The Emperor's Silent Army

Lintong County, People’s Republic of China, March 1974

Three farmers are digging a well when suddenly their shovels hit something hard. It is a clay head of a man who stares back at them, open-eyed and amazingly real looking. The farmers have never seen anything like it; neither have the archeologists who arrive and begin to uncover more and more pottery men—first dozens, then hundreds, and eventually thousands!

Buried for more than 2,200 years, they are soldiers, life-size as…