The Terra-Cotta Warriors

The Lawrence High Geography Club visited Xian, China over spring break during 2017.  One of the places we visited were the grounds of the tomb of the first Emperor of China.  He was a little paranoid about how he might be treated by the ghost of his enemies in the after life so he had this larger than life clay army constructed to protect him.  The size and scope of the tomb complex is much larger than people could have every imagined.  The ghost army was discovered by accident in 1974 by a group of farm workers who were digging a well.  I still remember a news story in my grade school Weekly Reader that talked about this amazing find.  Below you will see some images and the thoughts of our students as they visited the pits of the "Ghost Army".

“The Terra-cotta Army was truly an amazing feat.  I was really impressed with the skill and intricacy of statues.”
Vera

“There was so much history in this place.  Each statue had an unique design.  There were so many statues but the amazing thing was there were almost as many vendors illegally selling miniature versions of the statues.”
James

“The history of the site was cool.  I learned about this site at school but it is still hard to imagine that there are that many statues and who knows what else they might find in the future.”
Anna
​

“Pit One was amazing.  So many statues.  It was fun to see them putting them back together.  It was just as amazing that the cherry blossoms were blooming and the whole place smelled like cherry ice cream.”
Mia

“I did not realize that there were three pits of these warriors.  I also did not realize that some of them had  been broken into hundreds of pieces and that archeologists are putting them back together like puzzles.”
Braxton

“The emperor must have been really paranoid to surround his tomb with so many guards.”
Zach