Online users say it is all Greek to them to dispute terracotta origins
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SILENT and enigmatic, China’s Terracotta Warriors are at the center of a bitter row, with patriots and scholars dismissing as impossible theories they could have been inspired by Greek sculpture.
The 8,000-man clay army, crafted around 250 BC for the tomb of China’s first emperor Qin Shihuang, is a UNESCO world heritage site, a major tourist draw and a symbol of ancient Chinese artistic and military sophistication in a country that with a 5,000-year-old civilization.
Theories put forward by art historian Lukas Nickel of the University of Vienna and trumpeted in a recent documentary by National Geographic and the BBC — claim that Greek innovations in artistic naturalism, and perhaps even Greek artisans, directly influenced the sculptures.
After the documentary, which was aired this month, the BBC was heavily criticized by online users who questioned how the Greeks could have impacted ancient China.
“Couldn’t it be that Chinese people went first to Greece and influenced their sculpture?” one wrote.
At the tomb tourists from across China crammed observation platforms to view the ranks of soldiers, jostling for space to snap selfies against their serious, stony facades as guides briskly narrated the story of their discovery in the 1970s.
Several visitors were incredulous at theories of foreign influence. Dong Shenghua of Beijing said this was “impossible,” pointing to the Asian features of the statues and the sophistication of the craftsmanship, which is “so good we can’t even make them today.”
“We have 5,000 years of history, how many does England have?” he asked.
Ma Dongling, from Guangxi, said inspiration could not have come from abroad as China was “very innovative” at the time. “The emperor was the first in the world to do this.”
The terracotta museum’s lead archeologist Zhang Weixing was similarly dismissive, saying the materials, technology, and ceramics techniques used for the warriors were all Chinese.
“To say that the Qin (221-206 BC) tombs and ancient Greece had contact has no substantial evidence at all,” he said. “It merely exists in the scholar’s conjecture.”
As emperor, he added, Qin Shihuang “not only innovated the terracotta warriors, he also created a series of innovations” including standardized weights and measures, national roads, and a unified currency.
“Who influenced whom, it’s tough to say. Ancient Greek sculpture had already also been influenced by Egypt.”
For evidence Nickel points to historical records suggesting the first Qin emperor made casts of huge bronze statues seen in China’s far west, realistic detailing of muscle and bone on some figures, and the absence of an extensive prior sculptural tradition in China.
Further research could show that foreign empires may have provided a model for the Qin state itself, he said.
“I think it’s perfectly possible that there’s much more influence in thought about statecraft, in how to run an empire, than people have been so far willing to admit.”
“This is an argument that works mainly in Europe and America,” Nickel says. In China, researchers rely more on textual evidence for proof, he said, and so were “very hesitant to believe there were interactions before the mid 2nd century BC, when the Chinese emperor of the Han dynasty (206 BC-220) sent an envoy to central Asia.”
Li Xiuzhen, a fellow scholar at the terracotta museum, said the “terracotta army is unique in the world and is the “creation of the Qin people.”
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