兵马俑上有女人和少年留下的指纹

Someone pressed a finger into wet clay and then lifted it.

A fingerprint was left in the clay.

That clay became part of a terracotta figure that has stood since Qin Shi Huang's time.

Qin Shi Huang's era is called the Qin dynasty in history.

For all these years, nobody read it.

Only recently has someone read it.

The people who left the fingerprints may include adult women and children under 15.

In the past, many believed this work was done only by adult men.

The research was a collaboration between the Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum and Shandong University's School of Archaeology.

The paper was published in the Journal of Cultural Heritage.

They studied 23 figures from one excavation unit in Pit 1.

An excavation unit is a small plot marked out by the archaeology team.

On these 23 figures, they found 79 fingerprints in total.

The 79 fingerprints were counted one by one, separately.

73 are surface fingerprints.

Surface fingerprints were left when the makers pressed and smoothed the wet clay.

The other 6 are relief fingerprints.

Relief is a layer raised above the surface.

Relief fingerprints were left when pieces were pressed on.

The makers pressed on small clay pieces such as armor studs and belts.

When the hand pressed, the fingerprint stayed in the clay.

The locations of the fingerprints are also revealing.

Their locations are: 28 on the heads, 27 on the armor, 16 on the arms, 4 on the hands, 3 on the collars, and 1 on the feet.

Armor is the clothing that protects the body.

The head, arms, and armor were parts made separately and then put together.

The fingerprints on these parts match the practice of making the figures in pieces and then assembling them.

Next comes the hardest question.

How much information can fingerprints reveal?

Can age and sex be hidden in fingerprints?

The team used a statistical method called a Bayesian mixture model.

It calculates with probability.

It does not tell you whether a particular person was male or female.

It looks at what kind of people this group of fingerprints likely came from.

It sorts the fingerprints into groups and then estimates each group's share.

An adult is someone fully grown; a juvenile is someone not yet grown.

Adult male fingerprints make up about 45.0%.

Adult female fingerprints make up about 32.7%.

Fingerprints of juveniles under 15 make up about 22.3%.

The age peak for adult males is around 20.

The adult women were also young.

The 22.3% of juvenile fingerprints matches the Qin apprenticeship system.

Historical texts record that Qin-era children followed artisans, learning while helping.

So the makers were mainly adult men.

Women and juveniles may also have taken part in making, carrying, or assembling the figures.

But here is a point that is easy to get wrong.

The 32.7% is the share of female fingerprints.

It does not show the share of female artisans.

What a Bayesian model gives is a posterior probability.

A posterior probability is a probability calculated after looking at the evidence.

It describes a group and cannot identify each artisan.

So 32.7% of fingerprints does not equal 32.7% of artisans.

The research team itself stressed this point.

They also said the sample has its problems.

A sample is the portion of material used in a study.

The 23 figures all come from the same excavation unit in Pit 1.

That unit is only a small part of the whole Terracotta Army.

So it describes this small area and cannot yet speak for the entire Terracotta Army.

In addition, the reference data used in the study has limits.

The team plans a larger study in Pit 2.

If the new sample is larger, the results will be better.

At this point you may ask: before this study, did we really know nothing?

In fact, written records spoke of this long ago.

Writing means characters that were written down or carved.

On Qin lacquerware, special names were carved: "da nüzi", "xiao nüzi", and "xiao nanzi".

These names include women and children not yet grown.

In 1975, a group of lacquerware was unearthed at Shuihudi in Yunmeng.

In 2024, China National Geographic also covered this.

Among 81 lacquerware pieces from Tomb No. 1 at Dafentou, at least 23 bear the same name.

The name is "Huanli Da Nüzi Ao".

"Da nüzi" shows she was an adult woman, and "Ao" is her name.

The 23 pieces fall into 5 types.

The magazine said she could make many kinds of objects.

In 2012, Zhu Xuewen, a researcher at the museum, wrote a paper.

The paper is titled "Several Questions about Qin Lacquerware Inscriptions".

He pointed out that government-run workshops had to carve the managing office and the artisan's name on their products.

This rule lets people today know who made things.

These characters tell us women also made lacquerware.

And what about the Terracotta Army?

What could be seen before were pottery inscriptions.

Pottery inscriptions are characters on clay objects.

These inscriptions include "Gong", "Dajiang", and "Xianyang".

They come from different workshops.

A workshop is a place where things are made.

This shows the Terracotta Army was made by several workshops to the same standard.

But who made things inside the workshops was never made clear in the writing.

Writing can preserve a person's name.

Writing can hardly tell us how many of these many makers were women or children.

Fingerprints are different.

A fingerprint is a trace left by a body, coming directly from the maker.

This is the first time the evidence has come from the figures themselves.

This evidence can also become numbers.

Others can repeat it with the same data and method.

For example, the method can be applied to other burial pits near the mausoleum.

In the future, archaeologists may be able to read information about more people.

Back to that fingerprint.

The person who left it has no name.

History books will not record him or her.

But this fingerprint shows that he or she really stood before that wet clay.

When he or she pressed down, the clay remembered.

Do you have anything at home that a family member made, with a fingerprint of the maker still on it?