Archaeologists in northwest China have discovered a 13-kilometre segment of the legendary “Straight Road of Qin,” one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects of the ancient world.
The discovery was announced following a detailed field survey conducted by the Yulin Institute for the Protection and Research of Cultural Heritage and was reported by the South China Morning Post.
The Straight Road of Qin dates to the short but transformative reign of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who ruled from 221 to 210 BC. Historical sources state that the road was constructed in just five years between 221 and 206 BC, immediately after the unification of China.
At the time, it functioned as a national level “expressway,” enabling the imperial court to exert military and administrative control over vast northern territories. The road cut a near-straight corridor across mountains, valleys, and loess plateaus, defying the natural contours of the landscape.
The newly documented section lies in Shaanxi Province, close to the ancient heartland of the Qin Empire. It forms part of a route that once stretched nearly 900 kilometres, beginning in Xianyang – the Qin capital near today’s Xi’an, and terminating in Juyuan – close to present-day Baotou in Inner Mongolia.
Chinese archaeologists have been attempting to reconstruct the precise path of the Straight Qin Road for nearly 80 years, however, much of the route was lost over millennia to erosion, farming, and urban expansion.
The newly opened 13-kilometre stretch offers rare physical evidence of the road’s engineering sophistication, including levelled surfaces, compacted earth layers, and alignment techniques that reveal how Qin builders imposed geometric order on difficult terrain.
Ancient chronicles vividly describe the scale of the undertaking, where workers were said to have “filled valleys and levelled mountains to create a direct corridor from north
The rediscovery of this section not only enhances scholarly understanding of early Chinese civil engineering but also underscores the organisational capacity of the Qin state at the dawn of imperial China.
Header Image Credit : South China Morning Post
Sources : South China Morning Post
