Near Xi'an in China, the first emperor was buried with an army of life-sized clay soldiers. Roughly how many soldiers are estimated to stand in the pits?
Try it yourself first
🏛️ History · soldiers
Enter an estimate in soldiers.
Notepad
End a line with = to calculate it.
Show the answer and the method
Answer
About 8,000 soldiers
Every figure has its own facial features, and the soldiers were originally painted in bright colours that flaked away within minutes of being exposed to dry air.
How to estimate it
Work from floor space. The main pit measures about 230 m by 62 m, or 14,000 square metres. Earth walls between the corridors take up a third, leaving 9,000 square metres, and each figure in formation occupies about 1.5 square metres: 9,000 / 1.5 = 6,000. Two smaller pits add about 2,000 more. Archaeologists estimate about 8,000 soldiers, most still buried.
Source: UNESCO; Emperor Qin Shi Huang's Mausoleum Site Museum
More questions: History
- At its greatest extent, around 1920, how many square kilometres of land did the British Empire cover?
- About how many stone blocks were used to build the Great Pyramid of Giza?
- From 1961 to 1989 the Berlin Wall sealed off West Berlin completely. How many kilometres long was the entire barrier around it?
- When the Titanic left on her first and only voyage in April 1912, about how many people were on board, passengers and crew together?
- At its peak in the mid 1960s, how many people were working on the Apollo Moon programme, including staff at contractors and universities?