The Greatest Tomb on Earth: Secrets of Ancient China
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00:00I'm Dan Snow, and I've come to China to investigate the single largest burial site on earth.
00:15Starting with its greatest treasure, the terracotta army.
00:20That is one of the most wonderful views in the world.
00:26Over a thousand warriors guarding their ruler for eternity.
00:33With the possible exception of the Great Wall, there's nothing more Chinese than these warriors.
00:39And yet, a new theory suggests that this great icon of China may be guarding an explosive secret.
00:50New evidence suggests that the inspiration for all this could have come from the West.
01:09It's often thought that China grew up isolated from the West,
01:13until Italian explorer Marco Polo came here in the 13th century.
01:18But if we could prove that wrong by a thousand years, it would rewrite the history books.
01:26To help in my search, I'm joined by two expert investigators, Alice Roberts and Albert Lin.
01:34As our medical scientist, Alice will be examining any human remains buried here.
01:39This doesn't look like a typically East Asian skull.
01:45Albert will use the latest imaging technology to try and find the first roads joining East and West.
01:52If I'm right, then what I'm standing on right here could be one of the roads built by the first emperor.
01:59And I'll be interrogating the secrets of the emperor's mausoleum, looking for the traces of Western technology.
02:06Oh, look at that! That's fantastic.
02:10Together, we'll be exploring an extraordinary possibility,
02:16that East and West were connected far earlier than anyone thought possible.
02:22And that connection changed the face of China.
02:28This is the starting point for our investigation.
02:32One of the most hallowed sites in all of China.
02:36The burial grounds of the first emperor.
02:42Oh, yeah. That, according to legend, is the first emperor's tomb.
02:49Albert is setting out to survey the entire burial site by climbing the tomb.
03:01In over 2,000 years, no-one has been inside this sacred earth pyramid.
03:09It's pretty incredible.
03:11The emperor's tomb is right beneath my feet.
03:16He was buried 50 metres below the surface of this mound.
03:21And the Chinese government has decided to protect it further, by denying access to the public.
03:28This is the tomb of the first emperor.
03:32And the Chinese government has decided to protect it further, by denying access to the public.
03:41It's like being on top of Tutankhamen's tomb, but not being able to get inside.
03:47Maybe for good reason. Nobody really knows what's in there.
03:55Even from the top of the overgrown tomb, there's only one way to see the surrounding site.
04:01OK, let's go.
04:16Wow, look at that.
04:18You know, nobody's ever been allowed to fly here.
04:21This is unprecedented access.
04:24The nearby hills are studded with top-secret military installations.
04:29And it's taken us months of negotiating with the Chinese army to get permission to do this.
04:38But once in the air, it's clear it was worth the effort.
04:44Look at that. It just keeps on going. It just expands.
04:47The exterior walls of the mound are over there.
04:50At 100 square kilometres, this is the biggest burial site on earth.
04:57200 times bigger than Egypt's Valley of the Kings.
05:03Can you imagine building this for yourself?
05:07For your afterlife?
05:09And that's just what's visible on the surface.
05:14Beneath these fields, archaeologists have uncovered a vast buried world
05:19of more than 600 pits and structures.
05:23Each one, a goldmine of archaeological riches.
05:29Almost every day, there are new discoveries,
05:32and we have unprecedented access to them.
05:37Anyone could potentially link China to the outside world in the 3rd century BC.
05:45This was the era of classical ancient Greece,
05:49a time that was always assumed when China existed in total isolation.
05:56That assumption started to crumble because of the first discovery they made here.
06:03The Terracotta Army.
06:06It's not these buildings over here.
06:10It's the building...
06:12It's that one. It's the one beyond.
06:16The Terracotta Army lies a kilometre and a half away to the east.
06:23Today, it's one of the biggest tourist attractions on earth,
06:27but few people realise this extraordinary collection of figures
06:31contains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in China's history.
06:39No-one has ever been able to explain their origins.
06:46The mystery began when all this was farmers' fields.
06:51And one of those fields yielded a life-size terracotta head.
06:56It was 1974.
06:59Look at that.
07:01So what's happening here?
07:03This is right at the beginning of the excavation, I presume.
07:07So that's you?
07:09Yeah. Fantastic.
07:1342-year-old Yuan Zhongyi was the first archaeologist sent here from Beijing.
07:36What was the thing which most surprised you?
08:07Yuan's first week here turned into decades,
08:11and today I'm coming to meet the person who's continuing his pioneering work,
08:16his former assistant, Janice Zhu Jinli.
08:19Hi, Janice. Yeah, hi.
08:21How are you? I'm fine, how are you?
08:23Very good.
08:25They believe the Emperor's Terracotta Army is an exact copy of the real thing.
08:31What I really noticed looking around is, I think they all look different.
08:35I can't see any two that are the same.
08:37Some of them have got a bit of a belly on them.
08:39Some of them are very, very tall.
08:41Were they all individually crafted?
08:43They're really quite individual.
08:46You can't tell them apart.
08:48You can't tell them apart.
