The Ancients - Great Wall of China

Episode Date: March 20, 2024

It's one of the most iconic structures in the world: The Great Wall of China.But is it just one wall? And who built it and why? Today, Tristan Hughes is joined by William Lindesay OBE to delve into the ancient history of this epic structure and to answer these questions and more.Together, they uncover the origin story. From the Warring States around 300 BC to the Qin Dynasty and China's first emperor, and then to its expansion during the Han Dynasty. They explore the evolution of the walls' symbolism and significance, the role it played in protecting against nomadic threats, through to modern day conservation and protection efforts and how important it is to understanding China's military and cultural history.We need your help! We’re working on something special and we need your questions about the Roman Empire. Let us know here.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code ANCIENTS - sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode we are continuing our Wonders of the World miniseries with a masterclass all about the Great Wall, or should I say Walls, of China. Because yes, that's right, we're going to explore the multiple Great Walls that existed more than 2,000 years ago, where in China they emerged, why they were

built and how they evolved over the centuries from the Warring States period to the Han Dynasty. Now, as this is the Ancient Podcast, we're not going to focus as much on the later monumental fortification that was the Ming Dynasty Great Wall, built in the middle of the second millennium AD, iconic of pictures and postcards today. But I think we can all agree that the ancient history is always much more interesting, and that's the same with the Great Wall of China. Now, our guest is the esteemed author, conservationist and Great Wall expert, William Lindersey, OBE. William has dedicated his life to protecting and promoting the Great Wall

and its story. He's conducted surveys. He's explored distant remotes part of it in places like the Gobi Desert. He's founded several societies and programs that focus on Great Wall conservation and so much more. This man lives and breathes the Great Wall. He is a true legend. I was really grateful for William's time. He dialed in from Beijing for this interview and I really do hope you enjoy. So without further ado, here's William. William, it is a pleasure to have you on the podcast today. It's great to be with you, talking about the Great Wall.

Yes, the Great Wall, and you're dialing in from China, so this is amazing that we've got you on location. And also, you mentioned the word Great Wall there, but I feel like we need to start this episode with some myth-busting, especially when we're looking at the ancient history of the Great Wall. Is it more accurate to say Great Walls rather than Great Wall? Well, I've been telling filmmakers and editors for donkey's years that we need to have a title, The Great Walls of China, because, you know, using the singular just leads to so many misleading old roads that we've been down before. If you don't qualify which Great Wall you're talking about,

you know, which dynastic Great Wall you're talking about, confusion just soon sets in and the whole story gets kind of foggy. So yeah, it's the Great Walls of China, because if we look at the histories and if we look at the archaeology, it's the Great Walls of China. Because if we look at the histories, and if we look at the archaeology, at least 16 dynasties build structures, border defence systems that we regard as Great Walls of China. And the image of the Great Wall that we get today, whether it's that famous photo of Nixon or on tourism pictures of China, that massive, amazing fortification. Is that version of the Great Wall not too ancient almost? I say that as someone who's used to 2000 year old stuff.

Yeah. The wall you've just referred to is what I call the wall as the world knows it today. People have the Great Wall on their bucket list. It was actually nominated to be one of the new seven wonders of the world earlier this century when the Swiss organization organized that online vote. And that wall is the Ming Dynasty Wall. It's actually the most recent of all of China's Great Walls. And the Ming Dynasty was not so long ago in terms of Chinese history, just 500 years or so. The Ming Dynasty was 1368 to 1644. But when you stand on the Great Wall of the Ming, what so many people don't appreciate is before the Ming Wall, there were many other walls. kind of confused whether the Ming Wall stands on the foundations of a wall built much earlier, or whether it joins remnants of a wall built much earlier. Actually, it doesn't. It's pretty much a standalone wall of the Ming Dynasty. But as you explore the northern provinces of China, you can find what I call miraculously preserved examples of most of China's dynastic walls, even the first ones dating from more than 2,200 years ago.

