However there was no tradition of building life-sized human statues in China before the tomb was created. "We now think the Terracotta Army, the Acrobats and the bronze sculptures found on site have been inspired by ancient Greek sculptures and art," she said. Archaeologists say inspiration for the Terracotta Warriors, found at the Tomb of the First Emperor near today's Xian, may have come from Ancient Greece.  Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Greek artisans may have trained those who made the Terracotta Warriors 
 
 China and the West were in contact more than 1,500 years before European explorer Marco Polo arrived in China, new findings suggest. The skull is believed to have belonged to the First Emperor's eldest son, thought to have been killed along with others during a power struggle after the emperor's death. Image copyright Public domain Image caption Qin Shi Huang lived between 259-210BC and became the first emperor of a unified China 
 
 Farmers first discovered the 8,000 terracotta figures buried less than a mile from the tomb of China's first emperor Qin Shi Huang in 1974. Sources: Zhang Weixing and Xiuzhen Li, Archaeology Department, Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s Mausoleum Site Museum; Roberto Ciarla, “Giuseppe Tucci” National Museum of Oriental Art 25-33 ft Sites of additional finds Excavations revealed many pits within and outside the walls of this complex. They also include the mutilated remains of women, believed to have been high-ranking concubines of the First Emperor, and the skull of a man with a crossbow bolt embedded in it.
– Marco Polo's travels to China in the 13th century are the first well documented record of a European reaching the empire. But archaeologists studying a famous trove of terracotta figures dug up in China now suggest that the first contact with the West occurred much earlier than thought—some 1,500 years before Polo's arrival, reports the BBC. Their theory is that those terracotta figures were inspired by Greek art, and that a Greek sculptor may have actually helped create them around 300 BC. For one thing, there's nothing in earlier Chinese art like these life-sized statues. “I imagine that a Greek sculptor may have been at the site to train the locals," says historian Lukas Nickel of the University of Vienna. But more than that, researchers have turned up European DNA from skeletons at a nearby site in northern China. The DNA find suggests Westerners were living there under the dynasty of Qin Shi Huang, the "First Emperor" who commissioned the so-called Terracotta Army for his tomb. "We now have evidence that close contact existed between the First Emperor’s China and the West before the formal opening of the Silk Road," says an archaeologist on the project. "This is far earlier than we formerly thought.” An ongoing study of the tomb has also revealed the remains of what could be the emperor's sons, reports National Geographic. Experts say the remains—including a skull pierced by a crossbow bolt—match an account of one of the emperor's sons murdering his brothers to seize control after his father's death in 210 BC. (The terracotta warriors may resemble real soldiers.)