The Great Wall of China
The Great Wall of China is one of the greatest architectural achievements ever recorded in history. The Great Wall translates to “long fortress.” The wall was made entirely by hand. It was built to protect the Chinese from intruders from different Nomadic Tribes. The wall is about 5,500 miles long. The wall did not stretch across all of China but it stretched from Shanhaiguan in the East to Lop Nur in the West. Some people say that you can even see the wall from the moon! Wouldn’t that be something to see? The wall is very old and has been around for about 2,000 years. Parts of the wall are missing from it decaying and crumbling. Despite parts of the wall missing it remains a popular attraction today and is one of the seven spectacular wonders of the world. The history of the Great Wall began when seven powerful states appeared around the same time in China. All of the states wanted to defend themselves so each state built walls and kept soldiers stationed at the wall to keep out ant intruders. When these states existed the wall was about 3,100 miles longs and six different states owned different parts of the wall. The emperor at the time was Emperor Qin. He wanted all of the states to become unified. He succeeded at doing so and all the states set up the first unified kingdom in Chinese history. He ordered his men to build a long wall to keep out the nomads who would attack them. Qin ordered 800,000; men, soldiers, prisoners and peasants to construct the wall. If there wasn’t enough stones they used dirt to build the wall. The workers would pile the dirt into large wooden frames and pond the dirt in with pieces of wood until it became solid. The Western Hun dynasty was becoming more and more powerful. The Huns started to build their own sections of the walls in order to unify the frontier and protect themselves as well. They built more walls along the Yumenguan Pass. The Huns wall extended down half of the Silk Road. The Northern Zhou, Qi, and Wei