Wow. Well, we're going to explore that very, very quickly. But that kind of highlighted an important question I was going to ask, and I normally always ask, which is like, source material for understanding the earlier story of this amazing architecture. Is it a mixture of literature, poetry and stuff like that, but also, as you've highlighted there, surviving archaeology? Yeah, well, you know, for me, I came over to China as a raw adventurer. I couldn't speak a word of Chinese. I'd seen the Great Wall marked on a map of China when I was a young boy. And I made a journey along it. And I realized that to understand this

structure required a lot more. But still, 37, 38 years later, the ruins of the structures are an enormous primary resource for study. But of course, you have to have the knowledge of what China's earliest historians wrote about them. And when we talk about the story of ancient China written down, we very quickly get to records of the grand historian that was a masterwork put together by Sima Qian in the early first century BC. He mentions what we regard as China's first great walls in his work. And he doesn't just mention them. The tone of the voice seems to suggest that he saw them with his own eyes. Because he was an imperial astrologer, he accompanied the then emperor on his tours of the empire. And the then emperor was very famous Emperor Han, Han Wudi. And he writes, I have been to the northern frontier and I have seen ancient China. I mean, is wall building,

is this something that is very important in the whole story of China and for the ancient people of China? I think so. Before long walls were built in China, enclosing walls just around even individual dwellings and small clusters, small settlements were the norm, the required. So much so that at a certain time, we're not quite sure when, a Chinese character for town or city was actually a depiction of an earthen wall. earthen wall, suggesting that any place to live had to have this signature structure, enclosing defense for protection against imaginary or real foes. So yeah, the China wall building story starts with a small wall, circular enclosing. Archaeologists have found remains of very long city walls, several kilometers in length, dating from at least 1500 BC. And certainly from several hundred years BC, we have a lot of long walls appearing on the landscape of China. And whether, you know,

the academics regard those long walls as great walls is quite an interesting but complex conversation. But in my eyes, I differentiate a long wall from a great wall by expressing this, that a great wall is an ancient Chinese military defense built in the northern part of the empire to defend, which were several hundred kilometers in length, they are actually south of the frontier zone where the conflict between the Chinese, the Han people, and the nomadic people on the other side of the Gobi Desert was really forced. But these are academic points. But I think for our listeners, it's very important to understand what happened around about 300 BC. This period of Chinese history is called the Warring States Period because the area we know now as China, or at least the great big bulbous chunk on the right, was not one unified entity, not one unified empire. It was divided among a number of states, the warring states. Why warring? Because they were

always at war with one another, trying to dominate their neighbors. And one of the states in the north called the Zhao state, being in the north, it had the misfortune of suffering from increasingly frequent nomadic attacks. So these are people from north of the Gobi Desert inhabiting an area that we would now equate with the Republic of Mongolia. equate with the Republic of Mongolia. And the people in that area, they really had a difficult way of life because their land was high, quite high latitude, quite far from the sea. And most of all, the earth was infertile, much of it put there by the wind rather than rivers. And very importantly, the growing season was incredibly short, barely three months. So they could hardly grow anything. The only way to live there was to depend on animals. Originally, the people there were hunters, and then they became herders. But if you're living that kind of life, your lifestyle is very vulnerable to a disaster wrought by an

extremely cold winter, or summer drought, or most often, animal disease. And then basically, your food supply was wiped out. And you know, I'm a geographer. So I really subscribe to the view that the Great Wall story, which is really the incursions by nomadic people on the land of China, they were triggered by these lifestyle disasters that forced the nomadic people to cross the Gobi Desert in search of a means of survival. And they managed to do that. And they literally stumbled across settlements in the north of China where people had provided wealth for themselves, they'd managed to store food in granaries. And of course, they raised animals at the same time. So they got this relief from

natural disaster by raiding. So initially, the strikes on China by nomadic people were triggered by a need to get food. But as the decades and centuries rolled on, And as knowledge in the nomads' mind became more detailed, they realized that the people of the South, they had so many wonderful things in their life that they'd made that were useful or beautiful. And they had this insatiable human desire that most humans still have today. They wanted these things because they thought owning these things would bring them a better life. And you know, if you took some of these marvelous, wonderful, ingenious things back to the steppe land, you could really use them in a powerful way to, you know, arrange a wedding with a neighboring tribe that had long been an enemy, you could impress them by

