"The terracotta army, a legion of mysterious clay soldiers stand ready for battle." "The discovery of this 8,000-strong terracotta army is really our first vivid, clear view of ancient China." "They may guard one of the most notorious figures in China's history." "Now archaeologists are using revolutionary imaging technologies to find out..." "Who was this extraordinary army built to protect?" "Who were its soldiers expected to fight?" "And what magnificent treasures are they still defending?" "To solve these mysteries, we'll piece together the warriors, we'll unearth ancient skeletons, and blow open a hidden tomb to reveal the astonishing secrets at the heart of this ancient wonder. captions paid for by discovery communications" "The terracotta army..." "One of the greatest archaeological discoveries ever made." "It was unearthed just 40 years ago in the heart of China." "When I look at this man here and his fellows all around, you really feel the power of the Chinese state." "These warriors are part of a massive ceremonial complex spread across 20 square miles." "The warriors appear to be guarding a 150-foot-high soil mound, which lies 1 mile to the west." "Archaeologists suspect this enormous structure hides a lavish tomb, sealed over 2,000 years ago." "But who was the tomb built for?" "And what threat were the warriors defending it against?" "To find out, teams of investigators unearth mysterious military hardware and scientists unravel the mysteries of ancient Chinese alchemy." "To do this would have just seemed like magic." "All part of the extraordinary effort to unlock the secrets of the terracotta army." "Nearly 8,000 soldiers stood in perfect battle formation, spanning almost three football fields, each one handcrafted in the image of a warrior 2,200 years old." "On the front line, a vanguard of crossbowmen." "Row upon row of armed warriors stand to attention behind." "Among them once stood 130 war chariots." "The soldiers stand tall, but thousands more remain in ruins, awaiting resurrection." "This formidable army gives an incredible insight into the birth of a nation." "21st century China is a global superpower and the world's most populous country." "But China as we know it today hasn't always existed." "In 230 B.C., China wasn't one nation." "It was divided into seven warring states." "Historian William Lindesay wants to understand how this fractured Land was united to create the nation we see today." "When I look at this warrior," "I see an individual from 2,000 years ago, and he and his likes, they founded China." "Today, William's working with archaeologists to reveal the secrets of China's birth." "The team's job is to rebuild the statues." "Through their work, new clues are emerging that help answer the question "what were the statues for?"" "Repairing each warrior is a very long and painstaking process." "Dr. Ian Dixiang has spent the past 23 years piecing together the clues." "Every completed soldier adds another layer to the terracotta army's story." "But it's taken four decades for the team to rebuild just 1/4 of all the warriors." "But today, innovative 3-d laser-scanning technology is speeding up the process and allowing archaeologists to discover exactly why these terracotta statues were built." "Professor Zhang Weixing is the chief archaeologist at the terracotta army museum." "The 3-d scans allow a computer to build a virtual model of the statue." "Using this technique, the team has uncovered something extraordinary..." "Not all the statues were designed to stand guard." "Although most of the statues are ready for battle, a handful appear ready to entertain." "Together with the soldiers, the acrobats paint a picture of courtly ritual and imperial power." "They appear to have been created to defend and entertain the ruler of an ancient empire from beyond the grave." "But who was this leader?" "One man seems to be missing from this terracotta universe..." "The man who built it." "William is on the hunt for him in the warrior command pit." "This pit is the command center for the whole terracotta army." "There are 68 warriors down there, but the key group is right in the center..." "The chariot group." "The chariot's drawn by four horses." "Behind them, there are four men, but the grouping looks unbalanced." "It seems there's one man missing." "The army's commander in chief should be here, but he's nowhere to be seen." "Some people think that could be the commander of the army himself..." "The emperor." "Many archaeologists believe the missing figure is China's first emperor." "A military genius, he conquered six neighboring states to unify China." "And he believed that even death wouldn't put an end to his rule." "A power-hungry megalomaniac, he craved immortality and believed he would rise from the dead to take his place as the terracotta army's supreme leader." "Archaeologists believe his body lies here, in this mysterious mound." "Tales from ancient China describe the mound as containing an