Original subtitles

Modern china was born 2,000 years ago,

At a time when two mighty empires dominated the world.

In the west, rome.

In the east, china’s han dynasty.

The magnificent palaces of the han rulers

Have long since crumbled,

Their riches plundered by tomb raiders.

For centuries, the lost world of the emperors

Who built china has been shrouded in mystery.

Now an exploration of three of china’s spectacular royal tombs

Brings to light the full glory of china’s golden age,

Amazing proof of their luxury and wealth--

Treasures of gold, magnificent silk,

And priceless jade--

Watched over by a vast new terra-cotta army,

Their rulers encased in jade for eternity,

Guardians of a lost legacy that shaped a nation.

The city of xi’an, ancient capital of china.

Today it’s most famous for the terra-cotta warriors,

A life-sized clay army, created by the emperor qin shi huang,

The first emperor to unify china over 2,000 years ago.

But this isn’t the city’s only imperial tomb.

Just 40 miles away lies another amazing tomb

That’s just beginning to reveal its secrets.

It belonged to china’s next great ruler, emperor jing,

Leader of the han dynasty that ruled china for four centuries.

It was an era that shaped china forever.

By the end of the 400-year period

Of the han dynasty,

This entire subcontinental area

Has a sense of what it is to be chinese,

Has a sense of a shared heritage and a shared culture

With people who live 3,000 miles away.

Soaring over 100 feet at the center

Of this eight-square-mile mausoleum complex

Is the tomb mound where emperor jing himself is buried.

Around the emperor’s burial mound,

There’s a network of mysterious trenches

That archaeologists are still exploring today.

Here they’ve unearthed something extraordinary...

A second vast hoard of terra-cotta figures.

Unlike the life-size terra-cotta army,

These are built to one-third scale,

And at over 8,000 strong, it’s an even bigger find.

They’re also accompanied by a stunning variety of animals.

We found, wow!

Over 1,000 pieces of animals.

Terra-cotta animals, including pigs, dogs, sheep.

Such a large number, it was very impressive.

The trenches of the emperor’s tomb

Were dug into earth and boxed with wood.

When the wood rotted,

The trenches filled with mud, covering the figures.

What archaeologists have discovered here

Is not just an army,

But an astounding representation of the entire imperial world...

Down to the smallest details,

Including two types of dog--

Guard dogs, distinguished by their tail up,

And family dogs with their tail down,

Kept as pets and for eating.

Each trench is a precious window

Into the lost world of the han emperors

And their imperial government,

From kitchen pots to courtiers,

Some clearly marked as special

By their smaller penis and missing testicles.

These are the earliest known depictions of china’s eunuchs,

An elite class who occupied a unique position of power

Behind the scenes in the han court.

Only the emperor and his women,

Maybe a couple of children and a bunch of eunuchs

Are sealed off from the rest of the world.

There are no full men allowed in the palace

Except for the emperor himself,

And so the eunuchs get to control access to the emperor.

If you want to pass him a message,

If you want to get something done in the palace,

You are going to have to befriend a eunuch.

The man who controlled this court

Filled with intrigue 2,000 years ago

Was emperor jing.

During his rule, han culture reached its golden age,

And china appeared to prosper under his careful leadership.

Emperor jing has a good reputation,

But much of it was inherited from his father,

Including the ministers who gave him such good advice

And the wealth that he eventually spent on his tomb.

During his reign, he reduced tax to three percent.

That would make anyone popular, i think.

He abolished mutilation as a punishment

And reduced the amount of whippings in the empire,

So everyone was pleased with that.

But it didn’t stop him

From spending an unbelievable fortune on glorifying himself.

In planning for his afterlife,

He demanded a wildly extravagant mausoleum.

It took thousands of workers almost 30 years to complete.

Jing also broke long-standing rules

On how a chinese emperor should behave.

There’s a dark side to him.

His decrees are incredibly arrogant.

He doesn’t let his ministers take the credit

For what was largely their work.

He always acts as if everything was his doing.

Before he became emperor, he was implicated in a terrible scandal

That almost brought the empire down

With his second cousin

And murdered him by clubbing him with the game board.

