The Great Wall Of China And Its Significance

The Great Wall of China stretches about 5,500 miles long crossing deserts, mountains, grasslands, and plateaus. It took more than 2,000 years to build this incredible manmade structure. Many people died to build this wall. It displays the changes between the agricultural and nomadic civilizations. It proves that the superb structure was very important to military defense. It became a national symbol of the Chinese as a security for their country and its people.

The Great Wall of China was built as a military defense, to defend the invasion from some northern nomadic nations. The Great Wall was successful in keeping semi-nomadic invaders out, which was the primary concern at the time. However, the wall did not stop some large scale invasions, and even the nomadic people were able to breach the wall from time to time. But, Qin Shi Huang, was the first emperor, who put these parts and made what looked like a huge wall in 221 – 206 BC. It was progressively similar to a line of gatekeepers that helped spread signs to the caution of attacks and attract support troops. The XiongNu were exceptionally versatile herders, who rode a horse, and at the time were skilled at taking from their neighbors of Northern China. While the Wall was likely insufficient against singular armed forces (who could scale its side), the Wall was vastly improved at keeping horsemen and their ponies out. Rather than having an open prairie as their battleground, the itinerant armed force had to aggregate their assault at one segment of the divider. A smoke or fire sign would be lit along the divider, and support troops would be sent in. Not much of The Great Wall from Emperor Qin's time lasted, and a significant part of the Wall that is seen today is from the Ming Dynasty. During this time, Chinese culture prospered, and the tradition strengthened pieces of the Great Wall to ensure against intrusions. The Ming line took a protective position militarily, and the Wall helped with that. One of the most popular parts is SiMaTai, which was used to 'not let a single horse in (匹馬不入).' A segment of the Wall known as the 'Heavenly Ladder' for being practically Straight up a cliff. Truly, the Wall was very effective to a limited degree, however, it was added to a great extent romanticized by Chinese and Westerners the same. A common misconception is that it is so enormous, it tends to be seen from the moon.

The Great Wall of China was first built as a defense mechanism, it stood its propose to protect the people from invaders. Then later on the Wall stood as a landmark/national monument. Since the wall has been up for a while and carries a lot of history with it, its a great tours attraction. 100,000’s of people travel to China yearly just to visit this 5,500-mile-long manmade wall. It is crazy to think people really spent 2,000 years working on this wall. It just makes me wonder how long it’ll take us today, with all the new technology we have now