Amazing Facts about The Great Wall of China

 

Amazing facts about The Great Wall of China

• The Great Wall of China is the longest man-made structure in the world.
• Archaeological surveys  found that the entire wall with all of its branches measure out to be 21,196 km (13,171 mi).
• Ming walls(Wall being reconstructed during Ming dynasty) measure around  8,850 km which is made up of 6,259 km sections of actual wall, 359 km of trenches and 2,232 km of natural defensive barriers such as hills and rivers.
• Several walls were being built as early as the 7th century BC. These were later joined together and made bigger, stronger, and unified and are now collectively referred to as the Great Wall.Hence Great Wall is not a single wall and not a continuous wall built all at once.
• Qin Shi Huang,the first Emperor of China built the earliest extensive walls between 220–206 BC.
• Build to defend the Chinese Empire from Mongolian and Manchu enemies to the north.
• The Great Wall is 25 feet tall and 15-30 feet wide. That’s wide enough for two cars to drive on!!

In many locations the Wall is in disrepair and those parts might serve as a village playground or a source of stones to rebuild houses and roads.

Most of the Wall is built using rammed earth, adobe and stone.Bricks were used after the Ming dynasty.

There are more than 10000 watch towers and beacon towers along the Great Wall of China.

The Great Wall was called “the longest cemetery on earth” because so many people died while building it. Reports say that it took away more than one million lives.

More than 60 km of the wall in Gansu province may disappear in the next 20 years, due to erosion from sandstorms.