The Great Wall (original) (raw)

The GREAT WALL of CHINA an Architectural Foray

2000 years span the beginning and end of the construction period of the wall. The Wall was often built along the mountain ridges for a better defense. Without advanced technology like today, bricks used to build the Wall were carried by labors and ox carts from the foot of the mountain, which cost a great manpower and money. A lot of labors died because of the heavy work load. The walls are the main bodies of the China Great Wall,and Emperor Qin Shihuang's contribution to the design of the Wall is considered to be of great importance as it ensured peace for the people in the northern part of China against the Huns and established a pattern of defense for future generations. The Great Wall of the Qin Dynasty was built at the expense of many lives.This paper examines the history of the wall and the design and architectural nuances of the wall as present in existing literature.

The Great Wall as Perilous Frontier for the Mongols in 16th Century

International Journal of Korean History, 2016

The existing scholarship in nomadic-sedentary relations has focused on the raids and invasions by nomads against agricultural society, and has attempted to seek internal reasons for this within the nomadic society. Interactive Ming-Mongol history along the Great Wall in the sixteenth century indicates that the agricultural society was also capable of offense. Many raids conducted by nomads were actually revenge for the provocation and raids by the agricultural society, hence they were retaliatory raids. Nomadic-sedentary groups interacted along the Great Wall area; therefore, scholars should turn their attention to this area rather than exclusively search for reasons from internal factors of nomadic society. The razzias upon the Mongols beyond the Great Wall by Ming generals and their retainers have shown that sedentary society were in need of horses, cattle, meat, wool, hides, etc. Ming China’s big market for the nomadic goods drove Ming generals and their retainers to do the profi...

2018: The Earliest "Great Wall"? The Long Wall of Qi Revisited (Journal of the American Oriental Society) 138.4

Journal of the American Oriental Society

This article explores textual, paleographic, and archeological evidence about the “Long Wall” of Qi, arguably one of the earliest long walls erected on Chinese soil. It analyzes the possible dates of the Wall’s constructions, its route, its defensive role, and its relation to military, political, economic, and administrative developments of the Warring States period (453-221 BCE). I argue that the Long Wall played a significant role in Qi’s military strategy in the fifth-fourth centuries BCE bolstering its defensive capabilities. In the long term, however, the Wall might have inadvertently hindered Qi’s southward expansion, placing it in a disadvantageous position versus its rivals.

An ancient frontier wall in northern Iran: Who built 'Alexander's Wall'?

The 100-mile-long line of ancient fortifications, running east from the Caspian Sea into the Elburz Mountains, was popularly thought to have been built by Alexander the Great. Although at various times in the twentieth century, a handful of pioneers had managed to trace the course of the wall from aerial photographs and ground survey, it had been subjected to virtually no scientific study until the turn of the millennium. It is only now, over the past decade, that exciting new research has begun to answer the question of who built ‘Alexander’s Wall’.

The Discovery of the Great Wall of Jordan, Southern Levant

Great wall of Jordan also known as Khatt Shebib is a unique ancient wall situated in Southern Jordan near Maan City. The remains of the wall which includes towers, barracks, rooms …etc. are 150 km long from south to north, making it the longest linear archaeological site in southern Levant &in Jordan. The archaeological remains of the wall were first identified by British experts, the discovery was unveiled in 1948, then it was documented by air photographing in 1982, the Department of Antiquities explored it in 1992, with survey, excavations, & documentation continued to the present day. Located in the south of the Kingdom, the wall is the world's second longest after the China Wall, as it spans a distance of approximately 150 kilometers approximately, making it the region's longest structure. Known locally as Hableh or Khatt Shebib, the wall stretches northwards from Ras Al Naqab in Maan Governorate extending to the Wadi Al Hasa area of Tafileh Governorate, A Jordanian team of archaeologists and experts imitated a field project in 1992-1996, and 2020in order to document the nearby remains of the wall, where comprehensive survey and excavations urgently needed in several significant sites along the wall sides. The field study concluded in revealing significant architectural structures built directly adjacent to the wall, also focused on the importance of the wall to be an attractive point for tourism in South Jordan. The date of the wall's construction clearly refers to Nabataean Period.