Download The Great Wall of China

The Great Wall of China
Looking Beyond the Pictures:
Analyzing Photographs
What do you see in the image?
Borders, walls, place names, bodies of
water
What are the dominant
features?
Borders and the walls
What can you infer?
The Great Wall is or was a series of
walls, not a single wall
The Great Wall was a series of small walls that were built in the Spring and
Autumn Period (770-476 B.C), and Warring States Period (475-221 B.C.).
. There were several small states that built small, simple walls for defense. They
were made of stamped earth and gravel.
What do you see in the image?
Mountains, wall, watchtowers, path
What are the dominant
features?
Mountains, wall, length
What can you infer?
The wall was built on mountain tops
The wall stretches for 6,700 km (4,160 miles). It was built on mountain tops to
keep invaders out (barbarian Huns from the north), and move soldiers
quickly. The Qin emperor, Shihuangdi, ordered smaller walls destroyed and
new walls connected to the major fortifications, to help centralize power.
What do you see in the image?
Horse & rider, castle, wall, plain
What are the dominant
features?
Castle, wall
What can you infer?
Wall also built along flatlands
The wall that was built on flat land was also made of stamped earth. There were
parts of the various dynasties that did not run along mountain tops, which
were harder to defend.
What do you see in the image?
watchtowers, wall, windows
What are the dominant
features?
watchtowers
What can you infer?
Men were in the turrets, used for
different reasons
There was a watchtower built every 100 meters or so. They were intended to
watch for enemies and light signal fires to warn people that an attack was
coming.
What do you see in the image?
Wall, watchtowers, window
What are the dominant
features?
window
What can you infer?
Windows used to watch/ defend safely
The watchtowers had windows that were use to watch for enemies and to shoot
arrows, etc, from. They provided safety, too.
What do you see in the image?
Watchtower, people, wall, mountain
What are the dominant
features?
Gate, watchtower
What can you infer?
Gates used for a variety of reasons
The Great Wall had gates in it. These were used for trade, communication, and
even attacking enemies.
Other Interesting Things About the Great Wall of China
The wall was also built to keep nomadic people from going out, and from
coming back in with stolen property (which would make enemies angry and
cause an attack).
The Ming Dynasty emperors had the most work done on the wall, and the best
because they used bricks and stone instead of rammed (stamped) earth.
Commoners were forced to build the wall, where hundreds of thousands died
from cold, heat, hunger, or abuse. Many of these peasants were BURIED IN
THE WALL and have been unearthed by archaeologists.
It’s the largest human-built structure in the world.
The Great Wall also extends into Mongolia.
What do you learn from these paintings?
 During its construction, the Great Wall was called “the
longest cemetery on earth” because so many people died
building it. Reportedly, it cost the lives of more than one
million people
 The earliest extensive walls were built by Qin Shi
Huang (260-210 B.C.) of the Qin dynasty, who first
unified China and is most famous for the standing terra
cotta army left to guard his tomb. It is from the Qin
(pronounced “chin”) dynasty which the modern word
“China” is derived. Little of those earliest walls remain
 The dynasties after the Qin which seriously added to
and rebuilt the Great Wall were the Han (206 B.C.-A.D.
220), Sui (A.D. 581-618), Jin (115-1234) and, most
famously, the Ming (1368-1644). What survives today
are the stone and brick walls predominately from the
Ming dynasty.g
 A popular legend about the Great Wall is the story of Meng
Jiang Nu, a wife of a farmer who was forced to work on the
wall during the Qin Dynasty. When she heard her husband had
died while working the wall, she wept until the wall collapsed,
revealing his bones so she could bury them.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKPe_JZTr90
The last battle fought at the Great Wall was in 1938
during the Sino-Japanese War, which was between the
Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. Bullet marks
can still be seen in the Wall at Gubeikou.a
 The Great Wall of China is 25 feet high in some places
and ranges from 15-30 feet wide.a