HIST 1001 Qin Shi Huangdi Planner PDF

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Summary

A planner for a weekly essay assignment given by Dr. James Mokhiber...

Description

According to the documentary, why was the tomb of Qin Shi Huangdi built? What view does the documentary give of the labor that went into the construction of the tomb? ● ● ●

In part to replace the living sacrifices seen previously in China’s tombs Described as “an emperor’s vision” The documentary really emphasizes how difficult making the warriors would have been

Discuss three things that the scholars or the narrator noted that were evidence of the sophistication of the process, the builders of the terracotta soldiers, and/or the tomb itself employed? ● All of them are individuals so a lot of detail went into it ● Hard to find the right type of clay to make the warriors ○ Without the right type of soil or clay, it would be impossible to make them ● Would have to make a ridiculous amount of warriors in a short amount of time ○ Would have to make at least 700 a year which is over 3 times more than what modern replica makers produce in a year ● Arrowheads found in the pit were incredibly similar in size some with only a .22 mm difference ● Moulds weren’t used to create the bodies, they were stacked together layer by layer ○ Made individually by hand ○ Clay coiling ■ Takes a long time ■ Moulding takes about 2 weeks but coiling takes a month ● Extreme cold or heat will ruin clay statues before they can harden ○ China experiences both ○ Workers had to face a choice: find a way to keep their workshops 20 degrees celsius all year round or stop work for 6 months of the year (but no one knows what they did) ● Painted warriors ○ Coated in lacquer from head to toe ■ Lacquer was very valuable ○ Chinese purple was one of two man-made colors before the birth of jesus How might we compare Qin Shi Huangdi's tomb to other tombs in China, as suggested by the film and/or the websites below? ● Qin Jing Gong’s tomb ○ Ca 537 BC 300 years before China was united by Qin Shi ○ Large pit ○ Wooden boxes ■ Ritual killing of his entire court once he died ■ Burined 186 living people with him ■ Position of every coffin was preassigned ■ Ministers and wives were buried closest to him in nicer boxes ■ Cruder boxes on the outside held royal craftsman, bodyguards, and

other useful commoners ■ Killed ot serve lord in death, biggest human sacrifice found in ancient Chinese tomb ● Almost every tomb would have 100-200 corpses ● During the period of the “warring states” where China’s 7 states were fighting, human sacrifices for graves couldn’t be made because all lives were needed because of population decreases due to war ○ By the time Qin Shi unified the states human sacrifices were rare ● In a tomb ~300 years older than the emperor’s they found small pottery figurines → pottery was replacing living sacrifices in burials What questions do the documentary’s makers leave unanswered, in your opinion? How might they be addressed if you were to direct your own version of such a film? ●

Doesn’t really discuss the different types of soldiers seen in the tomb...