Murderous jing built his colossal tomb complex

Just outside the imperial han capital xi’an.

Its ancient name, chang’an, means perpetual peace.

At its peak, it was one of the largest cities

In the ancient world,

With a population of over a million.

Jeffrey it was, in reality and symbolically,

Not only the center of an empire,

But from the perspective of those who lived there,

Those who ruled and governed there,

The center of the world.

It’s also the same city where jing’s predecessor

Had constructed his massive mausoleum,

Guarded by the famous terra-cotta army.

Xiuzhen li is a leading expert

In these larger than life warriors,

Which loom at over six feet tall on the other side of the city.

She has come to compare them with the smaller figures

At the tomb of emperor jing, which are just 23 inches high.

Now on display from suspended corridors of tempered glass,

These excavated trenches contain

An idealized imagining of a real world, in miniature.

They are so small, when i first saw these figures,

Compared to the terra-cotta figures

In the qin first emperor’s tomb complex.

In this tomb, there’s everything

In it’s miniature version of real life.

It’s all been made

To give the emperor a perfect afterlife,

Tended by all his supporters and servants.

The big tomb really mirrored the royal household

And also the life of the emperor.

It’s easy to be charmed

By these intriguing figures,

But they come from an older and darker royal tradition.

When ancient chinese rulers died,

Members of their court were sacrificed

And buried with them.

The chinese have been including

Human sacrifices in their tombs

Since the seventh century b.c.,

And this was a custom

That was much lamented and deeply unpopular.

But by the time of the han dynasty,

The practice of mass human sacrifice

Had all but disappeared,

Replaced by figures like these, buried in the tomb instead.

We do think that this practice started

Really as a sense of humanity,

That it simply wasn’t right to have people killed

In order to serve a tomb occupant in the afterlife.

The giant terra-cotta warriors

Were designed as an awe-inspiring spirit army,

To fight ghostly enemies in the afterlife,

But if these smaller figures were meant to do the same,

There’s an obvious problem-- they have no arms.

It’s a mystery experts are determined to solve.

In xi’an, china’s ancient capital,

A team of archaeologists, led by professor jiao nanfeng,

Discovered an astounding luxurious world in miniature.

It represents the entire household of emperor jing,

Down to the last concubine and eunuch,

Buried beside his tomb for eternity.

They even found tiny replicas of ancient chinese money

For the model figures to spend in the afterlife.

These are small-scale versions of real objects,

Specially designed for funerals,

Made of bronze, weighing less than a third of a gram.

Jiao: they are not coins you can use.

We call them spirit article coins.

The han believed that when they died,

They would exist in another parallel world,

Where they would need spirit versions

Of everything from this world,

And this tiny gold seal

Bearing the signature of a cavalry general

Was found buried in a trench full of clay horses and riders,

A perfect replica of one

A general would have used in real life.

The seal is too small to be used.

It’s a spirit article seal specifically made for burial.

Recreating the emperor’s household

In such tiny detail

All stems from this idea of a continued existence

In a parallel world after death.

These miniature clay figures are not merely dolls.

They are the court the emperor will need

To serve him in the next world.

But the question remained:

How could they do that without arms?

Then in march 1991, scientists made a critical discovery--

Minute traces of wood.

The figures had arms after all, made of a material

That allowed different poses for different tasks.

Despite their small size,

They were made at great expense and with extraordinary detail.

Modern craftsmen are attempting to recreate the process.

Every single figure has to be constructed

Individually by hand.

Clay is pressed into finely carved molds

For the body, head, and legs.

Once the figure is assembled,

It’s fired in a kiln for up to four days.

These small figurines,

We can see clear around the eyes, noses, and ears,

And they molded and then carved in detail,

And also very clear about some details of the body.

After firing,

The arms made of wood are attached to them.

The microscopic analysis also found

Surprising remnants of another organic material,

Which proves that they weren’t even naked

When they were buried,

But draped in the source

Of the han dynasty’s great wealth and power--silk.

2,000 years ago, silk was one

Of the most highly prized commodities on earth,

And it came only from china.

Global hunger for this highly desirable fabric

Gave birth to the world’s

Longest overland ancient trading route.