this new wealth that you had. This domination led to local, regional, and sometimes national unity. So objects actually became very, very important in the nomadic world. And objects often led to federation of many tribes into a powerful group that targeted China, not for temporary relief, not for, you know, a few hundred cartloads of food, but for conquering the land, harnessing the native people, and benefiting from their great productivity. And the best example of that is, you know, in the 1200s, Genghis Khan united many of the nomadic tribes of the steppe land and started to strike China. So William, is it with that context, if we go back into ancient times of that growing

nomadic threat with these objects, is that the context as to then you see these warring states, particularly the Zhao state, as you've mentioned, create almost the first great wall to defend against those people? Yeah, the king of the Zhao state, it's recorded by Sima Qian in records of the grand historian that, as I've said, he was suffering from these nomadic attacks. And the thing about the nomadic attacks at that time, they were completely unexpected in their form. At the time, most conflicts in China itself were carried out by men on foot, infantry, and the nobility, you know, the top brass in their chariots. And often warfare was a very pre-arranged set thing. They made etchings on bones and they heated the bones

and saw the way the bones split, these oracle bones, deciding when and where the conflict should take place. It was almost like a sports event on flat ground where the infantry and the chariots could be put in action. But what the nomads did, they made fighting dirty and unruly because of their lifestyle. You know, learning to ride the horse from the age of three or four, even without a saddle, even without reins. Children playing with bows and arrows around their camps, waiting very patiently to shoot a marmot or a steppe hare.

The combination of this archery and superb horse riding made them superb cavalrymen. And it's the nomadic cavalry, even though they were few in number, they created havoc at this time back in 300 BC for the Zhao state. So the king of the Zhao thought, okay, solution, I establish my own cavalry regiments. I train my men in archery and riding at the same time. And while he managed to do that, they couldn't match these almost innate skills of their opponents. He even changed the style of the clothing so it didn't interfere with pulling a bow from the quiver and drawing the bow, all these baggy sleeves. He made

all the jackets tighter and what have you, but it didn't make much difference. So what did he do next? He decided on the long wall. And I think this is an indication of him acknowledging he didn't want to face these superb cavalry armies in open field battle, you know, in the middle of nowhere, where they would literally run rings around his own inexperienced forces. So what he did, he banked on what the Chinese do well. And the Chinese are very good from even before, you know, 300 BC in organizing a lot of people to work together on one project. And that one project is a different shaped wall, not circular and enclosing, but a linear shape from A to B,

cross-country, and of extraordinary length. And I think also technology played a part because, And I think also technology played a part because, you know, we're a few hundred years into the production of iron weapons State Wall from roughly 300 BC that I've seen, which can still be found in northwest China, about 100 kilometers north of a big city called Baotou. First of all, it looks like a wall. Still, it's what I call a miracle section. It's about two and a half, three meters high in the gullies or beside seasonal rivers or streams. This is rock that has been freed from bedrock by force using strong and sharp tools. The fundamental advantage delivered by this big human effort to build a long wall was height advantage. It occupies the high ground. This is key. This is the era of cold weapons warfare, when the range and the velocity of any object, missile, arrow, launched from a weapon is going to go further and do more damage and have more chance

of piercing armor, killing your opponents if you have gravity on your side. So occupation of the high ground is key. And what the wall does, it enhances the advantage of high ground. And where there is no high ground, the wall itself becomes the artificial high ground. But not only the king of the Zhao state did this, his neighboring states to his immediate east also built walls for the same purpose, to fend off nomadic attacks, both the Qin state and the Yan state. the Qin state and the Yan state. And of course, we know after about 70, 80 years, it was the Qin state that wiped out all the other warring states in 221 BC. Very famously, the Qin Empire was founded and the king of the Qin state became Qin Shi Huang. He's known all around the world because his terracotta warriors have been touring museums for the last 30 years. Qin Shi Huang. He's known all around the world because his terracotta warriors have

been touring museums for the last 30 years. Qin Shi Huang, of course, is well known for seeking immortality. He wanted to rule forever. And he realized that a major threat to his empire was nomadic attack. It's he who ordered one of his top commanders to round up a big workforce and route march them to the north to link up these three walls that were specifically built to fend off nomadic attacks. But the problem with these three walls was there were gaps in between them. So what Commander Meng Tian's 300,000 workforce did was he linked these three previously existing Warring States walls together. And it's this structure that Sun Ma Tian It's this structure that Sima Qian, writing in his Records of the Grand Historian, that's the structure he sees.

