Archaeology
SHOES worn by the warriors of the first emperor of China, famously depicted by the Terracotta Army, may have been surprisingly flexible and slip resistant. Replicas of them are helping to build a better picture of what Qin dynasty soldiers wore and how this might have aided them in battle.
The Terracotta Army was found in 1974 near Xi’an, China, and is formed of more than 8000 sculptures depicting the armies of the founder of the Qin dynasty, Qin Shi Huang. The terracotta figures include warriors, chariots and horses and were buried alongside the emperor more than 2200 years ago to guard him in the afterlife.
Analysis of the sculptures has revealed what armour the ancient Chinese warriors wore and what weapons they used. Now, Na Cha and Jin Zhou at Sichuan University in China have recreated the shoes of one of the army’s kneeling archers.
The pair determined that the archer’s square-toed shoes had upturned tips and their soles were about 1.5 centimetres thick. There were also circular markings on the bottom of the soles, which the researchers took to represent stitches. There were more circles at the front and the heel, hinting that the real shoe was thinner in the middle, say Cha and Zhou.