08:50You can't tell them apart.
08:52You can't tell them apart.
08:54You can't tell them apart.
08:56You can't tell them apart.
08:59You see the moustache is different, and also the eye shape.
09:04This stunning realism amplifies the great mystery surrounding these figures.
09:09Where do they come from?
09:11Because they're nothing like any figure made in China before them.
09:19Let me show you the Terracotta figures made in China before the Qing Terracotta War.
09:24OK. So the figurines is really small.
09:27OK. In small size, about 10 inches.
09:30Oh, so tiny. So that's why tiny.
09:32And suddenly they start producing this.
09:34Yeah, and this about two metres.
09:36So something has changed. Yes.
09:38These warriors are far more sophisticated, much bigger and much more realistic.
09:41Yeah, much more detailed.
09:43But were they all made in China?
09:45Yeah. Let me show you the stamps here.
09:47This is the name of the artisan.
09:49So this Terracotta Warrior is produced locally.
09:53The big question is, how did Chinese craftsmen
09:56achieve such an incredible transformation?
10:01Like going from a stick man to a Leonardo in a single step.
10:08Something remarkable happened here 2,200 years ago.
10:14To understand quite how remarkable, I need to put it in a global context.
10:20The world at the time of the first emperor, around 220 BC.
10:27Over here, right on the eastern edge of the Eurasian landmass,
10:31you've got the Chinese world,
10:34a competing cluster of mini-states over there.
10:38Over on the west of Eurasia, you've got the Roman Empire
10:43starting to expand over here, and you've got Greece over there.
10:48Now, what's going on artistically in east and west
10:51is very different in the 3rd century.
10:53This is classic Greek art.
10:56Absolute high-water mark of artistic expression.
10:59Beautiful, metre and a half tall, intricately painted, human in its look.
11:05But over here, in the Chinese world, as Janice has showed me,
11:09you've got that, just centimetres tall, far more basic.
11:13Then something changes.
11:15In fact, everything changes. There's a revolution.
11:18Suddenly, in 220 BC, and just after that,
11:21you get the Terracotta Warriors, light years ahead of what's gone before.
11:27It starts to look far less like its predecessor,
11:30and far more like what's going on in the western world.
11:35Both life-size, both life-like,
11:38attempts at realism, using paint and the sculpture
11:42to reflect the realities of the human body, the human form.
11:46And this couldn't be more important,
11:48because it's always been assumed that China developed in isolation.
11:52But if that's not the case,
11:54if the first emperor of China imported western ideas and techniques
11:58to create his extraordinary necropolis,
12:01well, that forces us to completely rewrite the history books.
12:13If you're going to rewrite the history books, you need evidence.
12:16You need a lot of evidence.
12:18And I think there isn't enough evidence just for the Terracotta Warriors.
12:22This is a theory that turns on its head centuries of thinking
12:25about the relationship between China and the West.
12:28You can't just base it all on one statue.
12:31It just seems that there are so many mysteries associated with this place.
12:35It's phenomenal.
12:37It just feels as though there's an awful lot more to be discovered.
12:40There was a history, Chinese history,
12:42so maybe there's a lot to the stories that were written in this historical text.
12:47It's amazing to have those texts as well. How fantastic.
12:50OK, this is it. It's called the Xi Jin.
12:52We got 20 pages of a text that was written over 100 years later
12:57by the first Chinese historian called Sima Qian.
13:00He talks about the first emperor's tomb,
13:02but he doesn't even mention the Terracotta Warriors.
13:04They don't even get a mention.
13:06What is now one of the most important sites on earth
13:09doesn't even get a mention in this.
13:11And unfortunately he doesn't mention foreigners
13:14or people from beyond Central Asia.
13:16So there are gaps in the history.
13:18There's big gaps in the history.
13:20So we're relying on you guys.
13:22Well, you know, the extent of this place is huge.
13:25So what we're looking at actually here is the main burial mound,
13:28and the Terracotta Warriors are pretty far off
13:31to the east side of the entire burial complex.
13:35And, you know, what I think is the interesting question is,
13:39is there a road network that extends from this?
13:41Do you think you could ever find connections with points further west?
13:44It's hard to say, because it's going to go...
13:46You know, obviously the roads meander and turn over time.
13:49But I think what's exciting is if we can start to use different technologies
13:53and maybe we can start to see the traces
13:55of where these roads were going from this one very important place, obviously.
13:59I'm really interested to know if there's anything else here
14:02in terms of the archaeology, in terms of the material culture
14:05that could point to a Western influence or a Western connection,
14:10or indeed, you know, any evidence of Westerners ever having been here.
14:14The assumption, I think, is that this whole site was built, what,
14:17in ten years or so, is that right? Very fast, yeah.
14:20And so it seems like the evolution of the material
14:23and the types of artistry that was created over time
14:26is pretty remarkable from the beginning to the end.
14:29How it could just spring into being with no tradition of it at all.
14:38So far, our only evidence lies in the terracotta warriors themselves.
14:44If they were created with some kind of outside influence,
14:48can we find traces of it in the way they were made?