incredible secret a burial complex sealed deep below the earth." "But for over 2,000 years, no one has ever laid eyes on this masterpiece." "The tomb walls are said to be made from compacted earth, towering 150 feet tall, and the stories claim that at the tomb's core lies a sacred crypt where the first emperor was laid to rest." "This tomb may hold the secrets of China's first ruler." "But for now, it remains one of history's greatest enigmas." "If the treasures in the first emperor's tomb promise to be so spectacular, why haven't archaeologists already uncovered them?" "For decades, the Chinese have said," ""No." "We're not going to explore it,"" "we're not going to excavate it, because we don't have the expertise" ""or the preservation skills to save those antiquities."" "But I think, sooner or later, curiosity is going to get the better of them." "They're going to open up the tomb of the first emperor." "The ancient Chinese were buried with all the items they'd need in the afterlife." "The earliest tombs were simple pits, containing food and weapons." "But over time, the tombs became ever more elaborate." "Thousands of items were added..." "Chariots, musical instruments, and ornaments." "The tombs became underground palaces built for the deceased to roam in the afterlife, but did the first emperor have even greater ambitions?" "Stories claim his tomb houses a re-creation of all the Lands he had conquered..." "A subterranean empire he could rule for eternity." "These ancient legends describe the first emperor's tomb as a monument of unmatched extravagance, filled with underground treasures, including a giant map of his empire crossed with rivers of flowing mercury." "But is this bizarre legend true?" "The terracotta warriors stand guard over one of the largest tombs ever built." "An ancient legend describes the tomb's secrets." "But could this legend be true?" "It tells that at the heart of the colossal mound, the emperor is buried in an underground palace." "A map of China adorns the floor, with rivers of flowing mercury that weave between mountains made of bronze." "The rivers encircle the emperor's sarcophagus..." "His final resting place..." "And he lies beneath glistening jewels that mimic the starry sky." "The legends paint a picture of a tomb unlike anything seen before in the ancient world." "But are these colorful accounts pure fantasy, or could they really be true?" "Today, professor Zhang and his team are on the mausoleum mound." "They're testing the soil, looking for signs of mercury." "What made the first emperor fill his mausoleum with this mysterious metal?" "Andrea Sella is a research chemist with a lifelong love of mercury." "To obtain bulk mercury, and certainly enough to be able to make a river of it, you would have to be operating on many kilos, possible tons, scale." "As a professor of chemistry," "Andrea relies on centuries of accumulated knowledge to understand the world around him." "He believes the ancient Chinese had a very different understanding of chemistry." "They saw it as something magical." "The quest for magic is, in many ways, a quest for understanding." "I think it emerges out of the same impulse as the scientific process." "The ancient Chinese were obsessed with a magical practice known as alchemy." "They could perform remarkable feats, like the transformation of the ore cinnabar into metal." "They believed this was a magical process that they could use to cheat death." "When you see cinnabar, you realize what makes it special." "If I take out a little bit and put it into this mortar and pestle, you really get the idea." "This is almost the color of blood." "It is this extraordinary pigment, one which has captured the imagination of people from time immemorial." "There are cave paintings from across the world where animals have been drawn using cinnabar." "Yet, for all the wonder of this incredibly colored pigment, the really amazing thing happens when you start to heat it." "The cinnabar undergoes a remarkable transformation." "It's going to get a little bit of condensation, but immediately, it starts to darken." "You can see the color change." "The red powder turns black." "Wow. that was much faster than I expected, actually." "This black powder then transforms into a liquid, which then vaporizes and coats the walls of the flask with mercury." "And so the amazing thing here is that we've actually got a mirror on the walls." "It's a mercury mirror." "We've actually transformed our beautiful red cinnabar into this weird silvery substance." "The product of this reaction is a material that captured the ancient Chinese imagination." "Andrea has a flask full of the stuff." "If you take a little bit of mercury, you really understand why people used to call it quicksilver." "It's because it dances around." "It's almost as if this material were alive." "Transforming blood-red cinnabar into mirrored mercury seems remarkable on its own." "But adding just one more simple chemical can change it back