From xi’an, it drove through thousands of miles of desert,

Traversed mountain ranges, and linked china with europe.

This was the silk road.

Silk was highly prized

As far as the mediterranean empires of greece and rome,

Where it draped the shoulders of the super rich and powerful.

Chinese farmers paid their taxes with it.

Civil servants received it as a salary.

It was so highly valued that anyone who revealed

The secret of its production to foreigners

Was punished with death.

To make luxury miniature costumes like these,

With a yard and a half of sumptuous fabric,

Would have cost more than a month’s pay

Of a soldier in the han dynasty army.

The miniature figures only give clues

To how they may have been originally dressed.

Exactly how these opulent clothes were made

Is still a mystery.

We can’t even imagine

How luxurious their clothes were.

We’ve lost the skills to copy han fabrics

Like those found in the tombs.

While some miniature figures

Wore elaborate silk costumes,

Others were dressed in clay.

They have arms but no hands, a clue to their identity.

These were the performers.

They once held wooden musical instruments

That long ago rotted away.

Alongside them, fluid dancers perform for eternity.

Their elegant gestures

Have puzzled contemporary choreographers

Trying to recreate their 2,000-year-old performances.

Ancient han dance styles can be reconstructed

Using the evidence from painted murals in han tombs

And the poses of the clay figures,

Designed to entertain the emperor forever.

One of the things that emperor jing did

Is that he established that two of his ancestors

Had to have dance performances and rituals conducted

At their tombs on a regular basis.

But there’s also dances as entertainment,

As a form of introducing him to eligible young ladies,

So dances are an important element in court life.

The sophisticated culture and power

Of the han dynasty

Were at their dazzling height in the second century b.c.,

When emperor jing built his extravagant tomb.

But the vast han empire was vulnerable.

Although the emperor ruled supreme

From his capital in xi’an,

He relied on local kings

To control his more distant provinces,

Like the kingdom of chu in eastern china,

Today’s jiangsu province.

The king of chu became one of the wealthiest rulers

Of these far-flung kingdoms

And would eventually challenge his power.

Modern xuzhou,

A fast-growing city of nine million people.

Among the modern skyscrapers are visible reminders

Of its historical past

As capital of the ancient kingdom of chu.

The city had special status during the han dynasty

Because it’s where their first emperor was born.

With his blessing,

The kings of chu built themselves extravagant tombs,

To be buried like emperors.

The han dynasty had reunited china,

But dotted around in the east, there were kingdoms,

And these were places where relatives and allies

Of the founder of the han dynasty

Had been set up as rulers in their own right,

And they called themselves kings.

They had their own wealth, their own religions,

And so these people stood a very high risk

Of becoming pretenders to the imperial throne.

In the middle of the second century b.c.

One king of chu, liu wu, accumulated enough power

To lead a rebellion against the emperor.

The emperor crushed the revolt,

Forcing the defeated king to commit suicide.

Behind this modern facade

Is where he is said to have been buried in a rush

In an unfinished tomb.

Dr. James lin of the fitzwilliam museum in cambridge, england,

Has joined local archaeologist li chunlei

To explore inside

The second of our remarkable han dynasty tombs.

A narrow corridor leads 100 feet down to an underground palace.

Unlike the tomb of emperor jing, which was dug underground,

This king’s tomb is cut from solid limestone.

The unfinished work of the stonemason’s chisel

Is still clearly visible.

This chamber is almost finished chamber.

But still you can see some rough area by the end.

The artist, the laborer

Couldn’t have time to finish to smooth the surface,

So we can still see traces of the chisel, still quite rough.

Even though the tomb was never completed,

Its layout reveals a royal resting place

Designed for maximum security in the afterlife,

And one of the biggest threats came from tomb raiders.

To protect against them,

The architects devised impressive defensive measures--

Colossal stones immaculately cut to block the passageways.

They weighed six tons each.

They were stuck in the main entrance in the tomb

To prevent the tomb robber.

Despite these measures,

The tomb raiders found ingenious ways to break in.

The stones bear mysterious carvings

Said to resemble the nostrils of an ox.

