The Terracotta Army: An Army Underground

Pit 2

Pit 2 is one of the more intriguing of the pits and the one with the most up for interpretation. Pit 2 is significantly different from pit 1. Being only 6,000 square meters it is still very large but much smaller than pit 1. This pit is arranged into an L shape and composed of four different types of units: crossbowmen, chariots, infantry and cavalry . The most common opinion about pit 2 is that it is a large camp instead of an actual army. This is because the army is more spread out and the L shaped formation of this pit would not make much sense in battle. It is believed to be more of a staging or drilling area. [4] The more complex belief of the origin of this pit is the "four animal formation." [1] For this theory each section of the L is meant to represent the four animals of ancient China: red bird (crossbowmen), turtle(chariots), green dragon (cavalry) and white tiger (infantry). Each of these animals or sections can function separately but could also be united if need be. 

Each section of the L shaped pit had a different type of unit.
1. The northeast most part of the L was comprised of 352 archers. This section was split into four corridors of two soldiers all facing east and kneeling. On the north and south end of the section two longer crossbowman face outwards protecting their perspective flank. From this section historians learned an important Chinese military strategy known as the "clouds formation". [1] How this would work was that archers would alternate between standing up and kneeling as they reloaded. This allowed for a constant stream of arrows being fired at the enemy. 

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