Great Wall Essays - Great Wall Of China, Border Barriers, Walls

Great Wall Everything can be linked to everything! This is the ultimate anthropological truth. What drew my to the Great Wall is that the Great Wall isnt only a physical thing but it is also something that has stood for a culture. From a physical barrier to something that established safe caravan routes, the Great Wall has stood for it all. It represents China, in the current and in the past. This draws me to The Great Wall of China. The three dynasties that constructed the wall were the Qin, the Han, and the Ming. Chin Shi Huang, the originator of the wall and who the great country gets its name after probably wouldnt of ever expected the wall to be a 4,500 mile long masterpiece that would have turned out to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World! The Qin wall was built to keep people out, and to keep people in. The Han wall was built as a cultural icon and a physical force. It was also the longest dynasty, lasting four hundred and twenty two years. The Han are the ones that restored the Confucian literature to China, established a strong central government, and set up the first public school system! The Han, being the builders of the second portion of the Great Wall extended and restored the Qin wall 300 miles into the Gobi desert. (www.discovery.com) By extending the Great Wall they opened China up to great expansion of trade. Trade of ideas, knowledge, and physical goods. The Ming wall was the last section to be built. It was built in an age when China would become a world economic power. This wall took an estimated 200 years to complete. The Ming portion of the wall contained individual forts that at one time held and estimated one million soldiers! An economic power is something that is not attained in one day but over time through careful planning and excellent leadership. The Great Wall of China is something that has stood for a culture for over two thousand years! It is a magnificent physical structure and cultural icon that represents an immense undertaking that shows a culture to the world. What I find is the most interesting about the Great Wall is that it is an anthropologists dream. Physically, culturally, politically, economically, and militaristic, the list goes on and on. Physically, the wall is a 4,500-mile long structure that covers land from the Gobi desert to the mountains of Korea! It is not a single wall but a series of walls built over a time span of over one thousand years. The wall was built and rebuilt many times throughout the ages. Seventy Percent of Chinas population was involved in building the Qin section of the wall! Different building techniques were used to build the wall. Such as a mixture of reed, sand, and water mixed to form 4-inch layers one by one until the wall was in full form; this technique was used in the Gobi desert section. During the Ming dynasty the wall was built using bricks made in kilns. These bricks are the quality of current masonry bricks. The Ming portion of the wall is the portion of the wall that is known greatly to modern society because of the durability of the building techniques. Culturally, the Wall is an item that has been the epitome of a representation of a society that has changed immensely through time. No, the wall is not for modern use; it is an ancient fossil-the largest fossil on the planet. But fossils are useful and truthful. It is the dividing line between two civilizations, and between two eras. (Geil, Page #) These quote sums up the extent that the Great Wall can be related to anthropology. This is an important concept. Politically, the wall is something that has been used to intimidate, invite, and shun people, whether inside the constraints of the wall or on the outside. Shi Huang Ti was a tyrant, an amazing leader that brought together cultures and turned them into one. the fundamental social and cultural unity which is China has remained unbroken. (Clark, 64) He brought together a society through force, forcefully