The Terracotta Army

As you may (or may not) have seen from my previous few posts, Kyle and myself got the chance to travel to China! We got to see and experience a number of absolutely amazing things while we were there. One of the places that we visited was the city Xi'an to see the Terracotta Warriors, and it was absolutely astounding.

The site consisted of three separate 'pits' and the main tomb. (We, very sadly, did not get to go inside and see the tomb part of it because it costed extra money that we didn't have). But the tomb, apparently, has actual deadly booby traps in it in places. Straight up Indian Jones style. I would hate to be the person who figured out that it was booby trapped though...

However, we did get to go see all three pits of the army. A couple of farmers were drilling for oil when they hit one, and that's how they were discovered. An excavation team was sent in not long after and the exhibit was born! They also came to find that the oldest known brick wall in China was built there, right where the entrance to the Pit One would have been. The crazy thing was is that they are still working on excavating and digging up warriors and their horses to this day! It is also really phenomenal because any broken soldiers that they find they number, piece back together and then place back where there were found in formation. Pit One was the largest of the three pits by far and was home to hundreds of the clay statues.

These are a couple of the chariot horses.

Above two are ones that have been rebuilt.

One of the stations where they work on assembling them.

Above four is another station.

Yet another station where they can be put back together. Also where one of the horses was being worked on.

Pit Two was one of the least excavated pits out of the three. It was also quite a bit smaller than Pit One. Pit Two mainly housed broken bits and an excellent view of where the roof of the place was.

All of the ridges on the top is where the roof was/is and the big lumps going down the middle are the walls that separate the rows of formations.

Chariot wheel.

Lots of broken bits.

These are all numbered.

Pit Three was the smallest pit of all of them and also the deepest. Archeologists spent the whole year of 1977 to finish excavating Pit Three. It reaches down about sixteen feet. People who have studied and do study the warriors say that Pit Three is the command center of all of the groups in all other pits. It consists of 68 warriors and one chariot pulled by four horses.

Visiting the Terracotta Army was incredible and I am extremely lucky to say that I got the chance to. It was an absolutely amazing phenomenon to get to witness and learn a bit more about. I am grateful that I got the chance to see it.