A discovery on the Great Wall of China calls into question the dating of its construction. Historians do not come back.
The Great Wall of China is one of the seven new wonders of the world. It was built there is – at least – more than 2000 years under the Qin and Han dynasties in order to protect the territory from the Mongolian invader. It is located along the northern border of the country and covers more than 21,000 kilometers between Shanhaiguan in the East and Jiayuguan in the west. Its height varies from 6 to 8 meters, with a width of 4 to 6 meters. It is punctuated by surveillance and shelters. It was several times partially destroyed and then rebuilt.
The Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archeology of Shandong recently analyzed this exceptional building. Archaeologists used the traditional analysis of artefacts but also advanced methods such as optically stimulated luminescence and carbon dating. They also sampered the soil of various areas around the wall and sought traces of dead plants. They then identified in the District of Changqing, in Jinan, the oldest section of the wall. It was built with clay, stone and other materials testifying to early military ingenuity.
These techniques above all allowed to reassess the age of the wall. The oldest part has been again again: it is actually 300 years older, compared to what had previously been evaluated, bringing it closer to an origin of 3000 years! Three centuries all the same, it’s a whole different era! By digging around this part, they also identified what looked like semi-buried housing areas. Workers were able to live on site during the construction of the wall, then giving way to the soldiers at the completion.
The construction would then have distributed in three phases with first the portions of “Qi”, built by the eponymous state and dating back to the end of the Western Zhou dynasty (1046 BCE in 771 BCE) and at the start of the spring and autumn period (770-476 BC). The next phase would date from the combatant kingdom period (475 BCE at 221 BCE) with wider parts and the last section, which is also the best preserved, would have been built under King Xuan of Qi (around 350 to 301 BCE).
These finds thus mark “a significant advance in the archeology of the Great Wall and constitutes an important step in the clarification of origins and the development of research on the Great Wall in China”, rejoiced Liu Zheng, member of the Chinese Cultural Relics Society, with the Global Times.