power beyond belief luxury beyond
imagination mummies beyond description
riches beyond fabulous
welcome to the afterlife
ancient Chinese style
enter the secret splendid tragic world
of China's mega tombs
man-made mountains that once proclaimed
the might of Empress and brought
dynasties to their knees
China
Shanxi province
a few kilometers outside the city of
Xian just another day on another busy
highway in the world's fastest growing
economy until the highway suddenly
becomes a runway
over the next 45 minutes a team of
experts steers a small drone aircraft
over Shang she's farmlands and brings it
back to earth
retrieving its precious payload images
of an astonishing world a world of mega
marvels
hundreds of earth and mounds rising
above the farmlands near Shyama some
merely large
others gigantic
what's buried inside them is mostly
unknown but who's inside isn't any
mystery these are the tombs of empress
generals lords and ladies some of the
richest and most powerful people who
ever lived on earth
[Applause]
2,000 years ago these peaceful farmlands
ran with blood as armies clashed and
dynasties rose and fell they rang with
music and laughter as China's nobility
reveled in all life's pleasures and they
echoed with the sounds of toil as
thousands of workers built massive
pyramid tombs monuments of a splendid
world even death couldn't end these
chains were symbols of power they were
symbols of wealth they were symbols of
political legitimacy they said
everything about how a person lived in
their lifetime they said it for eternity
to put it simply we can say I've got the
biggest tomb I'm the best
it's a rare event when archaeologists
open one of these mega tombs giving
experts like architectural historian
Tanya ik felt a look inside
so many mysteries still lie beneath the
earth but one thing is clear
centuries ago building these tombs was a
mega challenge to satisfy their Empress
engineers had to move millions of tons
of earth dig huge holes dozens of meters
deep and cover them with man-made
mountains how did they do it
today the earth is yielding a terrible
secret
the tragic price have built all these
monuments to glory a price paid in
suffering and blood
a price the Chinese people often refuse
to pay
for nearly a thousand years these
massive engineering projects helped
create powerful dynasties but they also
helped destroy them and one tomb was the
greatest and the most destructive of
them all
the year is 246 BC
China doesn't exist instead seven small
kingdoms fight each other for supremacy
in one of them called chin a new king
has just inherited the throne he's only
13 years old but one of his first acts
as king is to order the construction of
his tomb to us 13 might seem a little
young to be worrying about death but as
archaeologist Charles Higham points out
2,000 years ago 13 was a lot older than
it is today
who can tell how long he would live
some people were dying in their 20s or
30s and therefore it was vital for him
to ensure his immortality immediately
[Music]
for the royal tomb builders success or
failure depended on getting one thing
right location
in ancient China important tombs had to
be built on higher ground and a king's
tomb had to be the highest of all
but building on high ground was no
guarantee of success unless workers
could easily dig it dozens of meters
deep the tomb builders picked a site 89
kilometers from the royal capital on the
slopes of a mountain called Mount Lee
what they probably didn't know was that
the tomb they were about to build would
be one of the greatest tombs ever built
on earth
because the boy king of chin didn't go
to an early grave he grew up to do
something no Chinese ruler had ever done
he crushed his rivals in a series of
brutal Wars and unified their kingdoms
into a single Empire under his command
the Empire of Qin in English China
by 221 BC he was the most powerful man
in his world
he renamed himself Qin Shi Huangdi the
first emperor of China and he wanted a
tomb that would leave no doubt about who
he was and what he had done
what better way to project your
limitless power than to have the biggest
mausoleum the biggest pyramid ever built
for his tomb builders the first
Emperor's triumph was one of history's
biggest game changes now they couldn't
just build a tomb that was fit for a
king
they had to build a monument to the most
powerful man in China's history luckily
they were already working from a
brilliant blueprint a tomb that
centuries later would astonish his
discoverers 1977 Chinese archaeologists
excavate the tomb of an aristocrat named
Zhang hole Yi who died some 200 years
before the first emperor
it was a tomb unlike any ever found in
China earlier Chinese tombs had been
simple vertical shafts but somehow eased
who was an underground palace
divided into chambers with holes in
their walls and the coffin so that his
soul could roam at will through his
eternal mansion two hundred years before
the first emperor's tomb we have a whole
new concept and that concept is this
that you don't have a tomb you have a
palace an underground set of chambers
each one to its own purpose within which
the dead would live in perpetuity these
great and powerful men would live on
after death and their tombs would need
to satisfy all their requirements some
whole years after life required a
complete Orchestra and almost ten tons
of exquisite bronze serving vessels the
bronze serving vessels the wine versus
the food vessels in this particular tomb
are at least in my view some of the most
if not the most spectacular bronze
castings ever to come from the ancient
world
but fine music and fine food
weren't all that kept Zhong Hawaii
eternally happy
archeologists found the skeletons of
eight young women in his tomb concubines
slain at his death to keep their master
company for eternity some two centuries
after the death of Jean Paul Yi
engineers began building the first
emperor's tomb China's greatest