The army stands in the tomb of Shi Huang Di, also called Qin Shihunag, the first emperor of the Qin dynasty.
Before Di's death, Liu said the emperor "summoned all the scholars and naturalists to his court" to hopefully bring "peace and prosperity" to his lands and to prepare "wonderful medicines" and other concoctions.
The striking purple, which the emperor could have linked to jade's purported powers, might have been one such invention.
Richard Cowen, a senior lecturer emeritus in the geology department at the University of California at Davis, told Discovery News that he finds "the paper utterly convincing, as long as one takes the detailed analysis as correct."
"What's so convincing about this story is that it's compatible with everything we already knew about early Chinese chemistry, glass-making, bronze technology (which also involved use of different temperatures) and the very high quality of early Chinese furnaces," Cowen said.
He added, "It fits with what we know of the Taoist philosophy and the Taoist eagerness to experiment with natural substances. And, finally, the disappearance of Chinese Purple coincides with the decline of the Taoists and the rise of Confucian thought."
