西安: The Terra Cotta Warriors

I was originally going to begin this post with the bold statement that the Terra Cotta Warriors are, well, fake. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't suggesting that the Chinese government fabricated an entire archeological find. Rather, I was of the opinion that the warriors on display were replacements of the originals. There are plenty of legitimate reasons for the government to do this: preservation, research, presentation. But when I mentioned this opinion to my friends back at Yale, the response was unexpectedly strong outrage. Who was I to say that such a massive archeological discovery was fake? After all, my majoring-in-archeology friend pointed out, I was not an archeologist. 

Fair. BUT STILL THEY WEREN'T THERE.

So, for those who have yet to see the Warriors firsthand, here were my original arguments. This also gives people opportunity for rebuttal if they so choose... 

1. As you may or may not be able to tell from the (clickable) pictures, almost all of these soldiers are in excellent condition. The likelihood of being able to excavate so many perfect soldiers in such a concentrated place is… pretty far on the unlikely side of the scale.

2. Additionally, if one looks to the base of each soldier, one can see that the square that makes his base is completely separate from the ground below. By that I mean that you can tell the ground and the warrior’s base have not fused together. Given that these soldiers were buried for two millennia, it’s impossible that they didn’t somewhat merge with the dirt surrounding them. In fact, you can see in the next fourth of the pit just how mixed the statues were with natural earth. 

3. Finally, in the back of the pit, professional archaeologists (we can hope) were working with many broken pieces of warriors and slowly putting them back together. These fallen soldiers looked much more legitimate and much older than their standing brethren.

Now, I thought about it, and I realized there is a semi-reasonable explanation for the sight I beheld. They ARE the original soldiers, but they might have shifted a bit from their original positions. Recall that many soldiers made a world tour not so long ago. Many more soldiers were probably removed, repaired and replaced, as I described in my third point. So I suppose my conclusion has to be that even though the soldiers look too perfect to be real, it doesn't mean that they are not. Conveniently, this makes my memory of seeing Xi'an's famous terra cotta warriors that much sweeter. Now take a look at some of these (CLICKABLE) pictures!