Terracotta Warriors fight enemy of time

For a few minutes a couple of weeks ago, I imagined what the real men who formed the basis of the Terracotta Army outside Xi’an, Shaanxi province, were like.

What would it have been like to sit among them? What would they have talked about? What was on their meal plates?

I bet some of those conversations 2,200 years ago would have been about the young emperor whose arrogance brought them to this ancient capital.

Some may have talked about a great wall being constructed to protect the first Emperor Qin Shi Huang from marauding enemies.

Many of those conversations were likely about mundane matters — where they could find fresh herbs, vegetables, spices — or even some animals — to add to their porridge of rice or millets.

It was a fleet, but interesting reverie on my part. But, these several thousand men are not real. They were placed in kilns in pieces, baked and assembled to look as if they were in formation, ready for battle, at the command of their well-armored generals.

Artists, who made each one just a bit different, crafted their faces and heads — down to their unique ears. Perhaps each was based on a real man. More on that later. But, these warriors were created to protect Emperor Qin upon his death.

One must wonder about Qin and his insistence on such an epic legacy.

He had the warriors built to stand guard near his mountain tomb.

The first emperor, who reigned from 220 BC to 210 BC and was seen as a god, is buried a short walk away. His mausoleum is surrounded by a moat of poisonous mercury; the government has not allowed its excavation to protect treasures that could be damaged even with current technology.

These Terracotta Warriors have stood for two millennia.

As the centuries passed, wooden roofs above the statues’ heads finally gave way. The sands of time literally buried these majestic men, leaving them seemingly forgotten.

But their lonely vigil ended one day in March 1974, when farmer Yang Zhifa, digging for a well about 1.5 kilometers from Qin’s tomb, found a piece of a statue.

That is how the warriors were uncovered to become the Eighth Wonder of the World and China’s second most-important archaeological find, after the Great Wall.

Yang was paid about 30 yuan for the discovery; he signs his popular book now and earns a good living.

Ironically, the Terracotta Warriors now are much more famous than their arrogant emperor, who lived until the ripe old age of 50. Millions have visited them in justified admiration and awe since they were opened to the public a few years after their discovery.

We marvel at the artistry and unique appearance of each one.

Which takes us back to the ears. In 2015, a team of archaeologists from University College London studied 30 of the warriors to look for similarities, using advanced imagery and computer analysis. They found little was similar from one statue to the next, down to 30 sets of dissimilar ears.

This requires more study, they said, but the implication is that each head may be unique, perhaps molded from an actual soldier, forever preserving his appearance.

Now that’s a long life.