Israeli archaeologists shed new light on Great Wall of Mongolia - Archaeology - Haaretz.com
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Aerial view of a fort (square) and possible animal pen (round) along the Great Wall of Mongolia: such forts were built every 30 kilometers
Credit: Nachem Doron
The monumental wall running almost 750 kilometers in Mongolia and China wasn’t built to fend off Genghis Khan and his horde but to control mass migrations of climate refugees, archaeologists suggest
The Great Wall of China is one of the most prominent mysteries on the face of the planet. We can see it from outer space, yet surprisingly little is known about much of it. What purpose did the Great Wall of China really serve, whose purpose did it serve, and when did it serve said purpose?
In fact, the so-called great wall is a series of ancient high walls uncomfortably grouped under the soubriquet “Great Wall of China” in today’s China and Mongolia, and a bit in Russia and North Korea too. The earliest one dates to 2,500 years ago and the latest was erected in the 17th century. Their purpose has been assumed to have been defensive.
Now, an unusual collaboration of Israeli, Mongolian and American archaeologists propose that at least one of these great walls – dubbed the “Genghis Khan Wall” and stretching almost 750 kilometers (466 miles) from Mongolia to China – doesn’t have the hallmarks of a military installation. Nor does it separate between ecological regions, as had been suggested by some: the ecology on both sides is much the same.
This great wall may have been built – and fast at that – to control vast migrations by nomads in a climatically challenging time, propose Prof. Gideon Shelach-Lavi and a multidisciplinary team from the Hebrew University, with Otgonjargal Batzorig of the Mongolian company Oyu Tolgoi Mines, Chunag Amartuvshin of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences and William Honeychurch of Yale.
Map of the many Great Walls of China: the Mongolian one is the northern-most
Credit: Maximilian Drrbecker / (Chumw[…])
This great wall may have been built – and fast at that – to control vast migrations by nomads in a climatically challenging time, propose Prof. Gideon Shelach-Lavi and a multidisciplinary team from the Hebrew University, with Otgonjargal Batzorig of the Mongolian company Oyu Tolgoi Mines, Chunag Amartuvshin of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences and William Honeychurch of Yale.
The collaboration reported on surveying the “understudied” stretch in Mongolia, erected during the medieval period, and the discovery of clues to its functions, in the journal of Antiquity.
Genghis Khan and the great walls
In total, the “great walls” built over more than 2,000 years stretch 21,196 kilometers, according to the China Highlights website, which qualifies that the calculation is downside because it doesn’t count sections built on older ones, or isolated sections. Some segments were later connected.
The new report relates to the 737 kilometer-long structure in Mongolia dubbed the “Genghis Khan Wall,” though it seems Genghis Khan (aka Chinggis Khaan) or fear of him had nothing to do with its construction.
Let us describe it first: The Great Wall of Mongolia is the northernmost of the great walls and, like most of the rest, it stretches east-west. About half of it is in Mongolia; it continues into China, passes through Russia (southeast Siberia) and ends back in China. There has been some archaeological investigation of this wall by Mongolian, Chinese and Russian archaeologists.