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quinta-feira, 20 de novembro de 2014

China’s 7,000-strong Terracotta Army all modelled on individual soldiers, 3D imaging reveals

One of world’s greatest archaeological finds provides an even stronger glimpse of the past than we ever realised 



When it was unearthed by a man digging a well in rural China almost exactly 40 years ago, the Terracotta Army took the world by storm to become one of the greatest archaeological finds of all time.


Now, four decades later, scientists have discovered the first evidence which they say could prove that each of the clay figures in the army is modelled on an individual, real soldier – offering an unprecedented insight into China’s earliest empire.

Composed of around 7,000 soldiers and including intricate details such as horses, bows and arrows and bronze swords, the clay army had lain hidden underground for 2,000 years after it was buried alongside China’s first emperor Qin Shi Huang.

One of the greatest mysteries surrounding the army, besides how such a huge emperor’s tomb could have been lost for so long, was the extent to which the soldiers represent individual people of their time.

Despite the soldiers’ varying facial expressions and hairstyles, it has been speculated that such a large clay installation would have required an almost factory-like system of production, churning out lines of standard ears, noses, mouths and so on that were then assembled into full soldiers.

Exploring the precise detail of the clay soldiers has proved incredibly challenging over the years – the site is more or less completely closed off due to the army’s fragile nature. The soldiers are packed so tightly together that it is impossible to move between them without risking damage.
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But using the latest 3D imaging technology, a team of archaeologists from University College London (UCL) and from Emperor Qin Shi Huang's Mausoleum Site Museum in Lintong, China, have been able to digitally recreated soldiers from the army for further study.

According to a National Geographic report, the team was able to accurately map the ears of a sample of 30 soldiers from a safe distance and then study their geometries back in the lab.

UCL’s Andrew Bevan explained that human ears are so distinct they can be “as effective as a fingerprint”. If the army truly represented real people, their ears would be unique.

Sure enough, not only were no two ears in the group exactly the same – but they differed to the same extent as would be expected in a human population.

Archaeologist Marcos Martinón-Torres told National Geographic: “Based on this initial sample, the terra-cotta army looks like a series of portraits of real warriors.”

The initial results support previous suggestions that the army was in fact produced in a large series of workshops rather than assembly lines. The study will now be opened up to a wider sample size to confirm the findings.


fonte: @edisonmariotti #edisonmariotti http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/chinas-7000strong-terracotta-army-all-modelled-on-individual-soldiers-3d-imaging-reveals-9872711.html

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