A new scientific study has revealed that women and children helped build China’s famous Terracotta Army. The discovery comes from fingerprints left on the clay figures, offering a fresh look at who created the ancient soldiers.

Researchers from the Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum in Xi’an and Shandong University examined 79 well‑preserved fingerprints on 36 warriors from Unit T23 in Pit 1 of the first emperor’s tomb. The prints were photographed and measured for ridge breadth.

Using a Bayesian mixture model that compares the prints with modern fingerprint data, the team estimated the age and sex of each maker. The model shows adult men contributed 45 % of the prints, adult women 32.7 %, and children under 15 the remaining 22.3 %.

Seventy‑three of the prints were made while workers shaped, molded and assembled the clay, while six appeared when pre‑made decorations such as armor rivets were attached. These details suggest different tasks may have been assigned to different age groups.

The authors wrote that the findings challenge the long‑held assumption that Terracotta Army production relied exclusively on adult male labor, providing the first quantitative biological evidence of a diverse workforce. This shows that women and children played a real part in creating the army.