The Terracotta Army
Eight thousand clay soldiers, each with its own face
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The figures were made on a modular principle: standardised body parts assembled and then individualised in the face — mass production two thousand years before the assembly line. The weapons were real and some are still sharp, thanks to a chromium-bearing surface treatment. The burial mound itself has never been opened; the historian Sima Qian describes rivers of mercury inside, and surveys do show abnormally high mercury in the soil.
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China's first emperor had himself buried with an entire life-sized army made of clay. Every soldier has a different face. Farmers digging a well in 1974 found them — and no one had suspected they existed.
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Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org