Free Republic

Death traps and mercury poisoning are just some of the concerns facing archaeologists contemplating excavating Qin Shi Huang's tomb, China's first emperor. In 1974, farmers stumbled upon one of the most meaningful archaeological finds in Shaanxi Province, China. While tilling the land, they unearthed a clay figure, only scratching the surface of what lay beneath. Qin Shi Huang's Tomb Subsequent excavations unveiled an array of pits housing thousands of life-sized terracotta army statues depicting soldiers and warhorses. This Terracotta Army seemingly served as protectors of the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, who reigned from 210...

The Jiangcungou landfill in Shaanxi Province, which is the size of around 100 football fields, was designed to take 2,500 tonnes of rubbish per day. But instead it received 10,000 tonnes of waste per day - the most of any landfill site in China. China is one of the world's biggest polluters, and has been struggling for years with the rubbish its 1.4 billion citizens generate. How big is the landfill site? The Jiangcungou landfill in Xi'an city was built in 1994 and was designed to last until 2044. The landfill serves over 8 million citizens. It spans an area...

A team working at the Shimao archaeological site in Shaanxi province made the discovery during a recent excavation of the city’s Neolithic ruins, which are thought to date back to about 2,000BC, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Monday. “The beast-face patterns found in Shimao might have had a significant influence on the motifs of China’s Bronze Age,” Sun Zhouyong, president of the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, said in the report. Researchers unearthed about 30 carvings at the site with designs similar to those found on the elaborately decorated bronze vessels of the Shang and Zhou dynasties (1600-256BC). While most...

An entirely new species of ape has been discovered buried in an ancient tomb in central China. The remains of the now-extinct gibbon, which researchers have named Junzi imperialis, were found in a burial chamber in Shaanxi Province that dates back around 2,300 years. Researchers believe it may be the first ape species to have perished as a direct result of human activities such as hunting. “All of the world’s apes - chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and gibbons - are threatened with extinction today due to human activities, but no ape species were thought to have become extinct as a result...