The Greatest Tomb on Earth: Secrets of Ancient China

I'm Dan Snow and I've come to China to investigate

the single largest burial site on Earth.

Starting with its greatest treasure - the Terracotta Army.

That is one of the most wonderful views in the world.

Over 1,000 warriors guarding their ruler for eternity.

With the possible exception of the Great Wall,

there's nothing more Chinese than these warriors.

And yet, a new theory suggests that this great icon of China

may be guarding an explosive secret.

New evidence suggests that the inspiration for all this

could have come from the West.

There's a possibility they really have some other culture stimulation.

That is such an important idea.

The person who made that had an understanding of anatomy

that is extremely surprising.

It's often thought China grew up isolated from the West

until Italian explorer Marco Polo came here in the 13th century.

But if we could prove that wrong by 1,000 years,

it would rewrite the history books.

To help in my search I'm joined by two expert investigators -

Alice Roberts and Albert Lin.

As our medical scientist,

Alice will be examining any human remains buried here.

This doesn't look like a typically East Asian skull.

Albert will use the latest imaging technology to try and find

the first roads joining East and West.

If I'm right then what I'm standing on right here could be one of

the roads built by the First Emperor.

And I'll be interrogating the secrets of the Emperor's mausoleum

looking for the traces of Western technology.

Look at that! That's fantastic.

Together we'll be exploring an extraordinary possibility

that East and West were connected

far earlier than anyone thought possible

and that connection changed the face of China.

This is the starting point for our investigation,

one of the most hallowed sites in all of China.

The burial grounds of the First Emperor.

Oh, yeah. That, according to legend,

is the First Emperor's tomb.

Albert is setting out to survey the entire burial site

by climbing the tomb.

In over 2,000 years, no-one has been inside this sacred earth pyramid.

It's pretty incredible.

The Emperor's tomb is right beneath my feet.

He was buried at 50 metres below the surface of this mound.

And the Chinese government has decided to protect it further

by denying access to the public.

It's like being on top of Tutankhamun's tomb,

but not being able to get inside,

maybe for good reason,

nobody really knows what's in there.

Even from the top of the overgrown tomb

there's only one way to see the surrounding site...

OK.

Wow! Look at that.

Nobody's ever been allowed to fly here.

This is unprecedented access.

The nearby hills are studded with top secret military instillations

and it's taken us months of negotiating with the Chinese Army

to get permission to do this.

But, once in the air, it's clear it was worth the effort.

Look at that. It just keeps on going. It just expands.

The exterior walls of the mound are over there.

At 100 square kilometres, this is the biggest burial site on Earth.

200 times bigger than Egypt's Valley of the Kings.

Can you imagine building this for yourself for your afterlife?

And that's just what's visible on the surface.

Beneath these fields, archaeologists have uncovered a vast buried world

of more than 600 pits and structures,

each one a gold mine of archaeological riches.

Almost every day there are new discoveries,

and we have unprecedented access to them.

Anyone could potentially link China to the outside world in

the 3rd century BC.

This was the era of classical Ancient Greece,

a time it was always assumed when China existed in total isolation.

That assumption started to crumble because of

the first discovery they made here -

the Terracotta Army.

It's not these buildings over here.

It's the building...

It's that one, it's the one beyond.

The Terracotta Army lies 1.5km away to the east.

Today it's one of the biggest tourist attractions on Earth,

but few people realise this extraordinary collection of figures

contains one of the greatest

unsolved mysteries in China's history.

No-one has ever been able to explain their origins.

The mystery began when all this was farmers' fields.

And one of those fields yielded a life-sized terracotta head.

It was 1974.

Look at that.

So what's happening here?

This is right at the beginning of the excavation, I presume.

So that's you?

Yeah. Fantastic.

42-year-old Yuan Zhongyi

was the first archaeologist sent here from Beijing.

What was the thing which most surprised you?

Yuan's first week here turned into decades.

