Word: shihuangdi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...amazing archaeological find: a magnificent buried army of life-sized terra cotta soldiers, rank on rank, some 7,000 strong-charioteers behind chariots and horses, mounted cavalrymen, kneeling archers, thousands of spearmen, each individually sculptured and fully detailed. Scholars determined that the terra cotta army was commissioned by Qin Shihuangdi, the first Emperor of China, as a guard for his tomb, which lies nearly a mile to the west of the dig, under Mount...
...girdled by four miles of wall, lies under a 150-ft-high tumulus where excavation has yet to start. It may or may not be as rewarding as the dig for the warriors, who can thank grave robbers for their remarkable preservation. Only four years after the death of Shihuangdi, marauders made off with all the bronze weapons the soldiers carried, and set fire to the wooden roof that covered the long rows of the terra cotta army. The roof collapsed and buried the soldiers alive, as it were, much as Vesuvius' lava covered the citizens of Pompeii...
...standardized weights and measures, and installed a common currency and written language. He began the construction of his tomb even before he had consolidated his conquests. The work took 36 years. According to a historian writing about a hundred years after Shihuangdi's death in 210 B.C., some 700,000 conscripts worked on the burial chamber, which they "filled with [models of] palaces, towers, and the hundred officials, as well as precious utensils and marvelous rarities. Artisans were ordered to install mechanically triggered crossbows set to shoot any intruder. With quicksilver, the various waterways of the empire, the Yangtze...