It's the immeasurably long wall. So basically, in terms of mimicking an arithmetic formula, it's the Zhao state wall plus the Yan state wall plus the Qin state wall equals the Qin dynasty great war. I mean, when this first emperor, he orders his general to start unifying it. As you mentioned, there is that, of course, that military purpose of defending against that threat from the north. Do you think there's also very much a symbolic purpose behind it, like with Hadrian's Wall, a symbol of power, you think there's also very much a symbolic purpose behind it, like with Hadrian's Wall, a symbol of power, but also a symbol that unifying the warring states, but also showing that unification through the linking up of these three separate walls? Absolutely. And that is reinforced

by Emperor Qin Shi Huang, famous for creating the first Great Wall, because that's the brand name that Sun Ma Qian uses. But he's less well-known for something very important. Those other walls, long walls to the south, Qin Shi Huang didn't want those because they were threats to potentially being used by those that wanted to break up the empire. They could seize in a stronghold, yeah. So he wanted to remove these barriers so the empire was unified. And it is written that he ordered people to go out and demolish these walls.

They didn't do a very good job because many of these walls can still be found on the landscape of China. But they're not very impressive. But I suspect also that, you know, the last 2,100 years have played their parts. Local people stumbling across, especially if it's rock, very nice building material would have easily cut it off to use for themselves. And is that what we should be imagining the material for the building of this Great Wall and these early Great Walls in the northern provinces, northern frontiers? Do we imagine them being made completely out of rock? But is there also earth and mud there as well, like fire-hardened mud? What do we know about the materials? Yeah, well, we've got the archaeological

evidence. There's both. The Qin Dynasty Wall, you can find on the landscape of China today, the very high, well-preserved stone wall, and it's 100% stone. And then, let me think, as the crow flies 700, 800 kilometres away, what remains of the Qin Dynasty wall there is a high mound, about three, four metres in height. And in other places, the building material seems to have been much more friable. So actually, there's both remains of earthen walls and stone walls from this time. And the key thing is the wall builders always used locally available materials.

To have workers a relatively long way from the agricultural productive areas of China was a huge infrastructural headache, because these were very large armies, what we've talked about before, Mengtian, taking 300,000, 800 kilometers north of the then capital, Chang'an, today Xi'an, to an area that was remote, far from any agricultural production, it led to starvation. And if on top of that, the workers had to transport building materials, even a relatively short distance, well, you were really multiplying the difficulty of the project manifold. So this is an absolute rule for all dynasties. The builders, the organisers insisted on the use of locally available materials. I'm glad that you've kind of really highlighted the workforce for building this first Great Wall

as you highlighted there. Because I remember doing an interview recently about the building of the Great Pyramid of Giza and that kind of misconception that it was built by slaves, but now we kind of know it was probably built by workers and corvée labour and so on and so forth. William, with building this Chin Great Wall, with unifying it, do we know much about the workers themselves? Are they soldiers? Are they slaves? Are they citizens? What do we know?

Well, according to Sima Qian, I mean, he's the real historical source of what went on for like a couple of thousand years before he lived. He's writing the history of China from the year dot to when he was living. Matien, Corvée labourers were rounded up. And apparently, an able-bodied male from virtually every family in the land. It's hard to conceive, but I think it's very likely most families in the North. And you know, the message was, the Huns are in the North, and warrior-like savages. And unless we have a Great Wall, we'll never be able to farm and chop wood in peace. So come on, sign up. But you know, there's a very interesting legend from this period. And it's the means and way most Chinese people in history have heard about the Great Wall. And it's the legend of Lady Meng Jiangnu. And so the story goes, she was married to her sweetheart. And they'd only been married a day and the army

detachment arrived in the village and told every family they had to provide an able-bodied male. So Lady Meng's husband was one of many in the village who was forced to march north. And this young man, he was very clever, but not very strong, Fan Xilian. And the women were weeping and they were told, don't worry, before the end of the year, before the winter comes, the menfolk will return. But come year's end, Lady Meng was looking towards the north, hopefully for the sign of dust and the return of the war-building army. And of course, no one came. So she decided to pack up some dried foods and some warm clothes and march north herself. And it's sad that the passage of 300,000 Corvée labourers marching across in a

