The Terra Cotta Army, inside the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, the First Qin Emperor, was discovered in March 1974 during the sinking of wells for farmland near Xi'an, Shaanxi province, China.  The army consists of more than 7,000 life-size tomb figures of warriors and horses buried with the emperor in 210-209 BC. 

 

In 236 BC, Emperor Qin, known as Ying Zheng at the time, began the task of conquering the six other warring states that existed in China.  By 221 BC, Ying Zheng achieved his final victory and proclaimed the centralization of the feudal system as the Qin dynasty, declaring himself the First Emperor.

 

Obsessed with a fear of death, Qin Shi Huang sought means of prolonging his life.  In ships carrying hundreds of young men and women, he sent an alchemist Xu Fu in search of Mount Penglai, where the Eight Immortals lived.  But the group never returned.  After failing to find a path to immortality, he realized that death was inevitable and started building his mausoleum.  The luxurious tomb contained precious stones and other rarities and had rivers and streams reproduced in mercury, made to flow by mechanical means.  The heavenly constellations were shown above and the regions of the earth below.  The emperor's tomb was an underground treasure house, fixed with crossbows so that any thief breaking into the tomb would be shot.  Qin Shi Huang died at the young age of 50 on an inspection tour of his empire.

 

His son Hu Hai was enthroned as Second Emperor.  He buried his father in his magnificent mausoleum along with concubines and craftsmen who knew the secrets of the tomb.  Hu Hai was a weak leader, living a luxurious life while neglecting the hardships of his people.  A peasant rebellion put an end to the Qin dynasty just 15 years after it had begun.

Machu Picchu is a pre-Columbian Inca site located in the mountins of Peru.  Most archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was built as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438-1472).  Often referred to as "The Lost City of the Incas," it is a familiar icon of the Inca World.

 

Machu Picchu was built around 1450, at the height of the Inca Empire.  It was abandoned just over 100 years later, in 1572, as a result of the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire.  It is likely that most of its inhabitants were wiped out by smallpox before the Spanish conquistadores arrived in the area.  Although known locally, it was unknown to the outside world before being brought to international attention in 1911 by the American historian Hiram Bingham. 

 

The ruins of Machu Picchu are divided into two main sections known as the Urban and Agricultural Sectors, divided by a wall.  The central buildings of Machu Picchu use the classical Inca architectural style of polished dry-stone walls.  The Incas were masters of this technique, called ashlar, in which blocks of stone are cut to fit together tightly without mortar.  The Incas were among the best stone masons the world has seen, and many junctions in the central city are so perfect that not even a blade of grass fits between the stones.  Peru is a highly seismic land, and mortar-free construction was more earthquake-resistant than using mortar.  

 

The Incas never used the wheel in any practical manner.  Its use in toys demonstrates that the principle was well known to them, although it was not applied in their engineering.  The lack of strong draft animals as well as mountainous terrain and dense vegetation may have rendered wheels impractical.  How they moved and placed enormous blocks of stone remains a mystery, although the general belief is that they used hundreds of men to push the stones up inclined planes. 

Chances are you have seen Petra in films such as "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" or "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen."  Petra is an archaeological site in the country of Jordan.  It is renowned for its rock-cut architecture.  Petra is also one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.  The Nabataeans constructed it as their capital city around 100 BC.  The site remained unknown to the western world until 1812, when it was introduced to the west by Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt.  It was famously described as "a rose-red city half as old as time" in a sonnet by John William Burgon.  UNESCO has described it as one of the most precious properties of man's cultural heritage.

 

Pliny the Elder and other writers identify Petra as the capital of the Nabataeans, Aramaic-speaking Semites, and the center of their caravan trade.  Enclosed by towering rocks and watered by a perennial stream, Petra not only possessed the advantages of a fortress, but controlled the main commercial routes which passed through it to Gaza in the west, to Bosra and Damascus in the north, and across the desert to the Persian Gulf.

 

Excavations have demonstrated that it was the ability of the Nabataeans to control the water supply that led to the rise of the desert city, creating an artificial oasis.  The area is visited by flash floods and archaeological evidence shows that the Nabataeans controlled these floods by the use of dams, cisterns and water conduits.  These innovations stored water for prolonged periods of drought and enabled the city to prosper.  In 106, when the Roman Cornelius Palma was governor of Syria, that part of Arabia under the rule of Petra was absorbed into the Roman Empire as part of Arabia Petraea, becoming its capital.  The native dynasty came to an end.