Deliberately unopened; soil surveys really do show anomalous mercury
The terracotta army, eight thousand individually-faced soldiers, is only the outer guard. The burial mound of China’s first emperor sits nearby and has never been opened. Sima Qian, writing a century later, describes a subterranean palace with rivers and a sea of flowing mercury and crossbows set to fire on intruders. Soil surveys across the mound have repeatedly found mercury concentrations far above background, in a pattern some read as matching China’s rivers. China has deliberately left it sealed, largely because excavation would likely destroy what is inside. UNESCO World Heritage.
Lintong, Xi’an (China)
See it on the map
