Engineering the Great Wall of China

Engineering the Great Wall of China — page 3 — of miles It crosses mountains rivers and deserts on its way to the Bohai Sea on China’s eastern coast THE GREAT WALL The wall’s builders did not use the term Great Wall The old Chinese name for it was Changcheng That means long wall Some dynasties referred to their walls by various names such as border walls and frontier walls European and American visitors to China in the 1700s began referring to the wall as great They mistakenly thought that it was a single continuous wall They believed it had been built in the 200s BCE and survived intact for centuries What is now referred to as the Great Wall is actually a series of separate walls The walls were built and abandoned over a span of more than 2,000 years They were constructed at different times and for different reasons They followed separate routes and were built from a variety of materials Almost all the earliest walls have disappeared The remaining stone wall that is best known today was built about 500 years ago It was erected during the 6

Engineering the Great Wall of China — page 4 — MAP OF THE MING GREAT WALL This map shows some of the major sections of the Great Wall built by the Ming Dynasty What do you notice about the wall and where it was built Does seeing the map change the way you think about the Great Wall Beijing CHINA The Ming Great Wall

Engineering the Great Wall of China — page 5 — Ming Dynasty 1368 1664 CE This was the last great wall-building project in China THE HISTORY OF WALLS IN CHINA The Chinese have built walls since ancient times The earliest walls in China were built between homes Next came walls around villages and towns These walls were built for protection Before China was united into a single kingdom different regions were constantly fighting each other for control This is known as the Warring States Period It lasted from roughly 481 to 221 BCE Each state built walls to protect itself They defended against not only other states but also raiders from the north The states built walls to claim new land too These early walls were made of packed earth They were built quickly and eroded over time Archaeological digs of tombs from the Warring States Period are sometimes carried out alongside modern developments in China’s cities 8

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