Secrets of the Terracotta Army: Tomb of an Ancient Chinese Emperor
TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 A BURIED ARMY EMERGES CHAPTER 2 REBUILDING AN ARMY CHAPTER 3 AN ARMY FOR AN EMPEROR CHAPTER 4 THE END OF QIN CHAPTER 5 SAVING THE ANCIENT ARMY CRITICAL THINKING USING THE COMMON CORE GLOSSARY READ MORE INTERNET SITES INDEX
CHAPTER ONE A BURIED ARMY EMERGES Farmers digging in the dark pit were frightened For centuries they had heard about evil spirits that lurked beneath the soil in this field Strange things had been seen here Faces were said to have loomed suddenly out of the dirt when people had dug too deeply Grasping hands had sometimes appeared People had long whispered about these ghosts Some thought they might be the guardians of the ancient emperor whose tomb was nearby Maybe it was the long-dead emperor himself In March 1974 the farmers were digging a well near Xi’an China About 12 feet 3 7 meters down they struck something They cleared the dirt from around the object A face appeared Terrified they soon saw the face was not that of a ghost at all It was an amazingly real-looking terracotta head They dug deeper and found other large pieces of hard baked clay These appeared to be the broken parts of an ancient warrior statue
LOCATION OF TERRACOTTA ARMY Š Beijing CHINA Xi'an Terracotta Army A 0 400 800 mi 0 500 1 000 km The Terracotta Army is located near Xi'an southwest of Beijing
The farmers were excited This discovery was too important to keep secret terracotta a brown-orange clay Workers gradually uncovered terracotta figures AN UNDERGROUND ARMY Word of the amazing discovery spread fast Soon archaeologists from all over China began to arrive They were excited to see the terracotta pieces the farmers had found The statue pieces were different from anything found in China before The head appeared to be of an ancient warrior Tests showed that the terracotta was more than 2,000 years old The clay pieces had once been brightly painted but the color faded
