Why does the Great Wall of China follow such a bendy route?
score:59
The Chinese designed the wall to be an effective barrier; that was the goal. To answer your question, we need to ask: what land barrier stopped foreign troops the best?
The answer in China, and everywhere else, is mountains. The Great Wall is nothing more than a fortification of existing natural barriers. Look closely at the pictures you've posted, and those posted by Ken Graham. You'll see that they built the Great Wall directly on the mountain ridge. So this is the easy reason the route is bendy:
Because it follows a mountain ridge
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't enjoy building a wall along a mountain ridge. It was a ton of work just to survey the land, and clear trees in both directions from the construction site, and then carry the materials to the site. The expenditure of materials might have been the least costly component.
All this being said, the the real barrier was the mountains. On these mountains, the wall served 3 major functions:
To fortify the mountain passes, yet allow trade to continue
At the passes, the wall was actually the primary barrier. The wall in the passes is very high and has multiple defensive wings.
To provide a location for watchtowers at regular intervals.
These watchtowers were not just for watching the terrain north for gathering troops, but also for communication between towers.
Logistics: To provide a direct path between mountain pass fortifications for the transfer of troops, equipment, food, and other materials.
When I've hiked the wall, I found it very difficult, but far easier than traveling along a natural mountain ridge. I think the men who ran along the wall wearing armor and carrying weapons were strong men indeed.
Upvote:2
Mountain roads are "best" built along ridge lines that minimize (to the extent possible), the surface area of the mountains containing the roads to minimize the necessary excavation. This, in turn, is dictated by the process of building the road through the parts of the mountain, where the slopes are the "minimum."
At its heart, the Great Wall is just a long "road" with walls on both sides. You can see from the pictures that the mountains on either side tend to have steeper slopes than the ridges through which the wall is actually built. These ridges are the points of minimal slope changes. (Think of these slopes as "hypotenuses" over the x axis with the ideal slope being zero.)
A path that was "straight line" (as the crow flies) would usually violate the above rule, and therefore be inefficient in a real environment, even though it would look "optimal" on a map. So a wall with appropriate "bends" will "take less material and guards to defend [than] if it had taken a straighter path."
Upvote:2
High ground is also easiest to defend. As noted before, it was built in top of the ridges. This offers a defensive advantage, as well as good visibility.
Upvote:20
The Great Wall of China:
It is the longest man-made construction in the world. In the old times, it was of great military importance of preventing the enemies' intrusion and was regarded as the 'Guardian Angel' of the central plain in the past. - Great Wall of China FAQs
Why did they build the Great Wall of China?
The Great Wall of China is the longest man-made structure in the world, stretching 21,196.18km (13,170.6956 miles) long. It was built to keep out raiding parties of nomadic tribes, such as the Mongol, Turic and Xiongnu, from modern-day Mongolia and Manchuria. The first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, is often considered the father of the Great Wall, but even before he united the nation in 221BC, individual states built walls to keep out invaders as early as the 7th Century. Qin connected, lengthened and fortified the walls to protect the northern border between 221-206BC. Subsequent dynasties, most notably the Ming, maintained and rebuilt it.
Always maintained as a military defence – at its peak the Ming Wall was guarded by more than one million men – the Wall evolved other uses. Aside from being a transportation corridor, it was used to regulate trade, such as collecting duties on goods transported along the Silk Road. It was also used to restrict both immigration and emigration.
But why does the Great Wall of China follow such a bendy route?
The wall was generally built at the boundary line of the day. In normal conditions, taking the commanding position was the most important factor to win a battle. In this case, lofty mountain top was always the preferred location to build the wall. - Great Wall of China FAQs
More post
- 📝 How did the US vet Soviet refugees for possible spies/infiltrators?
- 📝 Hugh Dowding v. William Sholto Douglas?
- 📝 Was the 1852 Richard/Bolcoff divorce the first one in California?
- 📝 Conscientious objectors in Germany during WWI
- 📝 Is there something tangible remaining from the Library of Alexandria?
- 📝 Information on first stages of road formation between villages and towns
- 📝 What's the origin of the movement to withdraw the United Kingdom from the European Union?
- 📝 What was the estimated population of the Mississippi Valley before contact with Europeans?
