23and irrigate it with networks of canals and locks
43:28Conscripted labourers and slaves
43:33also assisted skilled artisans
43:35in making the 8,000 terracotta warriors
43:39But how did the Qin do it all on such a vast scale
43:45and with such attention to detail?
43:53The careful study of both the figures and the weapons
43:56now enables us to understand how the workforce was organised and controlled
44:01Inscriptions on the warriors reveal who made them
44:05They were built by groups or cells
44:08led by 92 master craftsmen
44:11each probably controlling about 10 workers
44:15These cells came from the palace factories or local workshops
44:22And the weapons also provide evidence of this highly productive
44:28and tightly controlled organisation
44:31We have hundreds, thousands of weapons here
44:36But we want to find out how that was achieved
44:39How is it that they could produce so many weapons in such a relatively short period?
44:44To help answer this
44:48Janice Lee has meticulously plotted all the armaments found in Pit 1
44:53This is the map of all these bronze weapons discovered in the east part of Pit 1
45:01So like the red one showed the bronze triggers
45:05cross-ball triggers discovered in the pit
45:07and the black dots presents the arrow bundles
45:12The plots are then compared with the analysis of the metal content of the arrowheads
45:18This group is really very different from this
45:22Yes
45:23And the precise shape of the triggers
45:26This reveals that the triggers fall into distinctive groups
45:30defined by their characteristic shapes
45:36For example, this hanging knife here is curved at this corner
45:40This other one here ends at an angle
45:44The plots of the armaments in Pit 1
45:47identified several distinct batches of triggers
45:50All the trigger combinations located in the top northeast corner
45:56are identical in size, bronze content and design
46:01Suggesting they were made by the same cell of workers
46:07While this set of triggers is different
46:10Showing it was made by another cell of workers
46:13This is a series of cells working individually to create these metal weapons
46:25All of this requires a very versatile workforce
46:30that can produce a sword today, a crossbow tomorrow, a halber the day after
46:36depending on what's needed as the work moves forward
46:39The worker cells were trained to be not only productive, but versatile
46:46I think this production model holds the key to understand how it was possible to produce
46:53something so colossal, so big, but also so sophisticated
46:57in a time window maximum 40 years, quite possibly less
47:01Janice Lee has also found crucial evidence about how the workers were organized
47:08by decoding inscriptions chiseled into their weapons
47:11They reveal a structure of strict supervision
47:15where all the workers had to record their names
47:18We can see individual workers working on different years of the reign of tin
47:24Above them, the craftsmen, foremen that would be working with them
47:28the officials, and then on top of all, Lu Buwei
47:32who was then the prime minister or the chancellor of tin
47:36The craftsmen at the bottom had to sign their names
47:40so any substandard work could easily be traced
47:43Sometimes people refer to this supervisory system for quality control as a carrot and stick system
47:52If something was wrong with a particular weapon that didn't fit the standard
47:56then one could identify worker Jin in particular
47:59and make him accountable for his error
48:02Everything had to be perfect for an immortal army
48:07created to defend the first emperor in his perpetual afterlife
48:11And perfection was achieved through fear
48:16Some recently discovered Chin legal codes detail a harsh system
48:26where even minor crimes had terrible consequences
48:34The state of Chin didn't just define things like theft and murder as crimes
48:39Incompetence was also a crime
48:41So not meeting a particular standard of workmanship
48:45would also have been met with savage punishment
48:48Maimings, you have tortures, you have executions
48:51This was all part of the system the Chin had created
48:55to rule every aspect of life in the empire
48:58It was called legalism
49:00The grand historian Sima Chien describes a society organized into small groups
49:15Each person responsible for the other's behavior
49:19Every unit of five or ten houses was obliged to report on each other
49:27If anyone committed a crime within your cell and you didn't report it
49:30the entire cell would be punished
49:32It's very likely that just as the army and society was divided up in this cellular way
49:38that the artisans, the blacksmiths and the potters of the Chin world
49:43also worked on very similar lines
49:47It creates a vicious, brutal society of people informing on each other
49:53And everyone was terrified
50:00All the evidence shows that the Chin deployed small groups of skilled workers
50:04capable of mass producing both weapons and individualized figures
50:14They were controlled by a rigid system of incentives and punishments
50:19In 210 BC, eleven years after he conquered all his neighbors, the first emperor died
50:38Sima Chien records he was buried in a bronze coffin
50:50Surrounded by rivers of mercury
50:53Laid out in a map of the empire
50:57His tomb mound has never been excavated
51:02But the Terracotta army opened the door to a lost world
51:07This massive site stands as testimony to the ingenuity and ruthlessness of the ancient Chin civilization
51:17Its pioneering system of flexible manufacturing combined with authoritarian rule
51:31Allowed it to create the eternal wonder of the Terracotta army
51:36This remarkable discovery gives a glimpse into how one small state created a vast empire
51:46Perhaps foreshadowing the rise of a superpower today
51:50Modern China
51:52Modern China
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