Terracotta Warriors could be mainly built by women and children, batch fingerprints show
Por Shi Huang — South China Morning Post – News feed
Advertisement Science China Science Terracotta warriors were mainly built by women and children, batch fingerprints show
Qin dynasty artisans included women and children assigned to pottery crafting, legal records and physical evidence show
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Shi Huang Published: 2:17pm, 21 Oct 2026 Updated: 2:56pm, 21 Oct 2026
Some 5 metres (16.4 feet) underground near one of China’s oldest cities lies the life-size army of thousands of terracotta warriors.
The purpose of the army, located 35km (22 miles) northeast of historic Xian, was to protect China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang , in the afterlife. The Terracotta Army was buried with him after his death in 210BC.
Now, a new study shows that a portion of the terracotta warriors was largely made by adult women and minors, not solely by men as previously thought.
“These findings challenge the long-held assumption that Terracotta Army production relied exclusively on adult male labour, providing the first quantitative biological evidence for a diverse workforce including women and children,” Shen Jingyi wrote in the paper published on October 13 in the peer-reviewed Journal of Cultural Heritage.
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