Some of the horse skeletons unearthed from the tomb (Weibo user Dynasty Ruins)
Posted on 09/21/2014 10:33:45 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
According to China.org.cn, the tomb complex covers an area measuring 173,325 square metres, stretching 550m in length and 310 meters in width, and is the second largest tomb to have ever been discovered in the country...
Qin Shi Huang (260-210BC) was the first emperor to unify China and enact major economic and political reforms across the country. China had previously consisted of a multitude of warring states and kingdoms, each under the control of feudal overlords, leading to much instability...
After the death of Qin Shi Huang's father, he took the throne at the age of 13.
His mother took a lover Lao Ai and had two illegitimate children. Later, Lao Ai tried to stage a coup with the intention of killing Qin Shi Huang and placing one of the two children on the throne as a puppet ruler.
Qin Shi Huang ordered his half-siblings to be killed and his mother was placed under house arrest, while Lao Ai died during the coup.
Perhaps the first emperor might have had a closer relationship with his grandmother than with his mother.
In later life, he never chose an empress, but sired 50 children on numerous concubines, so he might have had issues with forming relationships with women.
Qin Shi Huang standardised units of measurement, the length of axles of carts and currency, creating the Ban Liang coin. He also created the first unified Chinese script to make one language and communication system.
Although he destroyed many books about the past so that scholars could not compare his reign to rulers before him, he has left the world a lasting legacy in the form of the Great Wall of China, a defensive wall system, and his mausoleum complex, which is also in Xi'an.
(Excerpt) Read more at ibtimes.co.uk ...
Some of the horse skeletons unearthed from the tomb (Weibo user Dynasty Ruins)
Attention to gender imbalance : Terracotta female artists (Bilingual ) (Title translated)
SINA.COM | China News Network
Posted on 9/18/2014 1:06:48 AM by Morgana
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3205218/posts
Chinese history is fascinating. And from this guy-— so much he did, but so much evil, too.
Damn it, they need to suck it up and send some well-prepared tomb robbers in there to discover what’s there before I die.
If you know rivers of mercury might be there then wear a hazmat suit. I doubt any crossbow would retain its draw strength over thousands of years.
Come on, Commies, give it the old Qin try. You can kill the excavators when they come back with pictures and relics.
I believe we’ll see the so-called 1st emperor’s tomb opened within a decade at most. The Chinese are going to need a refresh to keep the tourism dollars flowing in. They have defaced the pyramid tombs in the Chinese interior, presumably a party policy thing rather than indicating their discovery of some cultural history that doesn’t fit their official narrative.
The other major undiscovered site I’d like to see found is Genghis Kahn’s tomb. The Mongols buried him and then erased all signs of it by running horses over and over the burial site to prevent its re-location.
There has been an expedition looking for its location for several seasons, but with no luck
But the technology we have today enables us to find long buried structures via satellite photos. A young female archeologist has already found hundreds of unexplored sites in Egypt including some promising unknown pyramid locations.
Well, I guess I’ll never see it. But I have seen the Terracotta Army a number of times. Once at night. Interesting.
“he might have had issues with forming relationships with women.”
Seems to me like he did pretty well!
“Forming relationships with women”??
He pretty much ordered and took what he wanted. How many wives did he have when he died? isn’t a quarter of Asians (orientals) descended from that guy?
Wow, even in 250 BC men couldn't commit! Gee, if only there had been daytime talkshows so all those concubines could air their grievances.
Genghis Khan is the quarter-of-Asia guy, and I have my doubts that he’s the only one. We get 23 chromosome pairs, one half of each comes from each parent, but at best our grandparents give us an 11-12 split; by the time we get back to our 64 great-great-great-great-grandparents, a minimum of 18 of them have dropped out of our genetic brew, give or take some duplicate lines (cousin marriages, hey, everybody’s doin’ it!).
But anyway, yeah, he formed plenty of relationships with women, and they lasted the rest of their lives, but only a few minutes at a time.
One of those early Chinese emperors was buried.... along with all of his staff, concubines, wives, slaves, the artisans who made the tomb, horses and gold and treasures.
Must have been pretty horrific for those that weren’t dead.
Anyhow, the plot is a very young Joan Collins is a scheming second wife of Khufu who wants to grab all that treasure he is filling his pyramid with. She murders the first wife and sets in motion Khufu's death.
The ending is great. She demands to be recognized as Queen, but the first minister says she must enter the tomb to order its closure. He then engages a huge machine that seals the tomb, with them in it along with the others who were to be sealed in to ease Pharaoh's way into the afterlife.
It was meant to be horrifying. I suppose in 1955 it may have been. Today, Collins' acting seems campy and I actually laughed during the last scene.
“The tomb is being sealed, your Highness.”
Lol!
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