again." "But you can now take that mercury and heat it up slightly differently with sulfur, which you obtain from volcanoes." "And in doing so, you regenerate this astonishing red material." "You get back, in a sense, to your starting point, and so the fact that you have this closed loop becomes almost a metaphor for this idea that you start, you die, and then, perhaps, you can be reborn." "The mercury/cinnabar pair reflected an entire belief system." "The ancient Chinese believed the world was built from opposites..." "Heaven and earth, day and night, male and female." "They called these opposing forces the yin and Yang." "The two powers are always held in Harmony." "Ancient alchemy played with these forces." "They could transform cinnabar's Yang into mercury's yin and mercury's yin back into cinnabar's Yang." "They believed that by repeating the cycle, they could control time and create the elixir of life." "Some scholars believe that alchemists told the emperor to consume potions laced with mercury so that he might live forever." "But Andrea thinks the mixture may have done exactly the opposite." "With the benefit of hindsight, there's a real irony in the fact that here was a man who was seeking immortality through mercury, when we now realize that mercury is a very, very poisonous element." "It does all kinds of nasty stuff, and so it's not surprising, really, that he died suddenly." "The first emperor died when he was just 50 years old..." "His vast tomb still unfinished." "Workers had already made thousands of soldiers for the terracotta army that would defend his empire of the dead." "But how did workshops more used to making Clay roof tiles suddenly start producing these incredible sculptures?" "And can the discovery of this mysterious Jade death suit help investigators figure out what happened to the first emperor's body?" "I think this gives us a possible clue..." "A vision of what might be at the core of the first emperor's tomb." "China's first emperor built a terracotta army of almost 8,000 warriors." "But no Chinese craftsman had attempted to create such lifelike statues before." "William Lindesay is investigating how they managed to achieve this incredible feat with no previous experience to draw on." "To think that those are the finger marks made by an artisan 2,200 years ago is absolutely amazing." "Each warrior is totally unique with individual facial expressions, hairstyles..." "And clothes." "Although they're weathered today, in their prime, each soldier was painted in striking color." "They were a dazzling spectacle of vivid pigments..." "Red, green, purple, and yellow." "The emperor's supernatural army stood shining in all its glory." "William has come to a workshop to meet a craftsman who creates replica warriors for export every day." "This workshop is able to churn out more than 10,000 life-size warriors every year, and they're able to do so because they have a fast method, using molds to do the torsos." "Today, master craftsman Han Pingzhe uses modern methods, but he also studies how the ancient craftsmen worked." "Master Han believes the ancient Chinese couldn't have used molds for the warriors' torsos because they didn't have plaster." "Instead, they must have used a much simpler method more commonly used for building pots." "Master Han shows William pictures that reveal how the craftsmen in the first emperor's reign built the soldiers." "When you look at this picture, you can see these layers of coils." "Each one is about an inch and a half in height, and it's clear that the body of the torso was built up in that manner up to shoulder level." "They build up the warrior's torso, just as the ancient Chinese did." "We've got to wait now, until it dries." "If we were to continue, the burden of the Clay would basically make it slump." "So the method here is do a bit, wait a long time." "Making each soldier with coiled Clay was a slow process." "A factory line created hundreds of legs on spinning lathes." "Another team coiled the arms, and another made the heads." "The craftsmen coiled Clay into a hollow torso and carved intricate details by hand." "Then workers baked the body parts in a kiln at nearly 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, standing the heavy torsos upside down so they didn't topple over." "Finally, workers assembled the pieces, lacquered and painted the figures, and the soldiers were ready for battle." "Incredibly, the ancient Chinese craftsmen who made these lifelike statues started out as Potters who made terracotta building materials." "But William's convinced they were transformed into fine artists by the threat of extreme violence." "The evidence for this can be found in the makers' marks stamped on each Clay warrior." "The purpose of these characters was to assign responsibility for the quality of workmanship." "They were useful, perhaps, if any work was substandard." "If any expression on a warrior's face was not liked, the inspectors of the warriors could easily