Chinese "Tomb" of Emperor Qin Shihuang - A Pyramid

In Science magazine, (Vol 325, pages 22-23), I was amazed to read what is perhaps the most mundane description of a pyramid ever:

Soon after Qin took power, he began preparing for the afterlife. Construction of his mausoleum at Mount Li, 35 kilometers east of Xi'an, took 38 years. The mausoleum, once crowned with pavilions, was never a secret, and even today it is visible as a kilometer-long wooded mound that rises a gentle 75 meters above the surrounding land.

And here is the mausoleum that gently rises 75 meters:



The above image is from the People's Daily Online. It is a refreshing change from the hill we usually see:



That the Chinese pyramids are in fact pyramids has been very under-investigated. Pyramids in Egypt and Americas have been argued to be a coincidence. How many more do we need before orthodox archaeologists consider that a common culture created them all?

Samoa, Indonesia, Central America, Egypt, China, Bosnia, Chile... can't be a coincidence!

I'm Stumped by this Chinese Geoglyph

Originally posted by myself at 2012Forum.com, and nobody could tell me what it really is, so I'm asking the audience of this blog for ideas...

AstralWalker's talk in Melbourne last month had some slides about GeoGlyphs. It was interesting hearing all the gasps in the audience when he showed the Chinese pyramids...

But this, I have not seen before:

http://www.gearthhacks.com/downloads/map.php?file=20423

It is in China, near the Mongolian border
It is big - looks like hills etc don't get in the way

The difficulty in determining what it is comes from the huge range of existing geoglyphs, that range from modern art like Colonel Sanders and the Firefox logo, to the ancient Nazca Lines. Without inspecting them at ground level, it is very hard to determine age and technique.

The best suggestion at the forum was that this is something like a quarry, and a large grader was used by someone who was on more then just a random mission:

There is clearly watershed over it in spots. The dimensions are roughly 1 mile square and the lines themselves average 50 foot wide. I can understand a mock runway and village but a mosaic pattern makes no sense to me even for a bored machine operator.

Scroll left when at Google Maps and there is a large square area that might be a clue...

Pyramid Uncovered in China

Well, uncovered by ground-pentrating radar. Can't wait for them to actually go inside:

Construction of this mausoleum began in 246 BC and is believed to have taken 700,000 workers and craftsmen 38 years to complete. Qin Shi Huangdi was interred inside the tomb complex upon his death in 210 BC. According to the Grand Historian Sima Qian (145 BC-90 BC), the First Emperor was buried alongside great amounts of treasure and objects of craftsmanship, as well as a scale replica of the universe complete with gemmed ceilings representing the cosmos, and flowing mercury representing the great earthly bodies of water. Pearls were also placed on the ceilings in the tomb to represent the stars, planets, etc. Recent scientific work at the site has shown high levels of mercury in the soil of Mount Lishan, tentatively indicating an accurate description of the site’s contents by historian Sima Qian.

More at China.org