TechnologyEast Asia
The Great Wall begun
A frontier against the steppe that never quite worked
See it on the timeline →In depth
The wall rarely stopped a determined army; it made carrying the plunder *home* difficult, which is a different and more effective logic. It also expresses an enduring Chinese problem: the settled farming society against the mobile steppe, a tension that shaped China's foreign policy for two thousand years and ended with the steppe conquering China more than once.
For children
The first emperor joined older walls into one long frontier against the nomads of the north. Hundreds of thousands worked on it, and many died. The wall you can visit today was built almost two thousand years later.
Connects to
Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org