Since the discovery of the Terracotta Warriors and Horses of Qin Shi Huang in the suburbs of Xi'an, with its magnificent momentum, realistic shape and exquisite craftsmanship, it has sensationalized the archaeological community in China and even the world, and after decades of continuous excavation, promotion and publicity, it has also become one of the great symbols of ancient Chinese civilization and enjoys a high reputation in the world. It perfectly shows the lineup of the Qin Army in the heyday of more than two thousand years, so that anyone who walks near the figurine pit and witnesses the scene of thousands of dressed figurines neatly arranged will be shocked. However, is such a large-scale lineup of figurines in front of the Tomb of the First Emperor the first qin the first and original? In Chinese tombs before the Qin Dynasty, when did figurines made of pottery or other materials appear, and what kind of evolution did it evolve?
In fact, the custom of burial with human figurines appeared very early in China, as early as the late Neolithic period, but most of them existed in rough forms made of hand, and the differences between regions were great, showing that there was no universal burial custom at this time. The oldest figurine found in China to date was found in archaeological excavations at the Yin Ruins in Anyang, two clay figurines wearing heavy shackles, apparently denoting two prisoners of war or slaves of sinners. Prisoners of war, prisoners of war, and slaves are the sources of human martyrdom that are often found in the tombs of merchants, who use living people to bury noble tombs, lay foundations for large buildings, pray for ancestors, and so on, and this cruel custom lasted for hundreds of years.
A small number of ceramic figurines were found in the Yin Ruins, reflecting that after the development of the Yin Shang society to the later period, there was already a humanitarian tendency to replace the living with symbolic figurines, but this was only a chinese tendency, and it had not yet become a common custom in the society at that time, and it was really completely replaced by human figurines in various sacrifices, at least in the late Western Zhou Dynasty and even after the Spring and Autumn Warring States. After the Ji Zhou Dynasty Shang Dynasty, especially after the establishment of the strict "Zhou Rites" during the reign of Zhou Gongdan, although the form of sacrifices by living people continued to exist, its scale and scope of application had been greatly reduced, and the Ji Zhou Sect itself did not advocate such an overly cruel act. Therefore, by the late Western Zhou Dynasty, human martyrdom had become less and less, but it was still far from complete disappearance.
In fact, until the early Spring and Autumn Period, the princely states of the Various Xia Dynasties still had the habit of martyrdom, but in the middle and late Spring and Autumn period, there were very few. It was at this time that the application of figurines became more and more extensive, and the northern countries at this time were popular to make small figurines made of clay, while the southern countries represented by the Chu State preferred to paint figurines with wooden painted figurines. Whether they are clay figurines or wooden figurines, their size is not large, most of them are only a few inches in size, and the number is not much, and their presence in tombs is often only symbolic. In the Spring and Autumn Period, the nobles used to show their status in the tombs were mainly complete sets of bronze ceremonial vessels and a surprisingly large chariot lineup.
In the Warring States period, the humanistic spirit of Zhuxia further developed, scholars like Mozi who advocated funerals violently attacked all kinds of extravagant burial behaviors, and Mencius, a representative figure of Confucianism, borrowed the mouth of Confucius and issued a message that "the initiator has no consequences!" The curse of other schools has also put forward similar slogans. This made human martyrdom basically disappear in the various countries of The Xia Dynasty, and although the figurines in the tombs had a tendency to gradually become larger and more refined, their status in the entire burial system was not high, nor was it an indispensable part of the funeral rites, until the first emperor of the Great Joy Gong developed it to the point of reaching the pinnacle. In the tombs of the emperors after the Qin Dynasty, although there were also human figurines, the scale and volume became miniaturized again.