The Terracotta Army was discovered in China
On this day · 29 March 1974
Farmers sinking a well near Xi'an in 1974 struck the buried clay army guarding China's first emperor.
On March 29, 1974, a group of farmers led by Yang Zhifa were digging a well in drought-stricken Lintong County, near Xi’an in Shaanxi Province. Instead of water they hit fragments of life-size pottery, the first hint of an entire army hidden underground for more than two thousand years.
What they had stumbled into was the funerary guard of Qin Shi Huang, the emperor who unified China in the 3rd century BCE. Archaeologists eventually uncovered thousands of soldiers, horses, and chariots arrayed in battle formation, each figure modeled with distinct features.
No two faces among the warriors are quite alike.
The site, part of the emperor’s vast mausoleum complex, became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987 and remains only partly excavated. Decades on, archaeologists are still lifting figures from the earth, which makes the farmers’ accidental well one of the most consequential holes ever dug.
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