14:54To find out, Alice and I are going to take a pottery lesson.
15:00We've found an instructor, Mr Han,
15:03who runs a factory producing replica warriors.
15:08He's also studied how the originals were made over 2,000 years ago.
15:13What do you do with this? We're building it up.
15:22Apparently, the bodies are not sculpted,
15:25it's a kind of coil pot technique most of us have tried at school.
15:33Looking at the ranks of terracotta soldiers,
15:35it's clear their bodies are variations on standard shapes,
15:39with arms, legs and torsos made up of a series of clay cylinders joined together.
15:47Ooh, we're building it out, are we? OK.
15:50And I suppose, really, when it comes down to it,
15:53this is an unusual type of pot,
15:55but it really is just a big coil pot, isn't it?
15:59What gives each warrior its sense of real, distinct character
16:03is the head and the face.
16:09And, again, it's all about ease of production.
16:13The mould, we got it. This makes more sense. Moulding makes sense to me.
16:18Right, one, two, three.
16:21Yes! This is art.
16:24In fact, making the head turns out to be even easier than the body,
16:28and it seems anyone with a bit of practice
16:31could produce heads pretty quickly using this moulding technique.
16:42Oh, look at that! Look at that!
16:45That's fantastic. Hold on his nose, needs a little bit of work there.
16:48There's something really magical about putting a lump of clay into a mould like that
16:53and then suddenly what you've got is a face looking back at you.
16:56Brilliant.
16:58The key to this is the original head from which the mould was made.
17:03Someone had to sculpt that head using techniques that were unheard of in China.
17:11This is our first clear sign of an outside influence.
17:19From the maker's marks on the original warriors,
17:22they have identified just five separate workshops making the entire terracotta army.
17:32So the mass production of thousands of warriors
17:35could have been based on a combination of skilled Chinese potters
17:39guided by a small team of outside instructors.
17:42Is it possible those instructors came from the West?
17:49A few miles from the Emperor's mausoleum lies his ancient capital city, Xi'an.
18:00It's really only in the last 20 years that China has opened up to the Western world.
18:05And it's not hard to imagine how extraordinary it would have been for Westerners
18:09to find themselves here in the 3rd century BC.
18:16In a totally alien culture on the other side of the world.
18:22If that is what happened, it took someone of extraordinary vision to make it happen.
18:28China's first emperor, Qin Shihuangdi.
18:35This was a revolutionary ruler who transcended all the boundaries of his age.
18:42In 221 BC, at the age of 40, he put an end to 250 years of war.
18:49Conquering the world was his only goal.
18:53And forging the civilisation we know today as China.
18:58This was the ancient foundation of the modern superpower.
19:03The emperor dreamt that his nation would last forever.
19:07And he wanted to stamp his mark on it.
19:13Yet, if he were to become the next emperor,
19:16he would stamp his mark on it.
19:21Yet, if he recruited Westerners to help him create his mausoleum,
19:25bringing them here could have been one of the greatest challenges of his reign.
19:33There is no history of an established route in 3rd century BC connecting China with the West.
19:41The Silk Road is not mentioned by name for centuries.
19:47So did the emperor open this world-famous highway
19:50long before the history books acknowledge?
19:55Our only contemporary reference does suggest road building
19:58was one of the emperor's major priorities.
20:02Now, according to the Shi Ji, in 220 BC,
20:06after a tour of inspection over terrible, bumpy roads,
20:11the first emperor ordered the construction of a series of speedways
20:15radiating out from the capital.
20:18But is there any trace of that network?
20:25The mausoleum's archaeology team has invited Albert
20:28to see a new excavation very close to the emperor's tomb.
20:32Good.
20:43Lead archaeologist Zhang Weijing
20:45believes they've uncovered an ancient road.
20:51I'll peel this tarp back.
20:55At first sight, it looks narrow for an imperial highway.
20:59OK.
21:00So, you know, when I first came in here,
21:02I thought that they were excavating the length of the road.
21:05I mean, it's, you know, it looks about the size of a road.
21:08But what we're seeing from the tracks
21:10is that actually the road is going this way.
21:14Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, you really get a sense of it here.
21:21Zhang believes this is the cross-section of a vast multi-lane highway
21:25built to bring men and materials to the emperor's tomb.
21:30Towards the mausoleum.
21:33OK, so this was part of the, I guess, the construction process, you know.
21:38Wow, look at that.
21:41When you look at, you know, the size of that mound,
21:44there must have been a lot of material that was moved
21:46to build basically a mountain.
21:49These are the tracks of carts
21:52that have pressed down in the earth
21:55of the Qin dynasty over 2,000 years ago.
22:00The huge width of this highway
22:02shows the Chinese were masters of road engineering on a vast scale,
22:07capable of building the national network described in the Xi Ji.
22:13Perhaps reaching beyond China itself.
22:20We need to find that hidden network.
22:24Which means Albert will need the latest aerial sensing technology.
22:30My own investigation, meanwhile, is gathering pace.
22:37The terracotta army gave us the first traces of possible Western input.
