Terracotta Army is China’s most stunning examples of Martial Arts. It is a collection of over 8,000 life-size terracotta statues of soldiers and horses, which guards the tomb of Qin Shihuang, the first emperor of China. The statues were painted in many colors, most distinctively purple in color.
The research was conducted to determine the chemical composition of the paint and how it was made. It was concluded that Taoist experiments in creating fake jade, a mineral once thought to bestow immortality were the reasons behind the purple color on the statues.
X-ray diffraction analysis, fluorescence, microanalysis and other techniques were used for the research.
It is believed that while making Chinese glass out of barium, lead and quartz to imitate jade the ancient alchemists created a sparkling, white substance to which they added the copper mineral malachite, which is bright green, in hopes of producing a more realistic jade. But the purple pigments were produced.
Among the institutions that conducted the research were the tomb museum that houses the army and the U.S. Department of Energy. The findings will be published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
Source: discovery
