14 DAY TRIAL // Even before the Great Wall was constructed, Chinese war lords apparently had the habit of protecting their borders by erecting similar defensive structures. Archaeologists in the United States were recently able to confirm the existence of several other walls in various Chinese provinces, including one that was built around 2,500 years ago.
The first signs of the ancient wall were discovered by Field Museum of Chicago archaeologist Gary Feinman in 2010, as he was strolling through the Shandong province of eastern China. The expert was simply looking for pottery fragments when he discovered the earthen wall.
In some places, he later said, the wall was up to 4.5 meters (15 feet) high. People in the area were well aware of the fact that an earthen wall ran through there around 500 BC, but clear evidences to confirm their statements had until then been lacking. Feinman now calls this structure “the first Great Wall.”
The defensive structure was most likely built by an ancient warring Chinese dynasty. It somehow stands to reason that The Great Wall was built five centuries later, around 2,000 years ago. The newly-unified country took over its provinces' habit of protecting themselves via walls, except this time they were able to build it much bigger.
“By walking this part […] we have seen how well designed it was. It really runs along the higher ridge-tops of these very craggy mountains in eastern Shandong. In the upper reaches of its run, it was amazingly well preserved,” Feinman says of “the first Great Wall.”
According to a series of measurements the expert and his team conducted in the field, the wall may very well extend for several hundred miles. This represented the first effort to map how the rammed earth structure snaked through the landscape, covering a huge area, NPR reports.
The technique used to build the wall was relatively simple, yet very effective – as demonstrated by the fact that sections of the wall survived for more than 2,500 years. Workers carried fine soils from lower altitudes to the hilltops and piled it in heaps that were then beaten until they hardened.
According to Hebrew University expert Gideon Shelach, the wall was built by the Qi dynasty, which may explain how so much manpower was available. Constructing a defense structure spanning several hundred miles probably took many years and a lot of hands, experts comment.
Feinman adds that this wall was not meant to protect Shangdong from foreign invaders – such as was the purpose of the Great Wall centuries later – but rather to separate two neighboring cities. These regional rivalries were ended by Qin Shi Huang's army, estimated to feature around 1.5 million soldiers.
Around 221 BC, all warring neighboring cities were united under a single leadership after a 10-year conflict on multiple fronts, and the Qin Dinasty emerged. Work then began on a new wall, which eventually became a part of the Great Wall later on.