straight line north of the capital created a road that Samachan describes as the Jidao. It translates directly as the direct road. And I've seen reports that traces of the direct road were identified decades ago by aerial reconnaissance, seeing this mysterious straight line streaking north from today's Xi'an, up across the Yellow River into the Yin Mountains. And archaeologists saying the passage of so many people compacted the earth, it changed the vegetation that was capable of growing. A bit like an overused path along a national trail and the National Trust say, an overused path along a national trail. And, you know, the National Trust say, don't walk here, spread the footfall. Anyway, back to Lady Meng. She trudges up the direct road,

she gets to the wall, it's manned, the flags are flying, she walks along the wall. Do you know my husband? Where is he? Scholar Fan Xilian. She eventually reaches a watchtower and the guards say, oh, yes, he was such a nice man, but he perished. But, you know, to save him from the vultures, we buried him in the fill of the wall. And it's said that Lady Meng, of course, was so distressed that her wails and her tears were so voluminous, it caused the wall to collapse. And that revealed the bones of her husband. And she gathered the bones up, ready to take them back, you know, to her hometown for a decent burial. And there was a hand on her shoulder saying, you've damaged the emperor's defences and you'll answer your crimes in front of his majesty. So she's put in a cage, taken to the capital, and Emperor Qin Shi Huang has apparently already decided on the verdict.

She's going to be dismembered and her case will serve as an example. But he very quickly changes his mind when he sees Lady Meng is quite an attractive young lady. And he thought that would be a bit of a waste. So he changes his plan. He offers her a place in his harem. And she very cleverly decides on the deal she wants. She says, that would be an honor.

But, you know, my husband, like many men have died to defend your empire with your wall. So at least he should have a decent funeral. And I think you should authorize the construction of a memorial arch to commemorate all of the souls who've given their lives for the cause. And the emperor falls for this. And she gets what she wants. And the legend goes that come the admittance day when she's going to enter the harem and have the chance of a night with the emperor, she's being made up and prepared with fragrance and having a hair done. And she tells the ladies that it's rather stuffy. I want to walk in the palace grounds. So off she goes. She walks up onto the bridge, climbs the balustrade and jumps into the lake and drowns herself to be reunited with

her husband in heaven. You know, if you ask Chinese people from north to south, when did you first hear about the Great Wall of China? So many of them say, oh, when I was a little girl, when I was a little boy, my mother, my granny, my grandfather told me the story of Lady Meng crying down the Great Wall. And interestingly, the imperial court, by all governments. They never referred to Great Wall construction as Great Wall construction, because from the legend of Meng Jiangdu, the very words Great Wall, Wan Lichangchang, were synonymous with a place of no return, death. And that lasted even until the Ming Dynasty,

you know, the Great Wall as the world knows it today, where you'll go if you visit Beijing. Even stone tablets placed on the Ming Wall 400 years ago, they don't call it Great Wall. They call it border defence. Well, let's chronologically move on, William. So we've been talking about the Qin wall and how the first emperor unifies these three great walls. But if I'm correct, the Qin dynasty doesn't

actually last that long. So what happens to the Great Wall and its story as we get to the end of this dynasty and the emergence of one of the most well-known dynasties, I'd argue, is in personally focused on ancient history, the emergence of the Han dynasty. Yeah, yeah. Well, as you said, the Qin barely lasted for a couple of decades, and then it collapsed. The Han dynasty was almost 400 years, although, you know, it's divided into the West and the East, and there's a period of instability in the middle for a decade or so. But certainly, it's an interesting episode of the Great Wall story. So the Han dynasty inherited the same headache as the Qin. The Xiongnu remained hostile. In fact, they became more aggressive, and they gained the upper hand. I think, to put it simply, the first few emperors of the Han

were a bit kind of, well, let's try and palm off these enemies with some kind of peace deal. So at that time, the Han inherited the Qin War. So there were what we call harmonious marriage alliance treaties between the early Han emperors and the Xiongnu. And the deals, well, they varied in content, but roughly the basic agreement was that the Xiongnu should not come south of the war, which is now the Han War, and the Chinese should not go north of the war. But in return for this peace, the Han should give the Xiongnu chieftain some goodies.