22:43But I've just come across a paper written by a German academic
22:46describing a set of terracotta figures...
22:50..whose bodies show unmistakable signs of a Western hand.
22:56No-one knows what these figures are meant to be.
22:59The Chinese call them the acrobats.
23:08They were discovered in a small pit very close to the emperor's tomb,
23:13where I've arranged to meet Dr Lucas Nickel.
23:20Ah, Lucas, hi.
23:22Dan, nice seeing you.
23:23It's very good to be here. I've read your paper.
23:25Well, have a look at this one.
23:29Here we have a figure with a semi-naked body.
23:32He has just this little piece of cloth around his hip,
23:35and what we see is the building of a body.
23:38You see, if you look at the arms, we have a musculature,
23:41we have an idea, an understanding of the bones.
23:44Ligaments in his hand, also big muscles over the kneecap.
23:47If you remember, the terracotta warriors
23:49are basically standing that high.
23:51It's like a torso with arms and legs just stuck in.
23:54But there's no attempt to build a proper working human body.
24:00There are believed to be more than 50 of these acrobats,
24:04and the conservation team is still trying to piece them together
24:08from thousands of fragments.
24:10Unlike the terracotta warriors, they're not made to a template.
24:16Each one appears to be individually sculpted
24:19by an experienced artist.
24:26This is now a totally different quality of sculpture.
24:30They want to show an anatomically correct movement.
24:34In a quite acceptable, believable way,
24:36he puts one foot in front, the other one behind,
24:39and you see that the whole body, the legs, the knees,
24:42the hip and the upper part of the body are moving along.
24:46Your first impression of that is classically Greek.
24:49Yes, absolutely no question about that.
24:51It's something we only find in Greece.
24:54Only the Greeks would do that.
24:56The people who made this had an understanding
24:59of how Greeks would make sculpture.
25:01That is extremely surprising.
25:03To show a human body in this kind of convincing,
25:06lifelike stance, that is extremely complicated.
25:09That is something we know in Greece,
25:11it had taken centuries to learn this.
25:13But suddenly, at the end of the 3rd century BC in China,
25:16we get that, and that is very close to a Greek idea.
25:19So you're seriously suggesting that that statue
25:22might have been sculpted by a Greek sculptor
25:25who came all the way out here and made it for the emperor?
25:28Well, I imagine a Greek sculptor may have come here
25:31to train the locals.
25:34It's just...
25:37I mean, that's amazing.
25:42This feels like a huge breakthrough.
25:45Possible evidence of Western instructors working in China
25:502,200 years ago.
25:53Perhaps the same people who helped to create the Terracotta Army.
26:00But how did the emperor know where to find them?
26:04How did they get here?
26:16At the end of the 4th century BC,
26:19Alexander the Great bursts out of Greece here, out of Macedon,
26:23and conquers a huge empire in Asia.
26:28So Alexander the Great's empire reaches its high-water mark
26:31around about the time of his death, 323 BC.
26:37Then, well, from 220 BC onwards,
26:41another young, charismatic leader, Qin Shi Huangdi,
26:45creates the beginnings of modern China, unifying China.
26:50Now, did this first emperor,
26:53Now, did this first emperor of China
26:58take advantage of the narrow gap that now existed
27:01between the Greek world and his Chinese world
27:04to import ideas, techniques, materials, maybe even people?
27:11Suddenly, China doesn't seem so isolated.
27:18Albert is already planning his search
27:20for the road that might have bridged that gap.
27:22That's about a mile, right? So about a mile from here to here.
27:25While Alice is looking for the human evidence
27:27of foreigners who might have come here.
27:33So far, they've found more than 600 separate pits
27:37in this vast mausoleum complex.
27:42And one of the things they've discovered
27:44is that the emperor didn't just take terracotta figures to the next world.
27:53Real people were sacrificed to go with him.
28:01This skull is from one of 99 shallow graves
28:04just north of the emperor's tomb,
28:07suggesting their occupants were very close to the emperor himself.
28:13The first revelation is that this skull, like all the others,
28:18belonged to a young woman.
28:23And Alice has found a passage in the Shi Ji
28:26that could explain their mass burial.
28:30Of the women in the harem of the former ruler,
28:32it would be unfitting to have those who bore no sons sent elsewhere.
28:37All were accordingly ordered to accompany the dead man
28:41to the next world.
28:44All were accordingly ordered to accompany the dead man,
28:48which resulted in the death of many women.
28:51If this skull belonged to one of those women,
28:53she was sacrificed for failing to give the emperor a son.
29:00Alice is going to see if she can find out more about this girl's life
29:04as well as her untimely death from lead archaeologist Mr Zhu.
29:09So you think these bones could possibly be
29:12the female consorts of the emperor, the concubines?
29:39They also have poignant evidence of how she lived.
30:10These pearls are absolutely beautiful.
30:14But we are looking at the jewellery that was worn by a woman
30:18who lived in the third century BC,
30:20a woman who, during life, enjoyed a special position at court
30:24and high status.