trace back to the workshop and mete out whatever punishment they liked." "William has more evidence that shows just how ruthless the first emperor could be." "Just beside his burial mound, a graveyard of shallow pits has been found, and it's full of skeletons..." "Skulls, ribs, limbs." "I can see everything here..." "Even teeth." "Very, very gruesome images that show us, once the burial mound was built, the workers were cast into the pits..." "Perhaps buried alive." "China's histories tell us that the first emperor's terrifying regime buried alive not only slave laborers, but scholars, too." "His ministers ordered the burning of books." "Under the first emperor, China was a totalitarian state." "The first emperor meted out collective punishment, which means if one person fouls up, any poor work submitted, the whole workforce would have been put to death." "By enforcing such extreme conditions, the first emperor ensured that the warriors the workshops produced were faultless and ready to face any enemy." "But what frightened him so much?" "And who was he expecting to fight?" "China's first emperor built a life-size replica army to stand guard over his vast mausoleum complex." "But were these terracotta warriors just very convincing toy soldiers?" "Or were they really expected to fight?" "When we see the terracotta warriors, we don't see any weapons in their hands because the weapons were all found on the ground, and they're now in the museums." "William Lindesay has special permission to inspect some of the 2,200-year-old weapons unearthed alongside the warriors." "The gem here is this magnificent bronze sword." "The profile of the blade, the sharpness in the lethal tip would have been plunged through armor." "The warriors' weapons were real, but who were they going to fight?" "Professor Zhang Weixing is working at a pit immediately to the east of the burial mound." "The floor of the pit is covered in thousands of mysterious stone squares." "Professor Zhang believes that they're a clue to the warriors' potential foe." "His team is picking up the pieces." "The pieces are jumbled together like a Jigsaw tipped out of its box." "But unlike the bronze weapons, this material is like nothing used by a real-life army." "Piecing together the shards of stone transforms the fragments into a vest of armor." "More than 600 pieces..." "Are fastened together with bronze wires." "Each piece is just 1/10 inch thick and would shatter under a hard blow." "If this suit were made for a living army, it would be made of leather." "So why is it made of stone?" "This suit of stone armor took professor Zhang's team six months to piece together." "And professor Zhang believes he's cracked the riddle of its surprising building material." "The stone armor was designed to offer protection against evil spirits in the afterlife..." "Because the emperor had good reason to be fearful of vengeful ghosts." "In his lifetime, the first emperor invaded six neighboring states to unify China, and he made many enemies who wanted him dead." "One assassin attacked him with a poison dagger wrapped in a map, one with a metal-ended lute, and another dropped a metal cone on his traveling carriage." "They all failed, but the first emperor was afraid of similar attacks when dead, so he provided suits of stone armor for the spirits of his fallen comrades." "These ghosts could fight alongside the terracotta army in a battle of the dead." "The combined forces of the first emperor's spirit army were expected to defend the universe he would rule in the afterlife." "But what treasures did the first emperor take with him when he died?" "The amazing thing about this chariot is, if it was pulled, the moving parts would rotate." "It's such a brilliant piece of art." "The terracotta warriors stand guard over a universe of artistic brilliance." "The surface of the horses and the detail on the chariot is absolutely outstanding." "The sleeves of the charioteer - you can see the creases there." "They look almost realistic, but they're made in bronze." "It really is a masterpiece." "William believes the level of artistry achieved by the first emperor's craftsmen created a calm oasis in the first emperor's hellish world." "The emperor is taking everything he experienced in his life to the underworld with him." "The beauty, the magnificence of this chariot, and the drama of those acrobats," "I think they're just a hint of the glorious things that must lie in the underground palace of the first emperor, and that's a phenomenally exciting prospect for the future." "The first emperor imagined a life after death of military might and artistic genius." "But when he died, what happened to the world he left behind?" "The first emperor was buried in a magnificent mausoleum and protected by thousands of terracotta warriors." "But archaeologists have discovered more than just people made from Clay in the vicinity of his tomb." "Archaeologists have discovered 99 pits sealed underground." "They contain