The tomb chamber of China’s first emperor has never been opened in the 2,200 years since his death in 210 BC — sealed beneath a 76-metre pyramid mound outside Xi’an, surrounded by 8,000 life-sized terracotta soldiers discovered in 1974 by farmers digging a well, and described by ancient texts as containing rivers of mercury that modern soil readings around the mound have now quietly confirmed

On the morning of 29 March 1974, a Chinese farmer named Yang Zhifa, working with five of his brothers and a neighbour named Wang Puzhi, was digging a well in the dry agricultural land east of Xi’an when his shovel struck what he initially mistook for a Buddhist statue. The object was made of terracotta, [...] The post The tomb chamber of China’s first emperor has never been opened in the 2,200 years since his death in 210 BC — sealed beneath a 76-metre pyramid mound outside Xi’an, surrounded by