Great Wall Of China

A monumental building project which created a wall running (with all its branches) about 4,000 miles (6,400 km) west to east from Bohai Bay to a point deep in central Asia, the Tarim Basin. Parts of the vast fortification date from the 4th century BC. In 214 BC, the first emperor of a united China (Shih Huang-ti of the Qin dynasty) connected a number of existing defensive walls into a single system fortified by watchtowers, which served both to guard the rampart and to communicate with the capital, Hsien-yang, by signal - smoke by day and fire by night. The enemy against whom the Great Wall was built were the Hsiung-nu, the nomadic tribes of the northern steppes. The wall was originally made of masonry and rammed earth and was faced with brick on its eastern portion. It was substantially rebuilt in later times, especially in the 15th and 16th centuries. The basic wall is generally about 30 feet high, and the towers are about 40 feet high.

Dating as a connected whole from the Qin dynasty (221-206 bc), the Great Wall linked together ramparts built independently during the 4th and 3rd centuries bc by the Eastern Zhou states of Qin, Zhao, and Yan. Though building materials varied with locality, the Qin wall consisted mainly of rammed earth (hangtu); it began in eastern Gansu and stretched more than 2000 km along the southern edge of Inner Mongolia to end at Shanhaiguan on the coast of northern Hebei. Several large sections were added during the early Han dynasty (2nd-1st centuries bc), when the western end was carried as far as Yumen in western Gansu, and between the Han period and the 16th century ad the wall was repaired and elaborated many times. Rebuildings carried out under the Ming dynasty were particularly extensive and the stone-faced wall seen today dates from that period. From the Qin dynasty to the Ming the Great Wall continued to serve the same purpose as the Eastern Zhou walls incorporated in it: these ‘monuments to cultural incompatibility’, in William Watson’s phrase, were erected for defence against the mounted nomads whose attacks on the northern frontier first became troublesome in the 4th century bc (see Xiongnu). The walls that the northern states built at that time to repel barbarians had precedents, however, in many similar ramparts erected by Eastern Zhou states for defence against each other.