Ancient Greeks May Have Influenced the Creation of China's Terracotta Army
Archaeologists have suggested that ancient Greeks may have been in contact with China nearly 1,500 years before the arrival of Marco Polo, and that Greek sculptors influenced the creation of the Terracotta Army:
China and the West were in contact more than 1,500 years before European explorer Marco Polo arrived in China, new findings suggest. Archaeologists say inspiration for the Terracotta Warriors, found at the Tomb of the First Emperor near today's Xian, may have come from Ancient Greece. They also say ancient Greek artisans could have been training locals there in the Third Century BC.
Polo's 13th Century journey to China was the first to be well-documented. However, Chinese historians recorded much earlier visits by people thought by some to have been emissaries from the Roman Empire during the Second and Third Centuries AD. "We now have evidence that close contact existed between the First Emperor's China and the West before the formal opening of the Silk Road. This is far earlier than we formerly thought," said Senior Archaeologist Li Xiuzhen, from the Emperor Qin Shi Huang's Mausoleum Site Museum.
[...] Farmers first discovered the 8,000 terracotta figures buried less than a mile from the tomb of China's first emperor Qin Shi Huang in 1974. However there was no tradition of building life-sized human statues in China before the tomb was created. Earlier statues were simple figurines about 20cm (7.9ins) in height. To explain how such an enormous change in skill and style could have happened, Dr Xiuzhen believes that influences must have come from outside China. "We now think the Terracotta Army, the Acrobats and the bronze sculptures found on site have been inspired by ancient Greek sculptures and art," she said.
Also at National Geographic.
Did Ancient Greeks Help Build China's Terracotta Army?
Greek sculptors may have helped carve the famous terracotta warriors that have for more than 2,000 years watched over the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, China's first emperor.
Historians and archeologists excavating the tomb surmise that the statues, which were unusual for the time period, were influenced by Greek sculpture, suggesting that East and West met much earlier than previously thought.
"We now think the Terracotta Army, the acrobats and the bronze sculptures found on site, have been inspired by ancient Greek sculptures and art," Li Xiuzhen, a senior archaeologist at the site, told the Guardian.
Not the sort of thing that senior scientists on the Chinese mainland usually suggest.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 24 2016, @02:48PM
Just last week in Canada a key missing link [blogspot.ca] in the transition between the late greco-roman statuary and the terracota style was discovered.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 24 2016, @04:09PM
The first step to Chiastianity. [twimg.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @04:05AM
That's... the ugliest Jesus I've ever seen, and that's saying something. She scuplted him to look like her ugly ass!
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday October 24 2016, @03:57PM
of western origin.
Was it stamped by a misspelled brand name by any chance?
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 24 2016, @04:17PM
It can be hard to know the true origin of something. "First found at" is not necessarily the same as "first created at". Like fossils, the vast majority of activities are never recorded (or at least we are unlikely to find the record). Thus, scientists have to use "first found at" as a rough proxy.
This kind of reminds me of the "fight" over who invented noodles: China or Italy. At last check, China was "ahead", but new finds could change that.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Monday October 24 2016, @07:54PM
I've seen the terracotta warriors and they're remarkably sophisticated. It took a huge number of craftsmen many years to just create the sculptures. That doesn't include whatever time it took to develop the ability to create the sculptures.
It's certainly possible that this is the first place they were found in China rather than being the first place they were created, but this is sophisticated work that's well above the typical sculptures done by primitive peoples. Developing the know how would have generated a footprint and it's rather unlikely that with all the digging going on in various areas that no other traces would have been found first.
Again, that's possible, but it seems more reasonable that the technology was imported from someplace else. That would drastically reduce the time it would take to get up to speed on the sculpting process and considering the reach of the Greeks at the time, it's not unreasonable. Alexander the Great got as far as India during the 3rd century BCE, which isn't that far away from China. Certainly not far enough to assume that traders weren't able to spread that kind of knowledge.
I don't believe that the Chinese closed their borders until much later.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday October 24 2016, @04:28PM
The ancient Greeks certainly had contact with the Middle East and India, thanks in large part to Alexander the Great's temporary takeover of what had been Persia. So it's not too surprising that there's evidence for some Greek influence on Xinjiang province, which is adjacent to eastern end of what is generally thought of as the Middle East: Give it a century or two, and some enterprising people will cross the mountains and talk to the people on the other side of them.
And the Romans also had some contact with the Chinese, according to historical documents on both sides of the exchange.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday October 24 2016, @05:53PM
Yeah, I discussed this last week when there was this "shocking" revelation of ancient Roman coins found in Japan. Personally, I find it shocking that so many media sources are acting like Marco Polo was the first contact between East and West. (E.g., the Christian Science Monitor article title actually has the tagline at the very top of the page: "This discovery calls into question the commonly held belief that Marco Polo was the first European to travel to Asia in 1300 AD, and suggests that this estimate may be off by more than 1,500 years.")
Maybe some people whose only background is middle-school history might believe that, but no serious historian does.
And the Romans also had some contact with the Chinese, according to historical documents on both sides of the exchange.
Indeed, there's an entire extended Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] devoted to relations between China and ancient Rome. So, it shouldn't be surprising to anyone that relationships might go back even further.
What's weird about the present argument is the speculation that there might even have been a Greek sculptor on site to "train the locals." Seriously? Yeah, it's possible, but I'd wait for at least SOME evidence of Greek presence in China in that era before postulating imported sculpting teachers from Athens. Far more likely that if there was influence, it was indirect through artifacts moving along trade routes, which perhaps inspired Chinese sculptors to try something different.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday October 24 2016, @07:00PM
Fifth column, Fourth rank, sixth row, third from the left. Did that one myself.
