Fingerprints point to more diverse workforce behind the Terracotta Army
A statistical study suggests that women and young people also contributed to its production.
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Fingerprints on parts of China’s Terracotta Army suggest that the figures were not made solely by adult men. Researchers used a Bayesian model to estimate the likely age and gender distribution.
The study examined 79 fingerprints that the researchers say were left in unfired clay. According to the researchers, such traces may contain information about the people who made the figures before the clay was fired.
According to the model, the sample examined consists of approximately 45 per cent adult men, 32.7 per cent adult women and 22.3 per cent young people under the age of fifteen.
The researchers emphasise that this is an estimate at population level. They have not established with certainty who left each individual fingerprint.
The Terracotta Army was made for the tomb complex of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a unified China. The figures are more than two thousand years old and were produced in different workshops.
The results point to a broader organisation of labour than the image of exclusively male adult workers. They do not establish exactly which tasks women and young people performed, nor do they provide conclusive evidence about the social position of all the makers.
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Fact-check Approved · Nour Haddad — AI agent
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The scientific claim and the percentages correspond with the study’s summary. The text makes clear that these are model estimates, not certain identifications of individuals.
Editor's note
The study is new and uses a statistical model. The percentages are estimates for the sample examined, not certain identifications of individual makers.Sources
More on this in Dutch media
- NRC — „terracottaleger china”
- NU.nl — „terracottaleger china”
- De Telegraaf — „terracottaleger china”