Great Wall

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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 isn’t 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 wouldn’t 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 anthropologist’s 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 mount...

... middle of paper ...

.... But this wall must be passable; it must have an opening that anyone can pass through. But the only people that will find the door through are the ones that are willing to be open themselves!” There are so many views, ideas, and aspects of wall due to its extreme complexity, culturally and archeologically. Everything can be linked to everything! This is the ultimate anthropological truth. The Great Wall is truly great.

Internet sources

Rause, Vince 1999 Secrets of the Great Wall. www.discovery.com

Chinavista.com 1996-2000 www.chinavista.com/travel/greatwall/greatwall.html

National Gallery of Art Washington, D.C. 2000 www.nga.gov/exhibitions/chbro_imp.htm

Chang, Kwang-chih 1968 The Archeology of Ancient China Yale University Press, New Haven & London

Clark, Grover 1935 The Great Wall Crumbles The MacMillan Company, New York

Feinman, Gary & Price, Douglas T. 1997 Images of the Past University of Wisconsin, Madison Mayfield Publishing Company Mountain View California, London, Toronto

Geil, William Edgar 1909 The Great Wall of China New York: Sturgis & Walton Company

Nai, Hsai Peking 1974 New Archeological Finds in China Foreign Languages Press

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