The tomb robber still drilled a hole,

Which was called ox nostril,

In order to put a rope through to pull this stone out

To get into the main chamber of the tomb.

Archaeologists found the tomb raiders

Had also dug a tunnel.

The robber came through the tomb

And went straight to the rear chamber

And stole almost every single piece from the chamber.

Reaching as far as the rear chamber,

The robbers stumbled across some of the richest relics

Of the entire han dynasty.

The kings of chu had buried with them

Treasure on a staggering scale

And their secret to immortality.

2,000 years ago, tomb raiders of ancient china

Broke into the tomb of the king of chu.

What they stole may never be fully known,

But what they left behind is priceless.

Thousands of pieces of jade littered the floor,

Pieces of a giant puzzle--

The shattered remains of the king’s coffin.

This is the only fully restored jade coffin in all of china.

More than 2,000 jade plaques

Attached to the lacquered surface with nails of gold.

Why would tomb raiders abandon such an astonishing treasure?

Because it was useless to them.

Jade was the exclusive property of the emperor himself.

Anyone trying to peddle it would have faced a death sentence,

So the raiders just stripped the superb coffin

Of its 1,700 gold nails,

Leaving a priceless pile of jade pieces behind.

Only a single gold nail survives.

But a painstaking reconstruction has revealed

One of the most magnificent funeral objects ever discovered.

Buried inside the jade coffin was this jade burial suit

Made up of over 4,000 pieces of precious stone

And sewn together with more than three pounds of gold thread.

The suit crafted to fit the contours of the royal body.

The jade suit

Is the most unique burial suit in china,

And possibly in the world.

2,000 years ago, in china’s han dynasty,

When a ruler died,

His corpse was carefully made ready for the afterlife,

And jade was essential

For setting him on the sacred path to immortality.

The ancient chinese didn’t have diamonds,

But they did have jade

As a symbol of imperial authority and sacred power,

And it becomes one of the symbols of imperial authority

To the extent that the word in chinese for jade

Is a picture of a king holding a precious jewel.

For the han, jade became the primary ingredient

In their recipe for immortality.

What i have in front of me are jade objects

That were used either to cover

Or to plug the crucial openings in the human body.

According to ancient chinese medicine,

A person’s vital essence

Could leak out through bodily orifices.

If you spoke too much,

The vital essence would then concentrate in your mouth

And would be depleted in other parts of your body.

If you listened too much, if you looked at something too much,

And so life needed to be a life of balance.

When a king died, it was essential

To preserve his vital essence for the afterlife

By plugging his orifices with jade.

Jade that would be placed over the eyes,

Plugs placed in one’s ears, plugs in the nostril,

A plug for the anus, as well as a covering for the genitals

In order to ensure

That the vital breath did not leave the body.

For the most important orifice, the mouth,

The chinese created a very special plug,

Shaped like a cicada.

The bizarre life cycle of this curious insect

Made it especially significant to ancient chinese observers.

They noticed how it spends

Most of its life underground,

And then, at a crucial moment,

It digs a tunnel through the earth up to the surface,

And when it reaches the surface,

It sheds its old body and transforms itself.

Here you are buried deep in the earth,

But we’re going to provide you with an exoskeleton,

Similar to that of the cicada,

A marvelous jade suit

That will keep evil influences away from you,

That will allow your soul to exist, to be preserved,

And then at the crucial moment, you can leave from your tomb,

Shed this exoskeleton we’ve provided for you,

And through this body, transform yourself into an immortal.

The belief in jade’s supernatural power

To give immortality gripped the han imagination,

Even driving emperor jing’s son wu to a peculiar addiction.

The early histories tell us

That emperor wu instructed his servants

To collect at dawn the sweet dew.

He would have it placed in a cup

And then mixed with the shavings of jade,

Clearly believing that the purity of the jade,

The magical properties of the jade,

Ingested as he was doing,

Would help transform his physical body

So that it had the properties of jade,

And he would last forever.

Emperor wu was one

Of the longest serving emperors ever, reigning nearly 50 years,

However jade contains metal elements

Potentially toxic if ingested,

And there is still no evidence

That jade has any preserving effect on the body.