30:26But she was killed, potentially brutally killed.
30:31And her only crime was to have been a concubine
30:36of the first emperor of China.
30:40This tragic story may yet have another twist.
30:48Before China was unified, local rulers used concubines
30:52to forge alliances with neighbouring states through marriage.
30:59It's quite possible the first emperor took that idea
31:02beyond China's borders.
31:05The mausoleum is beginning a DNA study
31:07to try and trace the girl's origins.
31:11The problem is, unlocking those secrets could take many months.
31:17Alice's search for Westerners in China continues.
31:23This is the tomb of the first emperor of China.
31:26It's the only tomb in the world.
31:29Alice's search for Westerners in China continues.
31:47Albert is ready to start his aerial search
31:50for the emperor's road network.
31:53What we want to do is create a systematic...
31:56..a systematic path, so this is...
31:59They're staying close to the tomb,
32:01where they already know that there was road construction.
32:05Shall we try it?
32:11Albert has borrowed a prototype, super-sensitive infrared camera.
32:17This is the first time it's ever been used in aerial archaeology.
32:23Look for time. Oh, there we are, at the very edge.
32:26And we're looking for a change in the temperature.
32:29The blue area is where it's a little bit colder.
32:31The red area is where it's a little bit warmer.
32:33And we're talking very subtle amounts here.
32:36The camera is able to pick up the faintest traces
32:39left deep in the earth by centuries of human disturbance.
32:45Albert adds this to satellite imagery,
32:48creating a comprehensive deep-time picture of the site.
32:59And right away, there is something that Zhang hasn't seen before.
33:03ZHANG SPEAKS CHINESE
33:13A diagonal line on the landscape.
33:16It just doesn't seem to belong.
33:22ZHANG SPEAKS CHINESE
33:27So he's saying that if this is man-made,
33:30then it's a game-changer.
33:34Really exciting.
33:42Could this be the first sign of the road network?
33:47The only way to know is to get out into the field and do a ground survey,
33:52to make sure that what Albert's seen from above
33:55is nothing obviously modern like a sewer pipe or gas line.
34:00ZHANG SPEAKS CHINESE
34:11All right.
34:14Let's go take a look.
34:18This is really cool.
34:23It's clearly not a pipeline.
34:26ZHANG SPEAKS CHINESE
34:30At least, not any more.
34:48OK. And where we're standing right now is right here.
34:53And what I didn't know until just this moment was what this was.
34:57But now I'm standing here, and what it is, is this massive trench
35:02over six feet below the surface of the rest of these farms
35:07with no real explanation for its existence.
35:10There's no reason to have this huge trench here.
35:12There's no river here. There's nothing else.
35:14But if I'm right, then what I'm standing on right here
35:18could be one of the roads, of the network of roads
35:21built by the first emperor.
35:26It's a breakthrough, but in the wrong direction.
35:29The new line goes north-east towards the interior of China.
35:34We need something heading north-west.
35:42So it's back to the aerial data.
35:49CLICKING
35:52There's this faint signature of some kind of anomaly
35:56that's running north-west.
35:59You see that right there?
36:03It looks like it's meeting right at the same point.
36:06And it looks like it's the exact same feature that we just ground-truthed.
36:10What looks like to be another road here.
36:15And they're literally radiating out.
36:19Our big question is, where would the western road be going to?
36:23And how far?
36:26The rest of that ancient road is buried under the modern landscape.
36:30But there is a natural line it could have followed 2,000 years ago,
36:35along the Wei River Valley.
36:38And there is a possible destination, described in the Shi Ji.
36:44The most western extent of the empire at the time
36:49was this town called Lin Tao.
36:53The Shi Ji describes it as a garrison town.
36:57It was part of this story of the Great Wall.
37:03The first emperor created the first Great Wall of China.
37:08Over 5,000km long, the wall's starting point
37:12for the piece of construction was at Lin Tao.
37:17It must have been a huge project.
37:20There's builders there, there's soldiers there.
37:23Communication was key.
37:25And the roads that this person built, the first emperor,
37:28they were the key to that communication.
37:31OK.
37:35Albert, how's it going?
37:37Hey, Dan. What have you found?
37:39We're actually seeing, around the first emperor's tomb site,
37:43a road going west.
37:45Really? Really?
37:47The farthest it would go, that we would know of so far,
37:50would be this town of Lin Tao,
37:52the most western extent of the entire empire.
37:55That is very interesting information. Congratulations.
38:01If there was a road going from here as far as Lin Tao,
38:05you wouldn't find any historic reference connecting Lin Tao to the west.
38:15What's great is there is actually another source that we've got.
38:19And it's not often talked about, but it was just shown to me the other day
38:23and it's absolutely fascinating.
38:25It says, in the 26th year of the emperor, which is about 220BC,
38:28in Lin Tao, it said,
38:31That's tall men. I love that description, tall men.
38:34They didn't have a word for statue.
38:36But this is the best bit.
38:41How interesting. Statues.
38:43That is what would become known as the Silk Route through there,
38:46so Lin Tao is perfectly placed. That makes a lot of sense.