- 📝 What are the social preconditions for division of labour, when compared in different emerging civilizations?
- 📝 Were lay people ever forbidden to read the Bible in the Christian world?
- 📝 What is the average (or default if you prefer) human political system?
- 📝 The practice of translating foreign monarch's or noble's name
- 📝 Ethnic Germans in Russian service in Poland
- 📝 What is it called when a Corporation purchases the rights to something to prevent it's production, to increase profit
- 📝 What was used to pay taxes in Medieval England
- 📝 Would there have been racially mixed student bodies in schools in communist Bulgaria?
- 📝 Did ancient and/or medieval cultures that emphasized the danger of religious pollution also exert more control over women?
- 📝 Did the proto-Indo-Europeans displace or overlay the pre-existing European tribes?
- 📝 Were British officers able to return home after the American Revolution?
- 📝 Was there a European country that held a referendum about adopting English in universities?
- 📝 What was the reason for the Ottoman empire to adopt the crescent moon as its flag/coat of arms?
- 📝 What caused the shift from annexation of territory, to colonization of territory?
- 📝 Did early northern Europeans drink alcohol?
- 📝 Is there any evidence of improved sanitation in the years following the Black Death?
- 📝 Did the Truman Doctrine contribute to the Cuban Missile Crisis?
- 📝 Was There a Specified Period Between Declaring War and Attacking Before World War II?
- 📝 Under what circumstances did the Vikings leave for North America?
- 📝 How is the Byzantine(Eastern Roman) different from Western Roman?
- 📝 Why didn't the Allies wait for the nuclear bomb before invading Normandy?
- 📝 Were Trojans the ancestors of the Romans?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Why does the Great Wall of China follow such a bendy route?
- 📝 Why do some sections of Great Wall of China seem to be bidirectional?
- 📝 Why does Japan celebrate the Gregorian New Year but China still celebrates Chinese New Year?
- 📝 Why did Empress Elizabeth and Catherine the Great of Russia have such different policies toward Frederick the Great?
- 📝 Did the Great Wall of China help cause the fall of the Roman Empire?
- 📝 Why does Alexander the Great call Greeks free men while Persians slaves?
- 📝 Why was the Tea Horse Route through Tibet less prevalent than the Silk Road route through Tarim Basin, for contact between China and India?
- 📝 Why does the First World War (WW I) play such a minor role today compared to Second World War (WW II)?
- 📝 Did anyone ever try to beat the Great Wall of China by digging secret tunnels under it?
- 📝 Why does the United States keep using "old" date representations and imperial system, while being in the minority?
- 📝 Why does Japan use the same type of AC power outlet as the US?
- 📝 Why didn't Great Britain give the colonies voting rights?
- 📝 If the Union Jack joins the flag of England and Scotland, why does it have a different shade of blue than the Scottish flag?
- 📝 Why does German money from the 1940s not bear Nazi symbols?
- 📝 Why did China shut itself out of the world in the 15th century?
- 📝 Why could China keep most of the lands it conquered after 17th century but European powers could not?
- 📝 Why does the King of Spain still claim defunct titles like the King of Hungary?
- 📝 Why did the Republic of China retract its simplified Chinese characters?
- 📝 If the Ch’in dynasty was so short-lived, why was China named for it?
- 📝 Why didn't China assist in the Vietnam War like they did in Korea?
- 📝 Why did Peter the Great name Saint Petersburg, Russia with a foreign styled name?
- 📝 Great Wall of China Controversy
- 📝 Why does the US use the opposite convention to the rest of the world for colour-coding harbour buoys?
- 📝 Why did the Monitor and Merrimac (aka Virginia) have such radically different designs?
- 📝 The WWI Christmas truce of 1914 resulted in no consequences, in spite of clear warnings against such beforehand - why were there no courts-martial?
- 📝 Why did Stalin push for the Great Purge against the Red Army in 1936?
- 📝 Why does the CIA report on the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich refer to it as "Operation Salmon" rather than "Operation Anthropoid"?
- 📝 Why does the amount of days in an year on average of the Gregorian calendar only have 4 decimal places (365.2425)?
- 📝 Why were the Normans such good builders?
- 📝 Why was the Gilgamesh flood tablet such a sensation?