dark secrets." "Surprisingly, the burial chambers are empty." "But between the entrance doorways, dismembered human bones lie scattered across the ground." "Somebody threw the body parts into the tomb passageways without ceremony." "Whose bones are they?" "And why are they here?" "Dr. Zhu Sihong is an archaeologist at the mausoleum museum." "He's looking for clues that might reveal who the bones belong to." "The history of the first emperor, written 100 years after his death, describes those buried alongside him in his tomb." "The emperor had many mistresses, and legend has it that some were murdered." "Could these be their bones?" "Dr. Zhu knows the sex of the skeleton." "Lying alongside the bones, archaeologists unearthed another crucial piece of evidence..." "The most ancient pearls ever found in China." "Dr. Zhu believes the bones and pearls back up the story that the first emperor's son, Huhai, murdered his father's mistresses." "But Huhai's rule was rocked by political strife." "In the main pit, William is looking for evidence of this vicious end to the empire." "See this warrior, here, this color is not the original color." "No, this is the original color, and this has been burned, and it gives us a clue of how the emperor's dream of his dynasty, his empire lasting for 10,000 generations, came to a very sudden end." "Within a decade of his death, the dynasty was overthrown." "William believes the scorch marks are evidence that rebels overthrew the empire and tomb raiders ransacked the terracotta warriors." "The rebels entered those tunnels, set fire to the chambers, and caused the whole thing to collapse." "The rebels who overran the empire destroyed as much of the first emperor's mausoleum as they could." "But archaeologists believe that the first emperor's tomb was untouched." "After 2,200 years buried beneath the ground, could there be anything left of his body?" "The discovery of the terracotta army has transformed our understanding of the man who unified China." "But archaeologists still have countless unknown pits and hidden tombs to unearth." "What treasures might the next 40 years of excavations find?" "William Lindesay believes the greatest surprise of all may lie inside the first emperor's coffin." "Jade was prized even more highly than gold, and the Chinese believed it had magical properties." "This is the death suit of Liu Wu, a Chinese prince who died just 66 years after the first emperor." "His extraordinary burial suit is made of over 2,000 individual pieces of Jade..." "A green stone treasured by the Chinese." "The first emperor was on a constant search for immortality, and all his successors inherited the same obsession." "To the ancient Chinese, life after death was possible, but only if you took the right precautions." "The key was to ensure that a dead person's spirit didn't perish." "This material had the property of preserving the most important part of the human being, and without preservation of the soul, there would be no hope of everlasting life." "I think this gives us a possible clue, a vision of what might be at the core of the first emperor's tomb." "If we look at how the Chinese respected and revered Jade," "I don't think we can expect the first emperor's body to be in any other material." "To attain immortality, it was also crucial that the dead body didn't decay." "That way, the spirit would continue to have a home." "This mummified body of a Chinese noblewoman who died just 50 years after the first emperor gives us another clue to what might lie inside the first emperor's tomb." "To preserve her body for millennia, undertakers wrapped her in 20 layers of silk, secured with nine silk ribbons." "They filled her coffin with 20 gallons of a mystery acidic liquid, sealed it with lacquer, then placed the coffin inside three others." "They lowered the coffins 50 feet into a vault, where the depth kept the body cool." "Then they packed the vault with 5 tons of moisture-absorbing charcoal and sealed her in beneath 3 feet of Clay, creating an airtight seal so her body would never decay." "I think, eventually, sooner rather than later, the tomb will be explored." "And when the archaeologists go into the tomb of the first emperor, we may find a mummified body." "The terracotta army was one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the 20th century." "And investigators continue to unearth new mysteries." "I think if I was to come back here in 100 years' time," "I would realize that what I've seen today is really just the tip of the iceberg." "It's the beginning of an even more amazing story." "China's first emperor forged an empire through military genius and tyrannical rule." "He built a terracotta army to fight the vanquished spirits of his defeated enemies and to defend a magical tomb." "Beautiful sculpture..." "Exquisite metalwork..." "And engineering on an unprecedented scale..." "Combined to create the ultimate city of the dead and a universe the first emperor could rule forever."