38:49And there's more written about these Lin Tao statues.
38:54Apparently, the emperor had giant copies made in bronze
38:57to adorn his palace in Xi'an.
39:00It says, weapons from all over the empire were confiscated
39:03and melted down to be used in casting bells, bell stands,
39:06and 12 men made of metal.
39:08He's melting down all of those weapons and creating these statues
39:12as a symbol of his power over that empire.
39:15It's straight out the playbook of the great conquerors of the Mediterranean,
39:19the Alexanders, the Ramesses, erecting massive statues
39:22to reinforce their own might, dominance and legitimacy.
39:28Sadly, there are no traces left of the emperor's original bronze statues.
39:34But the story suggests he wanted the kudos of exotic foreign culture.
39:40And we may have discovered the origins of the sculptors
39:43who brought that culture to China,
39:45thanks to a new discovery made by Dr Lucas Nickel.
39:52Ever seen something comparable?
39:55That looks very familiar.
39:57Or that one.
39:59That is very similar to the stuff we're seeing here at the Terracotta Army.
40:02Absolutely. I mean, this idea of realism
40:05and this idea to try to make a believable figure,
40:09that is totally comparable to what we see in China.
40:12That is a sculpture made in Kharchayan in Afghanistan,
40:15where the Greeks established a lot of cities at this time.
40:19What we have here, that's a local ruler
40:22employing Greek craftsmen to make sculptures for his palace.
40:26These Greek craftsmen had the idea,
40:29well, why not even move further east to the Chinese,
40:33of which we know that they are extremely rich?
40:36And that's going on in what is now Afghanistan.
40:39I mean, that's not very, very far from here, really.
40:42It's about the same distance to Athens as it is to the Chinese capital Xi'an.
40:48Albert believes he's found the start of the Emperor's Road network
40:53and is hunched that that network could go much further west
40:57seems to be correct.
41:00Hey, Albert, how are you doing?
41:02I've seen some good stuff as well. Oh, yeah?
41:05Some fun stuff.
41:07Lucas just showed me some extraordinary images of art from Afghanistan
41:12on the borders of modern-day China
41:16and on what would become known as the Silk Road.
41:19Looks quite familiar. Looks quite familiar.
41:22I mean, we're not talking about people coming from Athens,
41:25we're talking from Afghanistan, Tajikistan here.
41:27Basically what we're saying is that very similar art styles,
41:30very similar time frame,
41:32and a bunch of connection points between these two.
41:35Bang, east and west.
41:37Cultural exchange.
41:40We know the Emperor has western-style statues created for his capital.
41:45We think there were itinerant Greek sculptors
41:48moving east to a city in what is now Afghanistan.
41:51And it seems there was probably a road linking Xi'an
41:55at least as far as Lintau.
41:57So a picture is emerging of a cultural highway
42:01between west and east,
42:03a prototype Silk Road.
42:09But the picture is not yet complete.
42:13Hello?
42:14Oh, hey, Alice. How are you doing?
42:16We've got archaeology, we've got a culture of art, techniques of art.
42:21What we don't have is any people. You're the people person.
42:24It would be nice to see some evidence.
42:26I'm headed now to the Shanxi Institute of Archaeology.
42:30I'm hoping that I'm going to see some of the mausoleum workers' bones.
42:36I've talked to the archaeologists
42:38and they've hinted that there might be some kind of western connection there,
42:42so I'm really intrigued to have a look at them.
42:45The remains Alice is going to see
42:47were found several kilometres east of the Terracotta Army.
42:51They're believed to be tomb workers
42:53because they were buried in a mass grave of the same period,
42:56close to the remains of a pottery kiln.
43:04There's one skull in particular
43:06that I'm really intrigued to have a look at
43:08because it might offer some kind of connection to people outside of China.
43:16The Shanxi Institute is the central depository
43:19for all human remains found in the Emperor's mausoleum.
43:24Because of their sacred and sensitive nature,
43:27those remains are closely guarded and access rarely granted.
43:32According to the Shi Ji,
43:34the Emperor brought 700,000 men from all across China
43:38and possibly beyond to build his mausoleum,
43:42more than 20 times the number who built Egypt's Great Pyramid at Giza.
43:50And Professor Sun has evidence
43:52that the human cost was correspondingly high.
43:57Gosh, so do you think this would have gone around the neck...
44:00Yeah. ..of these individuals?
44:02So they're hardly willing workers.
44:04Would you consider them to be slaves?
44:10Criminals? Yeah.
44:12Criminals who were then conscripted to come and work on the tomb?
44:15Yeah. And presumably executed.
44:18I mean, these are young men.
44:20We presume this was not a natural death that they suffered.
44:24Among the mass victims of the Emperor's brutal forced labour,
44:29there is one individual, according to Professor Sun,
44:33whose features don't look Chinese.
44:39It's quite intriguing to look at him.
44:42This doesn't really look like a typically East Asian skull.
44:48I'm looking for features which might be typical of an East Asian skull
44:52and they're not there.