And the goodies were normally in the categories of elaborate textiles, alcohol, medicines, tea. Many other things like weapons were prohibited. And the idea was that if the chieftain and his family got these goodies, the chieftain would call off the rabble and say, hey, guys, don't attack the Chinese. Don't go south of the wall. But of course, they took no notice. Why should they? They were not getting anything. So the problem for the Chinese was they'd have a meeting, you know, maybe a year later. And the Chinese would say to the Xiongnu, we gave you all this stuff and your war is still raided. And the reply was, well, you didn't give enough stuff. There wasn't enough to go round. I could only give it to, you know, a certain number of people. We need more stuff. There wasn't enough to go around. I could only give it to a certain number of people.

We need more stuff. So you can see the problem. It's always escalating. But sometimes things worked a bit better. And the Xiongnu behaved themselves. And the Chinese would respond accordingly. They would, as a gesture, invite the Xiongnu chieftain, even to the imperial capital, hoping that he would be, you know, greatly impressed by the order and these buildings, because, you know, these were people from the steppe land they lived in, pressed wool felt tents, they'd never seen you know great buildings before pagodas and the like and the chieftains were given titles and we all like titles i mean i've got one obe i love it americans think they should call me sir you know that makes you feel good and then the real icing on the cake if one of these arrangement was going well then the real icing on the cake, if one of these arrangements was going well, a very beautiful concubine from the Harem.

And her story became famous during the Han Dynasty and every dynasty since. And even the premier of China, the first premier of China, Zhou Enlai, in the 1950s, he referred to the marriage of Wang Zhaozhun, marrying a Mongol as a good example of peacemaking between the ethnic minorities in the border area. And if you go to the border area of China, Mongolia today, there's a long banana-shaped region called the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, one of China's 34 provincial level admin regions. And there's a Wang Jiaojun Museum telling of this heroine that she thought she was going

to spend her life enjoying the luxuries and fineries of palace life. But she ended up on the Mongolian steppe wearing rough wool and fur clothing and only being able to wash once a year or something like that. So she's seen as a great heroine of the Great Wall story. But many Chinese criticise the Han government into putting the responsibility of peace and defence on the shoulders of a woman. And so obviously, there are these times by these early Han rulers, as you hinted at there, where relations seem to be getting better

between the Xiongnu and the Han, or at least kind of, you know, it's not open conflict. But after a while, do relations get a bit more tense? And I mean, how does that influence the Great Wall story? Do sometimes diplomatic relations break down

and is there a need to kind of, oh, hang on, we need to remand the wall or we need to improve the wall? Well, it all explodes when a new emperor comes to power. Han Wudi, we've mentioned him before. He's, I think, the third longest reigning emperor in Chinese history. So around about 120 BC, he decides, oh, this mollycoddling with the enemy, this isn't the Chinese way, and he's going to stop it. So the harmonious marriage alliance policy was completely cancelled. And he got his generals ready to go on the offensive. And he actually sent armies north north of the wall to attack the Xiongnu. And that had never been done before. And also he sent his armies west of the Yellow River

to conquer territory beyond what we call the central plains. So that's that bulbous area on the right-hand side of the present-day China map. And that latter military maneuver that I referred to consequently changed the shape of the Han Empire. It expanded to the west. New land was brought under Han control. And actually, this emerged as a very lucrative transportation route and trading route, and eventually would become known as the Silk Road. So it's very interesting. During the reign of Han Wudi, he conquers new territory. He sends military regiments out there. They establish military colonies. Trade starts to emerge, commerce, transportation. It becomes very lucrative. Goodies roll out of China. Luxuries come in, one of the luxuries being jade. one of the luxuries being jade. And the problem for the Chinese is this trade route, this narrow artery going from the heartland of China into Central Asia, the desert regions, it became

a very rich picking ground for the Xiongnu to target, because all the empire's luxury goods were there for the taking from the backs of camels. So it's a bit like, you know, the bottleneck, the Straits of Hormuz at the end of the Red Sea there. That's the place to strike to cause a lot of disruption. And Han Wudi responded by having his military colonies build a frontier defense and linked it up to the inherited Qin Wall. So we have in the Han Dynasty the Qin Great Wall plus the newly built Han Wall to defend the Silk Road becoming an even longer wall that we call the Han Wall. The Han Wall is just extended even more. And is there any kind of more evolution of the wall, William, during this period? I mean, are extra turrets added? Is it thickened? Do we know anything more about kind of improvements to the wall itself? We know a lot more. And let's start with a miracle section

