Craftsmen who built China’s Terracotta Army ‘ate dogs’: study

China’s famous Terracotta Army was created by workers and craftsmen who ate dogs, a study published today in the journal Scientific Reports suggests.

Archaeologists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology made the discovery by examining the bones found in the tombs of workers and craftsmen near the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, China’s first emperor of the Qin Dynasty.

After analysing carbon nitrogen isotopes in the remains, they found the majority of the them had survived on a diet “predominately derived from domestic animal proteins”.

The researchers, led by Dr Ma Ying, compared the composition of trace elements in the craftsmen’s remains to the remains of domestic animals at the time.

Dogs were the closest match, followed by pigs and sheep. Cattle and chicken appear to have been consumed less often.