And today I'm coming to meet the person

who's continuing his pioneering work,

his former assistant Janice Xiuzhen Li.

Hi, Janice. Hi. How are you?

I'm fine. How are you? Very good.

They believe the Emperor's Terracotta Army

is an exact copy of the real thing.

So these were going to be his army in the afterlife?

Yeah, to protect him.

What I really notice looking around is I think they all look different.

I can't see any two that are the same.

Some of them have got a bit of a belly on them,

some of them are very, very tall.

Were they all individually crafted?

They're really quite individual.

You see the moustache is different and also the eye shape.

This stunning realism amplifies

the great mystery surrounding these figures.

Where do they come from?

Because they're nothing like any figure made in China before them.

Let me show you the figures made in China before the warriors.

OK. So the figurines is really small. OK.

It's about ten inches.

Oh, so tiny. Tiny. Suddenly they start producing this.

Yeah, and this about two metres. So something has changed. Yes.

These warriors are far more sophisticated,

much bigger and much more realistic.

Yeah, much more detailed.

But were they all made in China?

Yeah. Let me show you the stamps here.

This is the name of the artisan.

So this Terracotta Warrior is produced locally.

The big question is -

how did Chinese craftsmen achieve such an incredible transformation?

Like going from a stickman to a Leonardo in a single step.

Something remarkable happened here 2,200 years ago.

To understand quite how remarkable,

I need to put it in a global context.

The world at the time of the First Emperor, around 220 BC.

Over here, right on the eastern edge of the Eurasian landmass

you've got the Chinese world,

a competing cluster of mini states over there.

Over on the west of Eurasia you've got Roman Empire

starting to expand over here and you've got Greece over there.

Now what's going on artistically in East and West is very different in

the 3rd century.

This is classic Greek art,

absolute high watermark of artistic expression. Beautiful.

Metre and a half tall, intricately painted, human in its look.

But over here in the Chinese world, as Janice has showed me,

you've got that.

Just ten centimetres tall, far more basic.

Then something changes.

In fact, everything changes, there's a revolution.

Suddenly in 220 BC, just after that, you get the Terracotta Warriors.

Light years ahead of what's gone before.

It starts to look far less like it's predecessor

and far more like what's going on in the Western world.

Both life-size, both lifelike, attempts at realism,

using paint and the sculpture to reflect the realities of

the human body, the human form.

And this couldn't be more important because it's always been assumed

that China developed in isolation.

But if that's not the case,

if the First Emperor of China imported Western ideas

and techniques to create his extraordinary necropolis...

Well, that forces us to completely rewrite the history books.

If you're going to rewrite the history books, you need evidence.

You need a lot of evidence.

And I think there is enough evidence just with the Terracotta Warriors.

This is a theory that turns on its head centuries of thinking about

the relationship between China and the West.

It can't just be based on one statue.

It just seems that there are so many

mysteries associated with this place. It's phenomenal.

It just feels as though there's an awful lot more to be discovered.

There is a history, Chinese history, so maybe there's a lot to

the stories that were written in this historical text.

It's amazing to have those texts as well. I mean, how fantastic.

OK. This is it. It's called the Shiji.

We've got 20 pages of a text that was written over 100 years later

by the first Chinese historian called Sima Qian.

He talks about the First Emperor's tomb, but he doesn't even mention

the Terracotta Warriors, they don't even get a mention.

What is now one of the most important sites on Earth

doesn't even get a mention in this.

And, unfortunately, he doesn't mention foreigners

or people beyond Central Asia. Wow. So there are gaps in the history.

There's big gaps in the history.

So we're relying on you guys.

Well, you know, the extent of this place is huge.

So what we're looking at here is the main burial mound.

And the Terracotta Warriors are pretty far off to the east side of

the entire burial complex.

And, you know, what I think is the interesting question is -

is there a road network that extends from this?

Do you think you could ever find

connections with points further west?

It's hard to say because it's going to go, obviously,