of the Han War, about a thousand kilometres northwest of today's Xi'an. It's on an area that's known as the Silk Road. It's very near a very famous small city called Dunhuang. There's a cliff face with about 700 caves known as the Mogao Caves with beautiful Buddhist murals dating from around about 400 AD to 1600 AD. Okay, so we're at Dunhuang in today's Gansu province, and about 100 kilometers from there, there are some wonderful, quite long strands of Western Han Great Wall. And these frontier defenses are totally unique in their visual appearance. If you see a photograph of them, or if you have the opportunity to see them, you know,

with your own eyes, they look stratified. And that's because the builders, they adhered to the golden rule of using locally available materials. And they were very innovative, I think experimental in the materials they use, because just a few months ago, I was standing in front of a section of wall that was 2.5 meters at its highest. This particular strand was about 250 meters long and there were layers about, I would think, a hand height in width made of branches. And then between the layers of branches, there were thinner layers of gravel. And if you touch the gravel with your fingernail, it was almost fossilized hard. And if you tapped the wood, that also emitted the sound of being fossilized, I think, by 21 centuries in the burning sun of the Gobi. Okay, so what are we looking at here? First of all, what's that wood? And we're in the Gobi. So where have they got wood from? Even in the Gobi, there are some drought-resistant plants,

and one of these is called hong liu in Chinese, red tamarisk in English. That has a very gnarly stem. And the wood branches from this particular bush. It's quite a remarkable wall. It was photographed as long ago as 1907 by the British archaeology explorer, Aral Stein, who at that time was based in the Punjab. And he mounted major expeditions from there across the Pamirs into Northwest China. And he actually surveyed about 150 kilometers of this fragmented Han frontier defense. And he photographed the wall

I just referred to in 1907. And actually going back there, you know, just recently, there's hardly been any change because this is in the middle of nowhere. And there's no human activity. So very happy to report in the last century, there's hardly been any change to this magnificent 2,100 year old piece of Han War. of the Great Wall. So we won't go into the story of the Ming Dynasty, but we can touch on it as we start to wrap up. You mentioned in passing there something which I also know is crucial to what you do, which is this going to the wall, exploring parts of the wall, but also conservation and making sure that parts of it don't fall down, that it's well-preserved and that it can be for generations. With it being such an expansive wall over over so much of China if you focus on the largely the

ancient parts of this wall I mean how difficult is it to conserve these bits of masonry that you know are over such a wide area it's just a an enormous task I can only think it compares in scale with you know the monumental tasks that they have in Egypt because they have so many magnificent monuments and so many tombs. In China, certainly the ruins of the Great Wall strewn across the north, even extending beyond China's borders. The ancient walls that we've discussed today, the walls of the warring states, the Chin, the Han, and, you know, these examples of being incorporated and reused, they tend to be in really remote areas. So there's not much damage by modern human activity, you know, encroachments of development, road building, the putting up of power lines, tourism. I mean, those kind of things really impact on the Ming Wall. For example, near Beijing, Beijing, a city of 22 million, arcing north of the capital, 80 to 120 kilometers away, there's 400 kilometers of superb Ming Dynasty great wall built of rock and

brick. The tourism impact on that has been considerable, as people have been attracted to the wilderness parts of the wall, you know, very romantic, crumbling, overgrown with vegetation. But as I've said, you know, these are miraculously preserved strands, fragments, like molecules almost, are pretty difficult to reach and a long, long way from habitation. And the only people going there nowadays would be fairly serious desert explorers, you know, with good four-wheel drives. And so far, some of these walls I've been visiting for the last 20 years, I've not detected much change in the environment. And I think inaccessibility has been a great natural preserver.

But, you know, when you look at a wall made of wooden branches and hardened gravel, the question arises, how long would that last for? What's the best way of preserving it? I think putting an unobtrusive fence around it would be beneficial. That's because in these areas, there are herds of wild animals, gazelle, wild ass, even camels. And there are domesticated herds of camels. And I've certainly seen, you know, big camel footprints, indicating that camels actually cross the wall where it's not so high. You know, maybe 50 meters away from this brilliantly preserved stretch, the wall for some reason or another is just, you know, 7,500 centimeters high, you can see these massive camel footprints. So maybe I think, you know, things like an unobtrusive fence around it.

