Long division: measuring the Chinese and Roman frontiers

OPPOSITE The Great Wall of China can be truly spectacular. Here we see an iconic stretch of the Ming Great Wall, constructed of fired brick, at Jinshanling in Hebei Province. This, though, is just one of the most-celebrated stretches of an incredibly long and complex monument. ABOVE Great Walls. A map showing the course of the various Chinese walls. BELOW Remains of the Han Dynasty Great Wall, constructed of rammed earth, roughly 85km north-west of Jiayuguan, Gansu Province. Comparing this to the Ming Great Wall at Jinshanling illustrates how varied the appearance of different stretches could be.

July 13, 2020

Ancient empires separated by both space and time have frequently resorted to building walls, fortifications, and other barriers, over long distances, to control their frontiers. Remains of a wide range of examples of these imperial frontiers have survived: from strings of forts constructed by the Inca to control the limits of their territory – such as those built in the south-eastern Bolivian Andes during the 15th and 16th centuries AD – to the linear barriers of the Sasanian Empire like the Great Wall of Gorgan – which dates from the 5th or 6th century AD and runs for 195km across northern Iran. Of these ancient frontiers, the two that are by far the most renowned are the Frontiers of

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