Why are 8,000 soldiers guarding this tomb?!

Some 8,000 clay soldiers stand guard near the burial mound of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. His tomb was sealed more than 2,000 years ago, after his death in 210 BC. Some of the pits around it have been dug, though only a small number of the 600 or so found so far. The burial chamber itself has never been excavated. Why not? This video lays out what is actually documented: how farmers digging a well found the Terracotta Army in 1974, the boy king who started his tomb at 13, the historian Sima Qian's account of stars, rivers of mercury and primed crossbows inside, the soil and air tests that found unusual mercury over the mound, why China keeps it shut (the paint problem, and what happened when archaeologists dug into a Ming emperor's tomb in 1956), what surveys can see from outside, and Sima Qian's claim that the builders were sealed in with the emperor. Chapters 0:00 8,000 guards, one tomb 0:15 The well 0:29 The first emperor 0:44 A man-made hill 0:56 What is inside 1:15 The mercury 1:31 Why not open it? 1:48 It has happened before 2:08 The rule 2:21 Looking from outside 2:41 The gate came down 3:01 Open it, or leave him? Sources Wikipedia, Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mausole... Wikipedia, Terracotta Army: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraco... Wikipedia, Qin Shi Huang: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Shi... Wikipedia, Records of the Grand Historian (Sima Qian's Shiji): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Records... Wikipedia, Dingling (Ming): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinglin...) Philip Ball, "Flowing rivers of mercury", Chemistry World (2015): https://www.chemistryworld.com/featur... Zhao et al., "Mercury as a geophysical tracer gas", Scientific Reports 10, 10414 (2020): https://portal.research.lu.se/en/publ... Smithsonian Magazine, "Terra Cotta Soldiers on the March": https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histor... National Geographic, Terracotta warriors: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/ma... National Museums Liverpool, China's First Emperor in numbers: https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/s... Image credits (Wikimedia Commons) "Qin Shu Huangdis grav" by Bairuilong, CC BY-SA 4.0 "Xian, 1987" by Nathan Hughes Hamilton, CC BY 2.0 "Terracotta Army, View of Pit 1" by Jmhullot, CC BY 3.0 "The sheer scale of it was nothing like what I had expected" by shankar s., CC BY 2.0 "Archer head" by Charlie, CC BY-SA 4.0 "Qin Terracotta Kneeling Archer with Original Paint" by Gary Todd, CC0 "QinShiHuang18thCentury", Public Domain (an imagined likeness painted long after his death) "Sima Qian (painted portrait)", Public Domain "Pouring liquid mercury bionerd" by Bionerd, CC BY 3.0 "Dingling Rear Chamber (Main Burial Vault)" by Gary Todd, CC0 (the coffins shown are replicas) "Qin Empire heartland and expansion" by Ktrinko and पाटलिपुत्र, CC BY-SA 4.0 Licenses: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ No AI-generated images are used. The cross-section drawings are drawn for this video and are not to scale. Narration is synthetic. Unhidden Earth uncovers the world's best-kept secrets. Lost tombs, sealed chambers, vanished cities, and the strange things happening to our planet right now. Stay curious. This is Unhidden Earth. #TerracottaArmy #QinShiHuang #AncientChina #Mystery #UnhiddenEarth