These sections already do have plaques placed, you know, 100 meters away saying Great Wall of the Han Dynasty, even naming the section. So, you know, they're identified. I think most people go into these areas, they see that and they feel, wow, this is really special and they should take care in this area. Well, William, this has been such an eye-opening chat, especially for someone like me who knows next to nothing about the ancient Great Wall of China and how it evolves over these various early dynasties of China. I mean, lastly, this is the last question, but I have to ask quite quickly. As mentioned at the start, we get the image of the Ming dynasty wall in our minds when someone

says the Great Wall of China. But I mean, how much is that wall influenced by that ancient Great Wall and those walls that came, you know, many, many centuries before and had primarily that purpose of fending off the Xiongnu, the Huns from the north? I mean, how much influence is there on it? Well, it's interesting, you know, referring to the Great Wall story, we're talking 2000 years of Chinese history. You know, the first Great Wall, in my eyes, 300 BC, and the most recent Great Wall, the Ming, and that was abandoned in 1644. And actually, all the walls have the same function. It's only when you get to the Ming do we see a few big changes. I think the two big changes are the Ming wall has bricks,

manufactured components, whereas all the other walls, it's natural components. And secondly, the Ming Wall has very fancy towers. Towers within closed space. Yeah, they're like, you know, castle chambers, a doorway, aisles, chambers. Had you been back there in the day 400 years ago, what, in the 1620s, you know, there'd be wooden shutters, wooden doors, and you'd find 20 or 30 blokes in every tower with all your simple furniture and vessels for storing all their water and weapons and food. Those are the big changes on the Ming War. But you know, I think we all appreciate, up until the last couple of centuries, things changed very, very slowly. I mean, I'm not an expert on the evolution of man in Africa,

but I'm told like the hand axe was like the tool, the weapon for like 175,000 years. And here we are in China for 2,000 years, the wall built of bulky material of extraordinary length, wall built of bulky material of extraordinary length, rooted cross-country, was the main way of dealing with this unstable nomadic society in the north. But you see, the thing about the Ming Wall is it grew to be beyond a barrier. It became a very effective signaling line. And as more and more of it was joined up, it became a military road crossing mountains that functioned as a very effective way for deploying reinforcements, answering signals that warned of nomadic threats. warned of nomadic threats. And I think we can pretty much say with great certainty that the Qin Wall, for example, didn't function as a military road. The Han Wall, that was a very effective signaling line. We actually know more about signaling along the Han Wall than the Ming Wall because they wrote the signaling codes on strips of wood.

And those strips of wood have been preserved very well in the aridity of the Gobi Desert. Whereas in the Ming Dynasty, 1500 years later, records, you know, instructions on how to signal when you saw the enemy, that was written on paper. when you saw the enemy, that was written on paper. And paper doesn't last very long, let alone, you know, in the humidity of the Beijing area in summer and the dryness of the Beijing winter. The Great Wall story is more than just the wall as the world knows it today. The further you go back, it becomes more and more fascinating.

And that's why I've stayed here for 36 years. It's an ongoing journey, one journey, but different walls and different directions. Lots of things to discover. Well, it's been an absolute privilege. William, you are a leading expert on the world and that OBE is very well deserved. And it's been great to have had your time

for the past hour to talk all about the ancient story, these first great walls almost. And it just goes for me to say, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. A pleasure. Thanks for having me. Well, there you go. There was William Lindersey OBE talking all the things the Great Wall of China in Antiquity, the latest in our Wonders of the World miniseries. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. It has been such a joy

doing this series on these amazing architectural wonders of antiquity and stay tuned we've got so many more episodes about wonders to come in the days weeks months and hopefully years in the future that we cannot wait to share with you now last from me, we have something special today. I'd like to mention how in a couple of weeks time for a bonus subscriber episode, we're doing an everything you wanted to know episode where we would love you to send in your questions to us and I will try to the best of my ability to answer them in that episode. If that piques your interest, then look at the show notes below in this episode. We will give all the details where you can send your questions and how you can get involved. But that's enough from me and I will see you in the next episode.