Why has the Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang not been opened yet?

How big is the Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang?

Everyone may have heard of the Terracotta Warriors and Horses of Qin Shi Huang’s Mausoleum, but if you think this is all there is to Qin Shi Huang’s Mausoleum, then you are too young and too simple.

According to historical records, the construction of Qin Shi Huang’s Mausoleum began quietly at the foot of Mount Li when Qin Shi Huang ascended the throne at the age of 13. The construction took a full 39 years, and the labor force used was 720,000, and at its peak, 800,000. You may not be able to feel anything through these numbers. Let me make a comparison: the pyramids that are also a wonder of the world, one of the largest pyramids - the Pyramid of Khufu. At that time, the construction required a labor force of 100,000 and took ten years to build. The number of laborers required to build Qin Shihuang's Mausoleum was 7 times that of Khufu's Pyramid, and the time was 4 times longer.

Qin Shihuang in film and television works

Qin Shihuang’s Mausoleum is now open to everyone as a scenic spot, but the size of the open area is roughly estimated by the editor to only account for about 1/4 of the total area, and it is precious Tourists can only visit the replica and not the real thing. Therefore, most of us have a misunderstanding, thinking that Qin Shi Huang’s Mausoleum is the Terracotta Warriors and Horses. Yes, the Terracotta Warriors and Horses are an excellent representative of Qin Shi Huang’s Mausoleum, but we have not seen the complete Qin Shi Huang’s Mausoleum yet.

Conceptual map of the First Emperor's Mausoleum

Now that science and technology are very advanced, and we know the specific location of the First Emperor's Mausoleum, why is it that no one dares to open the First Emperor's Mausoleum?

1. Because the Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang is so big, the excavation time will definitely be very long, and rain and snow will inevitably be encountered during this period. Imagine that archaeologists finally opened the underground palace, and it suddenly rained heavily? It is estimated that these experts will cry very sad in the rain. Of course, there is a way to prevent rain and snow, and that is to build a large canopy to cover the entire Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang. But the problem came again. During the excavation, in order not to cause difficulties to the subsequent excavation work, support points could not be set up in the middle. This would be equivalent to building a cross-sea bridge.

Terracotta Warriors and Horses in the Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang

2. There are many institutions and safety cannot be guaranteed.

According to the "Historical Records? The Chronicles of the First Emperor of Qin", "The craftsmen were ordered to make machine-made crossbow arrows, and those who got close would shoot them. Using mercury as the source of hundreds of rivers and seas, the machine was instilled, with astronomy on the top, and astronomy on the bottom. It has geography. Use the mermaid paste as a candle to save the immortal for a long time."

It can be seen that there are arrow and crossbow mechanisms everywhere in Qin Shihuang's mausoleum. Of course, these mechanisms are thousands of years old and will definitely be damaged. But we must not underestimate the wisdom of the ancients. Those who have read novels about tomb robbing may know that there are ingenious mechanisms in ancient tombs, such as quicksand, red rivers, and even traps and poisons. These are not all stories made up by novel writers at will, some of them have some basis.

There is also mercury, "mercury is used to make hundreds of rivers, rivers and seas". This kind of scene is really spectacular, but also how dangerous it is. Two famous Chinese geologists, Chang Yong and Li Tong, have sampled soil around Qin Shi Huang's Mausoleum many times. After repeated verification, they found that there is indeed "mercury anomaly" around Qin Shi Huang's Mausoleum. Mercury is the main component of mercury. This can be seen in "Historical Records" Sima Qian's record is not wrong, so how to deal with the mercury has become the primary issue in developing the Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang.

3. After the excavation is completed, the protection of cultural relics has also become a difficult problem. At present, all we can do for cultural relics is to extend their preservation life as much as possible, which means that even if they are properly preserved, the preservation life of cultural relics is not very optimistic. In addition, during the excavation of cultural relics, other types of cultural relics may be unearthed, such as liquid wine or other cultural relics that have not been touched so far, which makes the excavation of cultural relics even more difficult.

In fact, to sum up the above points, the main reason is the protection of cultural relics. The technical level cannot be reached, so we can only not develop such large ancient tombs and wait until the technical level is reached one day in the future before developing them.

It is said that the Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang was stolen many times. Was it damaged?

