Part of China's Great Wall not built for war: Study
09 June, 2020
The northern segment of the fantastic Wall of China was built never to block invading armies but instead to monitor civilian movement, an Israeli archaeologist said Tuesday (Jun 9).
When researchers fully mapped the Great Wall's 740km Northern Line for the very first time, their findings challenged previous assumptions.
"Ahead of our research, most of the people thought the wall's purpose was to avoid Genghis Khan's army," said Gideon Shelach-Lavi from Jerusalem's Hebrew University, who led the two-year study.
But the Northern Line, lying mostly in Mongolia, winds through valleys, is relatively lower in height and close to paths, pointing to non-military functions.
"Our conclusion is that it had been more about monitoring or blocking the movement of individuals and livestock, maybe to tax them," Shelach-Lavi said.
He suggested people might have been seeking warmer southern pastures throughout a medieval cold spell.
Construction of the Great Wall, which is put into sections that altogether stretch for thousands of kilometres, first commenced in the 3rd century BC and continued for years and years.
The Northern Line, generally known as "Genghis Khan's Wall" in mention of the legendary Mongolian conqueror, was built between your 11th and 13th centuries with pounded earth and dotted with 72 structures in small clusters.
Shelach-Lavi and his team of Israeli, Mongolian and American researchers used drones, high-resolution satellite images and traditional archaeological tools to map out the wall and discover artefacts that helped pin down dates.
According to Shelach-Lavi, whose findings from the ongoing study were published in the journal Antiquity, the Northern Line has been largely overlooked by modern-day scientists.
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