Terracotta army built by women and children
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Researchers in China examined 36 terracotta warrior figures from the Qin Dynasty and found fingerprints suggesting women and children helped create the army. The team, led by Xiaoxi Li, analyzed 79 distinct fingerprints and estimated that 45% were left by adult men, 33% by adult women, and 22% by children under 15 years old.
This challenges the long-held belief that only adult men constructed large state projects in ancient China.
The scientists used the width of fingerprint ridges to differentiate between age and gender groups, accounting for shrinkage of the clay during firing. While distinguishing between adult female and adolescent male fingerprints proved difficult, statistical methods allowed them to estimate the proportion of prints from each group. The study builds on existing evidence from contemporary texts mentioning women and children working in state-run workshops.
The researchers caution that their findings reflect the number of fingerprints left, not the total number of workers, and that their analysis used modern European fingerprint data, which might slightly affect the results.