44:54Instead, this skull has got quite prominent nasal bones
44:58and its cheekbones are different as well.
45:01They're not the flattened malars or cheekbones that I would expect to see.
45:06I think it would be fantastic if we could do a bit of further analysis on this skull.
45:10There's a tantalising possibility
45:12we could be looking at an outsider,
45:14perhaps from beyond China's western border.
45:18A simple DNA test would confirm it,
45:20but they won't let Alice take a sample.
45:23Precise cranial measurements are the only other option.
45:27What would be great is if we could reconstruct
45:30the face of this man,
45:32and if we could reconstruct the face of this man,
45:36What would be great is if we could reconstruct
45:39the face of this young man
45:41so that we can see what he would have looked like in life.
45:48Reconstructing the face involves weeks of digital recreation,
45:52building muscle groups onto a computer model of the skull.
46:00But the real scientific data lies in the skull itself.
46:06Alice is using a global database of skull types,
46:10which may help pin down the origins of our tomb worker.
46:17Albert logs on to witness the long-awaited reveal,
46:21and Alice and I get ready to greet our worker face to face.
46:27Here we go.
46:31Here it is.
46:33The moment of truth.
46:34I can't wait to see what this reconstruction looks like.
46:40There we go.
46:41Oh, interesting.
46:43Oh, wow.
46:44Oh.
46:46OK.
46:47The styrene's sticking to him.
46:50Wow.
46:51Well, he does look incredibly realistic.
46:54What do you think, Albert?
46:56Camera's coming in for extreme close-up.
46:59The thing that sends little tingles up my spine
47:02is that this may be the closest we get
47:05to actually being in that moment, in that time.
47:08You know, this is one of the guys who actually built that entire tomb.
47:12It's quite incredible, isn't it?
47:14Look at this reconstruction.
47:16Having seen the skull in China,
47:18this is our best guess of what this man actually looked like in life.
47:23My analysis of the skull was quite interesting.
47:26I took lots of measurements of the skull when we were out in China
47:30and came out as very definitely not Western.
47:34He's not from the West. I see.
47:37Doesn't help us, does it?
47:39Doesn't help us.
47:40It's not the smoking gun, tantalising.
47:42It would have been very nice to find...
47:46..a ginger bloke...
47:48..in the Tomb of the First Emperor.
47:50But we would have been incredibly lucky, I suppose,
47:53to find the one skeleton amongst the tens of thousands
47:57that must be lying around there.
48:00The data puts our man outside mainland China, but in a vast area.
48:07From Afghanistan to the Pacific Islands.
48:10Plausible evidence that there may have been outsiders working on the tomb.
48:14And it supports the controversial theory
48:17that the First Emperor could have imported foreigners and foreign ideas.
48:22There are always new discoveries coming out of this vast mausoleum site.
48:32And one of them has thrown us a new line of enquiry.
48:38Not in terracotta, but in bronze.
48:42And not of human figures, but animals.
48:4546 bronze water birds were found in a pit north of the Emperor's tomb.
48:49All beautifully arranged, as though feeding at an ornamental pond.
49:00It's a type of bronze sculpture that appeared in China almost overnight.
49:07Now, this is a very interesting discovery.
49:10It's a type of bronze sculpture that appeared in China almost overnight.
49:17Nothing like it had been seen here before the First Emperor.
49:30It's such a beautiful piece of sculpture.
49:33And it's not just a beautiful object.
49:36The techniques for making it came from the West.
49:40The technique is called direct lost wax,
49:43and its origins can be traced back to the Mediterranean 5,000 years ago.
49:55Before I can talk to the researcher who has the key piece of evidence,
49:59I'm told I need to see the basic process
50:02to understand quite how complex it is.
50:07As the name suggests, they start with a design carved out of wax.
50:13Then go through a series of processes to replace that wax with bronze.
50:18So this is a sort of mould that gets created around the wax.
50:22And it's this mould that will give the shape to the bronze.
50:26It's so clever.
50:29Lost wax took centuries to perfect in the West.
50:33And watching it today, I can understand why.
50:38So this is the big moment. It's all about to be put together.
50:41This is the action now.
50:46Wow. Molten bronze.
50:49It's fascinating to watch, but how good are the results?
50:57Ooh, look at that.
50:59The bronze has taken the form of that wax.
51:02Absolutely perfectly.
51:05So they're going to cut these off, stick a head on it,
51:09and you've got a wonderful bird.
51:11Fit for an emperor.
51:14Ah! Hot!
51:16It's clear this process is too complex to stumble on by accident.
51:22But did someone bring a version of it to China 2,000 years ago?
51:27According to Dr Xiao-An Ding,
51:30there is telltale evidence of the direct lost wax technique.
51:36It's hidden inside this swan's graceful, delicate neck.
51:41A reinforced structural core of clay.
51:47This is evidence, a core like that, isn't it? Yeah.
51:50So if you want to create these very natural shapes,
51:53you need, like, a reinforcing rod running through it to give it that shape.