Nonetheless, han royalty continued to fill their tombs

And cover their bodies with jade.

They were utterly dependent on the power of jade

In their search for immortality.

You get this sense, with many chinese emperors,

That they have become the ruler of the world.

They rule everything under heaven,

But they haven’t conquered death,

And death is going to get them,

And they become more and more conscious of that

As they get older, and they develop these obsessions,

Not only with their tombs,

But with the possibility of becoming immortal.

The precious jade that played such a unique role

In han dynasty funerals is still extremely prized today.

The same 2,000-year-old jade quarries

In hetian, in northwest china,

Still supply the stone to modern workshops

Like this one in xuzhou, 3,000 miles away.

Chinese people believe

Jade has spiritual qualities.

It brings you health and makes your dreams come true.

This is rare mutton fat jade,

Named for its special white color.

Unbelievably, this one piece alone

Is currently worth a staggering $450,000.

From stones like this, craftsmen serving a 10-year apprenticeship

Learn to use modern tools

To create copies of ancient chinese works of art.

Professor li has brought

An original 2,000-year-old jade dragon

From the xuzhou museum

To show one apprentice the extraordinary skill

Of the ancient han dynasty craftsmen.

Let’s look at the shape.

The carving on this one has much more fine detailing than yours.

Yes, 2,000 years ago,

People were very clever.

Modern craftsmen just don’t have the same skill.

Han royals believed their precious jade

Held the secret to immortality,

But as a preservative, it failed miserably.

Unlike egyptian mummies, the jade suits are an empty shell.

Their bodies have turned to dust.

But now exciting new finds

Reveal the han dynasty’s enduring obsession with jade...

And how they clung to their belief in its power,

Even as their empire crumbled.

Modern xuzhou in eastern china,

Capital of the ancient kingdom of chu.

Among the modern skyscrapers is this gigantic mound.

Our third tomb is part of the extraordinary network

Of 2,000-year-old royal burial sites being excavated

By archaeologists in the heart of xuzhou, called tushan.

It’s a pyramid of packed earth

Towering 50 feet over the city...

Built in the later han dynasty,

When their wealth and power were crumbling.

35 years ago, archaeologists began their preparations

To penetrate the burial chambers here.

With meticulous care,

They hollowed out the pyramid of packed earth

And landscaped over the site, revealing the tomb at its base.

Clearly visible at last, these stone blocks form a roof

Over a series of secret burial chambers dug out of the ground.

Now using cutting-edge technology,

We can see inside for the first time

Without taking it apart.

Three-dimensional laser scans

Can create this virtual model of the entire tomb site.

Our model reveals astonishing detail.

Four layers of giant roof stones collapsed in on itself,

Telltale signs of a break-in by tomb raiders.

In the local history of xuzhou,

Only one tomb robbery is officially recorded.

The prime suspect-- a resourceful tomb raider

By the name of jia hu.

He was accused of building a suspicious hut

On top of the tushan mound.

He built this structure to disguise what he was doing,

And over a 20-year period

He then dug his way deep down into the tomb mound.

The roof collapse

Is evidence of an ancient crime scene.

Archaeologists can now reconstruct the events

From 1,000 years ago.

The tomb raiders dug a hole into the tomb mound

From the northwest,

And they came down roughly to this spot.

And it was there in the central chamber

That they found an enormous array of tomb objects.

They needed a place to sort through things

To decide what they wanted, what was valuable,

What they wouldn’t bother to take away,

So that, for example, there was some clay pottery,

Too much of that stuff, so they just cast that aside.

For the tomb raiders, this was a central area

Where crucial decisions were made,

And from, from an archaeological point of view, it’s fascinating.

The target for jia hu and his gang--

The magnificent treasure in the tomb’s main chamber...

The gold and silver and the precious jade.

At the time of this crime, in the late 12th century,

The taboo on buying and selling this valuable stone

Was no longer in place.

Jade was fair game for tomb raiders,

So professor li’s team fears everything of value inside

Has already been stolen.

The archaeologists now trace the route made by the tomb raiders.

They brush away more dirt

And stumble onto an astonishing find...

The unmistakable geometric pattern of green stone...

