For nearly two millennia, it was a symptom and symbol of China’s never-ending problems with “frontier barbarians” who worked continuously to harvest some of the nation’s wealth for themselves (Barfield, 1989). It survives very visibly to the present, albeit now in greatly dilapidated condition except for a few limited restorations. The new Qin emperor also created for his personal afterlife a huge mounded tomb almost half a square km in extent, still unexcavated but, according to recorded legend, containing

a detailed replica of the royal palace surrounded by rivers of mercury. Well-digging in 1974 led to the discovery, about two km away from this location, of a fully equipped “spirit army” buried in two large pits that BMS-387032 cost included perhaps 3000 life-sized LBH589 concentration “terracotta warriors” and associated pottery models of horses, chariots, and weaponry. Excavations quickly captured world attention and the work continues, now sheltered and displayed beneath a vast metal hangar that could house a considerable fleet of the world’s largest jet airplanes (Fig. 2). The Zheng Guor Canal system, according to historical records created in 246 BC by the pre-imperial Qin State, was laid out over a course of some 200 km and linked two local rivers. It hugely expanded the agricultural output of the Qin region and helped afford its lord the economic wherewithal to gain

greater control next over his rivals. Beyond the constructions subsequently ordered by Emperor Qin Shihuangdi there were also infrastructural projects sponsored by other wealthy “houses” of the region that we still see attested archeologically – dams, canals, vast irrigated agricultural fields, and roads – that are not as well preserved as the displays of royal wealth we see in the Qin emperor’s funereal Terracotta Army. Nevertheless,

these modifications are evident on the landscape and referred to in written records of the time. A third-century historical source quoted by Elvin (1993) vividly portrays the busy cultural landscape of the Qin and following Han periods: “The households of the powerful are [compounds] where one finds hundreds of ridge beams linked together. Their fertile fields fill the countryside. Their slaves throng in thousands, and their [military] retainers can be counted in tens of thousands. Their boats, carts, and their merchants spread out in every direction…. The valleys between the hills cannot contain their horses, cattle, sheep, and swine. The great array of huge mounded earth tombs inside the boundaries of modern Xi’an, created by the Han emperors who followed Qin Shihuangdi, further attests the Imperial capacity of the time for enormously labor-intensive construction projects that created large areas of anthropogenic landscape in the Wei River Valley. Each Han tomb was an artificial mountain that took armies of men and animals years to build.