How does the Terracotta Army affect your lives today?

In ancient China, living sacrifice was quite ordinary. Especially when kings or members of royal family died, their favorite concubines, servants, steeds and other animals should go with their masters as an expression of loyalty. That is to kill themselves or be killed on the funeral ceremony and buried alongside the coffin. Later, Chinese rulers started to realise the superiority was brought accompanied by the harmfulness to their regime, thus figures was used to replace living beings. However, it was just a new trend appeared at that time, the old funeral custom was still prevalent prior to the Qin Dynasty.

Qin Shihuang, as the first Chinese emperor, unified the whole territory of the country and made great contributions in military, economic, cultural fields. He is also known to be very ambitious and despotic. During the construction of his mausoleum (afterlife palace), he spared no expense and levied labors all over the country. But he didn't follow the custom to use living sacrifice for himself, a group of delicate soldier figures were made instead, which reflects more than personal superiority but national strength.

The Terracotta Warriors are involved with a lot of ancient Chinese advanced technologies, however, that may not be the most important for this topic. The large scale application of figures buried in tombs brought about ideological changes, profoundly affected the next several dynasties.