Nah, just kidding. Spent all my time in China at the royal observatories.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday October 24 2016, @07:28PM
One point that really gets driven home when you study ancient history is that no, societies were not generally isolated from each other. It's entirely possible to traverse mountains, deserts, oceans, and other geographic features that you might think were show-stoppers using ancient technology. As a good example of this, there's significant evidence of contacts between the Americas and a number of surrounding areas (Africa, Polynesia, Japan, Europe) that go back much further than Columbus or even Leif Ericson.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Monday October 24 2016, @07:56PM
Indeed, China is kind of an odd one because it's had prolonged periods where there was no contact with the outside world, but even there, those spells usually didn't last more than a couple hundred years and were only enforceable because they had a huge amount of wealth and a strong military.
I'd be surprised if they were as successful at it as it seems on the surface though. It's really hard to guard a desert.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @06:54PM
Far more likely that if there was influence, it was indirect through artifacts moving along trade routes, which perhaps inspired Chinese sculptors to try something different
That ignores several other details. If they were inspired to try out new things, one would expect there to be a couple of statues here and there. It's not like the first project would be creating the thousands of statues from scratch on a major project like this.
For example, China is currently planning on sending people to the moon (last I heard). They didn't just wake up one day and try a moonshot, they are doing progressive improvements by creating things like space stations.
It's entirely possible that some inspired (army of) artists decided to try their hand at life-sized statues, and went all-out creating thousands of them. However, I would have expected a more progressive build-up (finding individual statues here and there... finding less detailed or broken statues as they refine the art... years spend refining the craft and figuring out how to get it to scale... etc).
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday October 24 2016, @07:02PM
So we have a dead guy surrounded by innocent-looking stuff the Greeks brought. Reminds me of some ancient story...
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 24 2016, @09:03PM
In the 1970s, some folks thought that the people of Mesoamerica could not possibly have figured out how to build giant stone pyramids on their own and there just -had- to be a technology transfer from Egypt to the Western Hemisphere.
So, they tried to sail across the Atlantic in a boat they made out out of reeds. [wikipedia.org]
That did not go well.
Occam's razor suggests that maybe different human societies each have smart guys that figure out things on their own.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 25 2016, @01:54AM
But, if you had read the wikipedia article you linked to, Heyerdahl's first attempt got within 100 miles of the Caribbean Islands before breaking up. But that was after it made it 4,000 miles. There was a second attempt with a slightly modified design that included a key element they had neglected from the pictures, and it did make the trip. Heyerdahl also did a similar voyage to prove that Egypt could have traded with the Indus Valley using ships made of reeds; they succeeded, and the ship was still seaworthy after 5 months. They burnt it as a protest against wars in the region in 1978.
So what actually happened is the opposite you intended, to say that it was impossible for ancient civilizations to have had real, ongoing contact with each other using the technology available to them at the time.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @03:45AM
The success or failure of the expedition wasn't meant to be a major argument in my comment.
I will note that they launched from Morocco, not Egypt, so there's that to factor in.
The biggest thing that affected their first try was that they saw a taut cord from the aft section to the mid section in the old images and thought that it was just for decoration, so they left it out.
...but mostly, I wanted to point out that this stuff reeks of White people thinking that the less White people's skin is, the more stupid they are.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday October 25 2016, @10:23AM
So what about this one?
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Ming-Dynasty-replica-junk-sails-across-Pacific-3265631.php [sfgate.com]
It went much better than the attempt you mentioned. Of course it only proved that it could be done, not that it actually happened in ancient times.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday October 24 2016, @09:50PM
Terracotta Army is OK if you're going for a domination victory, but the extra maintenance cost for doubling the size of your army makes it expensive.
I usually go for Petra, especially if I have some desert tiles.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Ugmo on Tuesday October 25 2016, @12:36AM
It had nothing to do with the Greeks. Laurel and Hardy got an order for 600,000 clay soldiers 1 foot high but instead made 10,000 clay soldiers 6ft high.
(Score: 2) by VortexCortex on Tuesday October 25 2016, @11:28AM
Meanwhile, off the coast of Brazil, exploration of Roman shipwrecks are waylaid indefinitely [nytimes.com] after exploration of the first showed strong evidence that romans traded with South America long before the official narrative of Peruvians discovering Brazil. Wait, but if the romans were actively trading with South America, and the architectural styles of neolithic stone structures in Egypt match those of South America and all other ancient locations, even Easter Island... Then isn't "Columbus" just part of a huge propaganda campaign?
In other un-news an ancient Greek bust was unearthed from a Mexican temple site. The site is unlikely to have been disturbed being that it was beneath 3 stone floors.
Everything you've been told about history is wrong. Christians rewrote all of human history by copying and "correcting" Greek and other ancient manuscripts. The scribes modified history to paint the world the Christians wanted to portray. Soon afterwards the library would burn and all original texts would perish except the newly transcribed and politically correct revision of history. Additionally, with the introduction of the Gregorian calendar 1000 years was added to our date system. It's really 1016 AD right now. People used to put "I." in front of dates to signify after the birth of Christ. Folks continuing the tradition of Scaliger's rewriting history purposefully reinterpreted such conventions. Thus I.666 became 1666... Now, go figure out what significant event happened 666 years AD and you'll be on the right track to understanding your reality.
(Score: 1) by GDX on Wednesday October 26 2016, @04:32AM
The Christians didn't rewrote the history more than any other religion, culture, political party... the Chinese also have rewrote the history, Muslims also have done it, the USA politicians and powerful people also have rewrote the history.
The is know the existence of contact between America and Europe even before the Romans, they are anecdotal, mostly due to lost ships or some expedition but very few people had the luck of returning. Most of those contacts are hidden in the sailors histories.