Archaeologists are cleaning the Terracotta Warriors and Horses

According to historical records, after Xiang Yu led his troops into Guanzhong, he first killed Prince Ying of Qin and almost all the royal nobles who had surrendered to Liu Bang, and set them on fire. to Xianyang City. Then he led troops to Qin Shi Huang's Mausoleum, moved away all the treasures that could be seen in Qin Shi Huang's Mausoleum, and set fire to the ground buildings of Epang Palace and Qin Shi Huang's Mausoleum. But later Liu Bang established the Han Dynasty. In order to win over people's hearts, he sent people to protect the Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang.

Facing such a huge treasure house, who can’t afford to be greedy? It can be said that the Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang has been damaged to a certain extent throughout the dynasties. According to records, the Red Eyebrow Rebel Army in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, the rulers Shi Le and Shi Jilong in the Wei, Jin and Hou Zhao dynasties, and the Huangchao Rebel Army in the late Tang Dynasty all robbed the tomb of the First Emperor. Legend has it that there was once a child who was herding sheep nearby. One of the sheep got lost and entered the tunnel dug by the tomb robbers. When the shepherd boy held up a torch to search, he accidentally caught fire and ignited the Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang. The fire burned for 90 days before it was extinguished.

It’s amazing that I, Emperor Dishi, have never succeeded in robbing tombs in all dynasties?

According to the archaeological team's investigation around the surface of the underground palace, they found several robber holes, but they were far from being dug close to the underground palace. They were convinced that Xiang Yu did not rob the underground palace of the First Emperor's Mausoleum.

The underground palace is 35 meters deep from the surface. If you want to dig a hole to rob the tomb, you must first pass through the thick rammed earth wall outside the underground palace under the sealing mound. Here is a quote from Professor Duan Qingbo, a Qinling researcher who interviewed at the time: The researchers found that under the sealing mound There is a thick thin rammed earth wall around the lower tomb chamber, which is the so-called palace wall. It has been verified that the palace wall is about 168 meters long from east to west, 141 meters long from north to south, 16 meters wide on the south wall, and 22 meters wide on the north wall. "During the construction of the palace wall, in order to test whether the palace wall compacted with soil is strong, the construction workers will stand in the distance and shoot the wall with bows and arrows. If the arrow can penetrate the wall, the repaired palace wall must be torn down and rebuilt."< /p>

The Underground Palace of Qin Shihuang’s Mausoleum

The underground palace is made of copper walls as another protection to prevent groundwater from seeping into the underground palace. So, do you know what the concept of "copper wall and iron wall" is?

Then you also need to find the tomb passage, the entrance. There are only two tomb passages in the underground palace (one on the east side, one on the west side, running in the same horizontal line; the two tomb passages lead directly to the location of the middle coffin), and there are three thick stone gates in the tomb passage (Inner Xian Gate, Zhong Xian Gate, Outer Xian Gate ) Unless you rely on explosives to blow it up like Sun Dianying, at the ancient level you can only rely on a battering ram, right? The archaeological team once used a Luoyang shovel to survey the soil structure under the sealed soil pile and found that the Wuhua soil (there is a difference in color between the newly filled soil and the old soil layer) has no trace of disturbance. This shows that since the burial of the First Emperor, no one has tried to excavate the underground palace of the First Emperor's Mausoleum or destroy the mound of earth.

Eternal King Qin Shihuang

Then there is the famous hidden weapon mechanism. Legend has it that poison-coated crossbow arrows can be fired automatically. As long as a tomb robber approaches, they will be shot into hedgehogs. I'm not an engineering student, so I don't know if this is possible. But we can talk about another famous thing, which is the mercury in the underground palace. The archaeological team used satellite remote sensing to detect the distribution of mercury underground in the Qin Mausoleum based on records in "Historical Records". As a result, it was surprisingly discovered that the distribution of mercury underground in the Qin Mausoleum was surprisingly similar to the distribution in the territory of the Qin Empire at that time. This once again proves that Sima Qian's description of the underground palace of the Qin Mausoleum as "using mercury to represent hundreds of rivers, rivers and seas" does not appear to be imaginary. In addition to satisfying the First Emperor's desire for maps and his dream of immortality, mercury can also prevent theft. The vapor of mercury evaporation can poison people. In addition, the underground palace is relatively airtight. If a person enters the underground palace, he will be poisoned to death. Second, a large amount of mercury vapor will leak out. So how can we conclude that the mercury content in the underground palace of Qin Shihuang's mausoleum is abnormal compared with other surrounding places? Woolen cloth?

At all times and in all countries, only the First Emperor had such extraordinary courage.

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