51:57Yeah. If you don't have this core rod, it will...
52:01Just snap off. Yeah, yeah.
52:03Xiao only discovered the core rod when he X-rayed the swan.
52:07Oh, there you go. Is that the rod?
52:10Yes, yes. It's the evidence of the rod.
52:12That's very clear. That's the reinforcing rod on an X-ray.
52:16Such kind of evidence, we haven't seen in Chinese bronze before.
52:21We see similar things in Egypt bronze sculpture.
52:24In Egypt? Yes, Egyptian bronze kite.
52:27Wow. I can show you.
52:29No. Look at that. Yes.
52:31That's uncanny. It's got the reinforcing rod there.
52:34Yes, yes, yes. This one is the same techniques with the neck.
52:39So you're saying this technique was normal in the Mediterranean
52:43and never been seen before in China?
52:45Yeah, we haven't seen it.
52:48But in this group of bronze, the technique is perfect.
52:53So I think it's influenced our borrowed directly from the West.
52:58Wow. That's pretty good evidence.
53:07We now have strong evidence of Western metal workers in China
53:12in the 3rd century BC.
53:18Added to the evidence of Greek-trained sculptors,
53:21it suggests there was a community of Westerners brought here by the emperor.
53:27But unlike terracotta, when it came to bronze,
53:31the Chinese took imported technology to a whole new level.
53:37In the heart of the mausoleum is a gallery
53:40showcasing the genius of the emperor's bronze workers.
53:48Objects like these,
53:51two half-size replicas of imperial carriages made entirely of bronze.
54:00I don't think I've ever seen anything so beautiful of this antiquity.
54:06Over 2,000 years this remained underground.
54:10It's so lifelike. You can feel the energy in those horses.
54:15I love the fact that it's just waiting, key in the ignition,
54:19ready for the emperor to rise in the afterlife,
54:22take his position and be taken off to visit his new underground kingdom.
54:36We're getting a clearer and clearer picture
54:38of how the emperor used Western techniques
54:40to enhance his newly unified empire.
54:46And creating the physical infrastructure
54:49to connect to communities far beyond his borders.
54:56But we haven't yet found evidence of Western people.
55:05However, Alice has heard about a new study of human remains
55:09from around the time of the first emperor.
55:13And she's meeting its author, geneticist Josh Juji.
55:17Hello, Alice. Hello, Josh. Nice to meet you.
55:20Really nice to meet you. Have a seat. Thank you.
55:24They have the European-specific mitochondrial DNA.
55:30The U. Oh, yeah.
55:32Mitochondrial U.
55:34And most of them are U.
55:37So U on my map here is something which is much more common,
55:41much more frequent in Europe.
55:43Definitely European-looking.
55:45So this is really intriguing.
55:47This must be evidence at some point, then,
55:50of people with European mitochondrial DNA coming into Asia.
55:55It looks like some Western Europeans travelled there
56:01and settled down and died there.
56:04It does make you wonder if this is evidence
56:07of people moving along a kind of praeto-silk route.
56:11This DNA evidence was found here en route to China
56:15and within its current border.
56:21It's news Alice needs to share.
56:26So I've just met up with Josh, who is the first author,
56:29on this fantastic paper from Xinjiang province.
56:33Right, where the Silk Road is, basically.
56:36Yes. OK, so right over in the west of China.
56:39And there they found a real mixture.
56:42European mitochondrial DNA lineages
56:45mixed up with East Asian lineages.
56:48So this goes back kind of to the time of
56:50the whole Alexander the Great conquests and...
56:53Yeah, yeah, yeah.
56:55And a real mixture of people.
56:57I would think that there's been an inspiration
57:00across the two worlds that we haven't fully accounted for.
57:10We began our journey with a simple question.
57:13What could explain the Terracotta Army?
57:20There was one explanation that was earth-shattering
57:23in its implications,
57:25a direct link with the Western world
57:28centuries before it was thought possible.
57:34This is the Western Empire.
57:37This is the Western end of that connection.
57:41The British Museum's collection of classical Greek sculpture.
57:50Is it possible that people that learned the skills
57:54that created these masterpieces
57:57helped to forge the legacy of the first emperor of China?
58:01The experts certainly think so.
58:03That's a possibility.
58:04They really have some other cultural stimulation.
58:07This understanding of sculpture was absolutely extraordinary.
58:11I believe Greek sculpture makers moved all the way
58:14to the Chinese capital and sold their trade to the first emperor.
58:18And not just in terracotta.
58:21I think it's influenced our borrowed directive from the West.
58:26We have evidence of an ancient road network
58:29that could have brought Westerners to China
58:32but there is no evidence of Europeans living on China's doorstep.
58:37Archaeological evidence shows
58:39they really have communications between the East and the West.
58:42I think this story rewrites the history of the birth of China,
58:46today one of the most powerful nations on Earth.
58:49And it totally revolutionises our understanding of relations
58:52between East and West 2,000 years ago.
58:55But perhaps most importantly of all,
58:57it provides vital context
59:00that deepens and enriches our relationships in the present day.