Wheareas the anatomy of the terracotta warriors is rather uncertain under their bulky uniforms, the acrobats on the contrary display many details of human anatomy which had never been shown in Far Eastern art traditions: the proportions of the body are accurate, the musculature appears bulging under the skin, the ribs appear along the flanks and the emergence of the spinal vertebrae is precisely shaped in the back of the athletes.

[8] Among the very few such depictions known in China before that date: four wooden figurines[9] from Liangdaicun (梁帶村) in Hancheng (韓城), Shaanxi, possibly dating to the 9th century BCE; two wooden human figurines of foreigners possibly representing sedan chair bearers from a Qin state tomb in Longxian (隴縣), Shaanxi, from about 700 BCE; and more numerous statuettes from around 5th century bronze musicians in a miniature house from Shaoxing (紹興) in Zhejiang; a 4th-century human-shaped lamp stand from Pingshan (平山) county royal tomb, Hebei.

[11] According to Duan Qingbo, there is a possibility that these miniature human and horse shapes were already inspired by the Art of the steppes, as seen in objects such as the figurines of the Saka incense burners.

[15] This idea was also generally supported by Duan Qingbo, Director of the excavation team at the First Emperor's necropolis from 1998 to 2008,[15] or by Professor Lukas Nickel of SOAS.

'"[22] Dr. Raoul McLaughlin, an independent researcher on Roman trade, said there is no Greek influence on the Terracotta Army and emphasized the differences in artisanship, construction material, and symbology.

[24] In the 4th and 3rd century BCE, Alexander the Great and its successors state the Seleucid Empire and the Greco-Bactrian kingdom are known to have ruled over large part of Central Asia as far as Sogdiana, at the doorstep of the Tarim Basin and China beyond.

These cities, thriving with Hellenistic, could well have been the source of artistic influence over China, until the fall of Ai-Khanoum circa 135 BCE, to Saka and Yuezhi nomads.

[24] Some of the Helenistic art of Central Asia persisted in the 1st century BCE, as seen in the statuary of Khalchayan, using clay-molding techniques and human-sized realism similar to those of the Qin Terracotta Army.

These bronze statues, known as the Twelve Metal Colossi, remained very famous in ancient China and were the object of numerous commentaries, until they were lost around the 4th century CE.

[30] However Frederick Shih-chung Chen disputes that foreign statues at the western border may have been the model for the Twelve Metal Colossi of the First Emperor.