4) Terracotta Warriors: A Larger Workforce Than Croydon
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The Terracotta Army are a dazzling bunch of human sized statues who were buried with Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China in 210—209 BC. The army was only discovered in the 70’s and it’s so huge that we still don’t know exactly how many replica soldiers there are. One estimate reckons there to be 8,000 soldiers with 130 chariots, 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses.
According to one source, as many as 700,000 workers were involved in the ambitious project — that’s twice the population of Croydon.
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What’s the most impressive thing about having 8,000 soldiers lovingly formed out of terracotta? Well, the fact that there’s 8,000 of them for starters. But to make the ancient art installation even more incredible there are rumours that at one point there were multiple rivers of mercury flowing through the tomb. At first, archaeologists weren’t sure whether the rivers of mercury were just a fabrication by an ancient scholar, but after analysis of the soil in the tomb returned high readings for mercury, it seems that it may have been true after all.
Shimmering rivers of mercury must have looked pretty amazing don’t you reckon?
