With what was the great wall of china built

During subsequent dynasties, the wall was extended, repaired or modified. The best-known and most visited sections including Badaling , Mutianyu , Simatai and Jinshanling were built during the Ming Dynasty.

See more How old is Great Wall of China? With the end of the cold weapon no fire or explosives era, the Great Wall gradually became less important as a military defense system. As a result, the construction also stopped.

The final construction was in during the late Qing Dynasty - AD. In BC, after defeating other states and unifying the Central Plain, Emperor Qin Shihuang ordered General Mengtian to connect the existing walls and extend them further as a front line to defend against possible invasion from northern nomadic tribes.

This took more than 10 years. Therefore, a continuous Great Wall was made for the first time about 2, years ago. In addition, there were also four periods of repair and construction during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty.

The first time and second times were both in BC to prepare for war with the northern Huns and to guarantee the safety of the Silk Road. The third time was during — BC, and the last time was — BC. The Ming Dynasty spent over years repairing and building the walls, which could be primarily divided into 3 stages. In the — , during the early Ming Dynasty, the emperors mainly repaired and connected the walls of former dynasties including the Northern Wei — , Northern Qi — and Sui — From to , during the middle Ming Dynasty, the construction of the Great Wall in the north became quite urgent, since the Tartar, a northern nomadic nation, invaded the border constantly.

The last stage was during to , in the late Ming Dynasty. It focused on rebuilding and re-routing the wall to defend against the Jurchen, a minority nation in northeast area at that time. And all of these bits overlap each other in time. The sections you see around Beijing have ancient precedents, some of which run directly beneath the Wall. And these divided sections are as nothing compared to other walls of earth, which run westward in parallel lines and scattered segments.

Construction to create the current 13, miles of wall continued, on and off, for more than two millennia. Much of what remains was built during the Ming Dynasty. While intended to keep out foreign invaders, Genghis Khan demonstrated how even a wall as great as this had a flaw. He marched his Mongol horde around one of the sides. Sections of the Great Wall owe their longevity to a rather unusual mortar — glutinous rice flour.

And there is much more to the Wall than walls or banks: fortresses, barracks, guard-towers and beacon-towers stalk the main lines of the Wall in a sort of stretched-out halo.

The threat then was from the Xiongnu, who possibly became the ancestors of the Huns. The classic confrontation with the Mongols occurred only from the late 14th century, when the Mongols were chased out of China by the Ming.

Ancient rumours speak of labourers being buried in the Wall. These probably emanated from a chief historian of the Han dynasty, Sima Qian, who criticised his own emperor by slighting his Qin predecessor. However, no bones have ever been found in the Wall and there is no evidence, written or archaeological, for the slander. In mountain areas, workers quarried stone to build the Great Wall. Using the mountains themselves as footings, the outer layer of the Great Wall was built with stone blocks and bricks , and filled with uncut stone and anything else available like earth and dead workers.

On the plains Great Wall workers made use of local soil sand, loess, etc. Jiayuguan's Great Wall section in west China was mainly built with dusty loess soil — "the most erodible soil on the planet".

It's amazing that sections 2, years old still remain mostly intact! Sand doesn't stick together, so how could a wall be built with sand? Sand was used as a fill material between reed and willow layers.

West China around Dunhuang is desert. Innovative builders there made use of reeds and willow brought in from rivers and oases to build a strong wall. The Ming Dynasty Great Wall was mostly built with bricks. To build a strong wall with bricks, they used lime mortar. Workers built brick and cement factories with local materials near the wall. The Great Wall over the ages used around ,, tonnes of stone, bricks, and mud. According to history and legend, there were three ways to get the materials up the mountains and across the plains Workers carried most of the stones and bricks up the mountains on their shoulders or backs.

Bamboo baskets were used for soil, loose stone, and lime mortar. Human chains were also used to pass the blocks and baskets up. Lining up on narrow mountain paths was more efficient than trudging back and forth.