The figures, dating from approximately the late 200s BCE,[1] were discovered in 1974 by local farmers in Lintong County, outside Xi'an, Shaanxi, China.

[5][6] Geographer Li Daoyuan, writing six centuries after the first emperor's death, recorded in Shui Jing Zhu that Mount Li was a favoured location due to its auspicious geology: "famed for its jade mines, its northern side was rich in gold, and its southern side rich in beautiful jade; the first emperor, covetous of its fine reputation, therefore chose to be buried there".

According to this famous account, 100 flowing rivers were simulated using mercury, and above them the ceiling was decorated with heavenly bodies, below which lay the features of the lands of China which the emperor had unified.

[11] Later historical accounts have suggested that the mausoleum complex and tomb itself had been looted by Xiang Yu, a contender for the throne after the death of the first emperor.

[15] The Terracotta Army was discovered on 29 March 1974 by a group of farmers—Yang Zhifa, his five brothers, and neighbour Wang Puzhi—who were digging a well approximately 1.5 km (0.93 mi) east of the Qin Emperor's tomb mound at Mount Li (Lishan),[16][17][18][19] a region riddled with underground springs and watercourses.

For centuries, occasional reports mentioned pieces of terracotta figures and fragments of the Qin necropolis – roofing tiles, bricks and chunks of masonry.

[20] This discovery prompted Chinese archaeologists, including Zhao Kangmin, to investigate,[21] revealing the largest pottery figurine group ever found.

During the excavations near the Mount Li burial mound, archaeologists found several graves dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, where diggers had apparently struck terracotta fragments.

The soldiers within were laid out as if to protect the tomb from the east, where the Qin Emperor's conquered states lay, and were discovered 7 m below the excavation level.

[34] It is the largest of the four pits and has eleven parallel corridors, most more than 3 m (10 ft) wide and paved with small bricks with a wooden ceiling supported by large beams and posts.

[36] These, together with the missing weapons, have been taken as evidence of the reported looting by Xiang Yu and the subsequent burning of the site, which is thought to have caused the roof to collapse and crush the army figures below.

Originally, the figures were painted with ground precious stones, intensely fired bones (white), pigments of iron oxide (dark red), cinnabar (red), malachite (green), azurite (blue), charcoal (black), cinnabar barium copper silicate mix (Chinese purple or Han purple), tree sap from a nearby source (more than likely from the Chinese lacquer tree) (brown),[41] and other colors including pink, lilac, red, white,[42] and one unidentified color.

[41] Excavations in Pit K9901 have uncovered in 1999 a series of associated terracotta sculptures that have been dubbed "The Acrobats", which have been remarked to display an advanced understanding of human anatomy.

[44] Eleven of such figurines from Pit K9901 have since been subsequently unearthed with seven of them found in a degree of preservation that made them capable of being largely reconstructed from their fragment shards.

[49] This idea was also generally supported by Duan Qingbo, site chief archaeologist from 1998 to 2006, though noting that "the only thing" in extant archaeology which may hold a close similarity to the figures in terms of their artistic style is that of the later 1st century BCE Central Asian Khalchayan statuary.

[53] Raoul McLaughlin, an independent researcher on Roman trade, stated that there is no Greek influence on the Terracotta Army and emphasized the differences in artisanship, construction material, and symbology.

[57] In 2021, morphological studies have shown that there is a strong resemblance between the statues and that of the local region's modern inhabitants, which has led some scholars to theorize that the high level of stylistic realism stems from the figures being modelled on actual soldiers.

This has aided modern historians in verifying which workshops were commandeered to make tiles and other mundane items for the terracotta army.

According to Duan Qingbo, lead archaeologist and Director of Excavations at the Mausoleum from 1998 to 2006, DNA analysis work on a group of 19 skeletons, in comparison with 33 contemporary Chinese individuals, showed that the workers and laborers analyzed exhibited a diverse range of ethnicities, traceable to that of both Han and minority ethnicities, with a particular concentration of individuals from southern China.

[30][62][63] Studies of these arrowheads suggest that they were produced by self-sufficient, autonomous workshops using a process referred to as cellular production or Toyotism.

[64] Some weapons were coated with a 10–15 micrometer layer of chromium dioxide before burial that was believed to have protected them from any form of decay for the last 2200 years.

[71][72] The rider wears Central Asian, Scythian-style clothing,[73] and his high pointed nose suggests he is a foreigner,[72] but these early statuettes have been argued to lack the naturalistic and realistic quality of the Qin terracota army.

[76] In 2007, scientists at Stanford University and the Advanced Light Source facility in Berkeley, California, reported that powder diffraction experiments combined with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and micro-X-ray fluorescence analysis showed that the process of producing terracotta figures colored with Chinese purple dye consisting of barium copper silicate was derived from the knowledge gained by Taoist alchemists in their attempts to synthesize jade ornaments.

Based on the arrows' chemical compositions, the researchers concluded that a cellular manufacturing system similar to the one used in a modern Toyota factory, as opposed to a continuous assembly line in the early days of the automobile industry, was employed.

[93][94] An exhibition entitled 'The First Emperor – China's Entombed Warriors', presenting 120 artifacts was hosted at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, between 2 December 2010 and 13 March 2011.

[100][101] An exhibition featuring ten Terracotta Army figures and other artifacts, "Terracotta Warriors of the First Emperor," was on display at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, Washington, from 8 April 2017 to 4 September 2017[102][103] before traveling to The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to be exhibited from 30 September 2017 to 4 March 2018 with the addition of augmented reality.

[106] An exhibition tour of 120 real-size replicas of Terracotta statues was displayed in the German cities of Frankfurt am Main, Munich, Oberhof, Berlin (at the Palace of the Republic) and Nuremberg between 2003 and 2004.