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For more than 2,000 years, the Terracotta Army has guarded one of the most extraordinary burial complexes ever discovered. But beneath the famous clay soldiers lies a much larger mystery—and modern scanning technology is revealing just how enormous it really is.
National Geographic Explorer Albert Lin has used technologies including ground-penetrating radar, LiDAR, satellite imagery and 3D scanning to investigate ancient sites that cannot easily be excavated. His work on China’s First Emperor has helped visualize the enormous mausoleum complex surrounding Qin Shi Huang’s tomb.
The results are astonishing. Remote-sensing research indicates that the mausoleum complex extends across roughly 38 square miles (98 square kilometers)—far beyond the famous warrior pits. Researchers have identified additional underground features, burial areas and structures surrounding the emperor’s central tomb mound.
And there is another mystery: the emperor’s central tomb remains unopened. Ancient historical accounts describe an underground world of palaces, treasures and artificial rivers, while modern measurements have detected unusually high mercury concentrations around the mound.
But there is no verified evidence that Lin’s scanning has revealed a supernatural secret or opened the emperor’s tomb.
What it has revealed may be more important: the Terracotta Army was only one piece of a gigantic engineered landscape built to preserve Qin Shi Huang’s power into the afterlife.
