China's First Emperor and his Terracotta Warriors, Frances Wood, c. 2007

China's First Emperor and his Terracotta Warriors, Frances Wood, c. 2007. 931WOO.

Frances Wood is the head of the Chinese department at the British Library. 

Many years ago, we were fortunate enough to see the terracotta warriors on tour, in London.

Introduction

China's first emperor, 259 - 210 BC.

Terracotta warriors discovered, 1974:
while drilling a well
Xiyang village
Yanzhai rural commune
Lintong county
Shaanxi province

Xiyang village, Yanzhai rural commune, Shaanxi province:

First emperor:

• a Chinese Hitler
• b. 259 BCE
• eldest son / heir of King of Qin ("chin")
• founder of Imperial China
• father of the imperial bureaucracy that governed vast territories for 2,000 years 
• he became a tyrannical bogeyman, the enemy of intellectual life and historic culture

Peopled:
earliest inhabitants of Chian, with settle agriculture begain ~ 5000 BCE
distinctive pottery
two cultures separated by mountains and rivers; probably unaware of the other
in the west, along the Wei River, the "painted pottery" culture, red clay burial urns with swirling patterns in black
to the east: burnished black surface and cmoplex articualteed shpaaes, unlike the curved forms of the painted pots
further south: along the Yangtze River, cord-marked pottery and cultivated rice

at some point, eastward movement of the black potter towards the center, to what are now Henan and Shaanxi provinces
tripod pottery forms (anticipating the tripods of the Bronze Age)

now: archaeologists tentatively ascrive a late site for the black pottery culture to the Xia, and the beginnings of the Bronze Age to about 1900 BCE.

Xia followed by Shang dynasty, 1570 - 1045 BCE
inscribed ox bones (oracle bones)

Zhou dynasty, 1045 BCE ---> devolved into a multi-state system

5th century BC: the period 481 - 221 BCE became known as the "Warring States period"

221 BCE: a prince in Qin, the First Emperor crushed the separatist states and in 221 BC unified the area from the Liadong peninsula to Hainan Island
many difference cultures and geological features

Reign of First emperor: the last in which purely local foods were consumer
teh expansion of rthe Han dynasty, 206 BCE - 220 CE towards thee Central Asian desert and the Silk Road brougth in many foodstuffs whicch are now stables in China, but introduced then: grapes, alfalfa, pomegranate, walnut, sesame seed, onion, ccaraway seeds, peas, coriander from Bactria and cucumber.

Bactria, or Bactriana, was an ancient Iranian[1] civilization in Central Asia centered on modern day Northern Afghanistan and including parts of southwestern Tajikistan and southeastern Uzbekistan.
[so, Han dynasty: corresponds with Roman classical age and rise of Christianity)