In 221 B.C., emperor Qin Shi Huang united China's various warring states into a single empire for the first time. Feeling he deserved a few props for this significant task, he set to work building himself a magnificent tomb. The Terracotta Warriors were meant to be the guardians of his tomb in the afterlife. Standing on average 5-6 feet tall, each warrior has distinctive features and appears to have been modeled on real people, which is wild given that there are an estimated 18,000 of them. Even more fantastic is the fact that all of them were originally painted in significant detail, wore leather armor, and carried real bows, swords, spears, and crossbows. The 2000+ year-old steel swords were allegedly still sharp when they were discovered, and there were also trace remains of poison on the arrowheads. Archaeologists have also found terracotta horses and chariots. Shi Huang wasn't playin'! One of the fascinating things about the Warriors is that there was no record of them or of the emperor's tomb in modern times, and they were found completely by accident only thirty or so years ago by a few peasants digging a well. Unfortunately, the lighting inside the hangars covering the excavation pits is kinda crappy, so my camera wouldn't take very good photos. The video seemed to work okay though·