The Great Wall of China defines a series of fortifications made out of brick, tampered earth, and other materials. It is specifically constructed along the east-to-West line that runs across the northern borders of China to offer security to Chinese empires and states against any form of invasion from the varied nomadic teams (Ma et al., 2014). The wall is approximately 2300 years old in age and manifests its age. It covers over twenty-one thousand kilometers (thirteen thousand miles) in length. As a result of a lack of tourism and upkeep, the wall is slowly eroding away. The wall phases began during the times of Zhang Dynasty in the 770-221 BC. That is a time that marked a period that overlords constructed the border walls. At the Qin Dynasty 221-207 BC, the Qin’s First Emperor did a linkage of the walls. Several persons participated in the construction of the Great Wall. That labour force entailed soldiers, workers, peasants forcibly recruited, war prisoners and war convicts (Ma et al., 2014).
One of the aspects of the Great Wall that profoundly caught my attention was the length of thirteen thousand miles. Taking a simple comparison; In the United States, from the West coast of California and coast of Maine is approximately 3, 500 miles in length. In other words, both coasts of US combined cannot match anything near the length of the Great Wall. That is pretty interesting to me. The purpose of building the Great Wall was also quite impressive; to prevent the aggressive barbarians from crossing over from Mongolia into China. The Great Wall in a different sense represents a unified China. It represents a separation of the nation from the rest of the world from another perspective and keeps evaders at bay. Ironically, this was not successful. The Great Wall became a prominent tourist attraction point and several persons move to China to have a feel of their culture (Ma et al., 2014).
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Another example similar to the Great Wall is the Hadrian Wall. It was built to act as a defensive barrier that could guard the northwestern frontier against the Barbarian invaders (Heritage, 2014). The wall was an extension from coast to coast and ran approximately 73 miles.
References
Ma, Z., Melville, D. S., Liu, J., Chen, Y., Yang, H., Ren, W., ... & Li, B. (2014). Rethinking China's new great wall. Science , 346 (6212), 912-914.
Heritage, E. (2014). An Archaeological Map of Hadrian’s Wall.
