This tomb was built during the Qin Dynasty which is around 250 BC, this was the dynasty in which China was united by Emperor Shi Huang. In those days, when an emperor died, he'd have his advisors, mistresses, concubines and wives buried with him so they'd join him in the afterlife. This particular guy wanted his impressive army to join him so they could protect him afterdeath. Someone had enough brains to figure out that this wouldn't be the smartest thing, so they built soldiers out of terra cotta instead. These statues were modelled after the real thing as every single one of them has a unique face. Archielogists have so far found about 8000 unique soldiers, but excavation of the tomb is far from finished, they have no idea how many more soldiers are buried there.
These statues are also important to show how the people of China worked together back then. Basically, based on the facial bone structure and height of each soldier, archielogists have figured out that specific ethnic groups were used for a specific branch of the army (ie. archers were Cantonese, generals were Mongolian). Some of these boys were pretty big too, most of the generals were around 6'5 (192 cm), the heights of the rest were from between 5'8 (170 cm) and 6'2 (185 cm), not too shabby.