The remains of a han royal burial suit.

At the burial mound of tushan in xuzhou, eastern china,

Professor li yinde’s team of archaeologists

Has made an extraordinary find,

The remains of a 2,000-year-old han royal burial suit.

Remarkably, its 40 pieces of jade are still together

In their original configuration.

It’s likely the tomb raiders

Dropped part of the burial suit 1,000 years ago

As they made their getaway in the dark.

This rare archaeological discovery

Contains a unique feature--

The jade pieces are still sewn together

With fragments of the original thread.

And one significant detail threatens to upset

Current thinking about who is buried here.

The thread is not gold or even silver.

It’s bronze.

According to historical record, this is the tomb of a king.

His suit should be threaded with silver, not bronze like this.

Even though the tomb is smaller than early han burials,

The suit itself is made of fine quality

And beautifully worked jade pieces.

If this is a king,

How did he end up with a precious jade suit

Sewn together with inferior thread?

It’s inconsistent

With the literary records,

Maybe because the records were incomplete,

So this is more valuable.

For archaeological analysis,

It’s important to preserve not only the object

But how the object was found in the location.

It’s now time for the archaeologists to lift

The pieces of the jade suit abandoned by the tomb raiders.

They pour a special resin over a carefully marked area.

The resin will quickly harden, with the jade embedded in it,

To be extracted in one piece and taken to the lab.

What we’re looking at here are the jade pieces

That were, of course,

Part of this, part of the jade suit.

The size and configuration of the pieces

Suggest they are a cuff

From the ankle or wrist of the burial suit.

It’s very rare that we have an opportunity

To see the jade pieces together, more or less in place,

And because we’re seeing them together,

The thread is intact.

When we look at the thread through this magnifying glass,

We see that it’s made out of bronze,

Bronze that has already corroded

And hence has a light green patina around its surface.

The bronze is a much cheaper substitute for silver,

But closer examination of one piece of jade

Reveals another astounding twist.

On the corner of this small jade piece,

Mr. Jiao and his colleagues

Have discovered a tiny bit of gold foil,

And they believe that this gold foil

Was wrapped around bronze thread.

So the thread wasn’t simply bronze.

It was bronze wrapped in gold,

As though keeping up appearances.

And what’s interesting about this

Is that according to common practice,

According to common valuation,

Bronze wrapped in gold equals silver,

And so that combination renders the jade suit,

With the thread as we have discovered it,

Completely in harmony with the ancient records

That dictate what a local king should be using.

It’s a smart ploy

For making the cheaper thread in the suit look expensive.

This and a more modest-sized tomb

Seems to indicate a king living beyond his means.

The empire’s fortune is in decline.

Few tombs of han kings from this time have ever been found,

Much less identified.

The discovery of this thread

Confirms that they’ve found a han king of chu.

His exact identity remains a riddle.

We are very certain now

That this is a later han king of ancient xuzhou.

This mysterious king was buried

When the golden age of the han dynasty was over.

His suit, sewn with bronze thread

Disguised in a thin layer of gold,

Is a clue that after four centuries of glory,

The dynasty was facing its final days.

Their power and influence was in terminal decline,

As rebellious kings and weak emperors

Tore the dynasty apart.

But all things come to an end.

While we’ll see, later on in the han,

Examples of tomb grandeur, generally speaking,

The tradition diminishes as the han itself diminishes

In its, in its closing decades.

On the surface,

The han dynasty itself faded away.

They buried their magnificent treasure of terra-cotta and jade

In their tombs,

But they left china far more than worldly wealth.

Arguably one of the greatest achievements

Of the han dynasty

Is that by lasting for 400 years,

They were able to homogenize everything.

They were able to take these disparate kingdoms

And countries and provinces

And smooth out their cultures,

Give them all a sense of being chinese.

Today over 90 percent of chinese people

Consider themselves to be ethnic han.

They refer to their language as the han language.

They refer to their writing system as the han script.

And all of this reflects

The perception of modern-day chinese,

That when they’re looking to their beginnings,

They certainly must look to the han.

They searched for eternal life.

They gave modern china a unified social and cultural identity.

That is the immortality of the han dynasty.