Does anyone know how long it took to build the Great Wall of China?
There was a documentary on this the other night and most answers appear to be wrong. Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China and creator of the Great Wall. A first set of walls, designed to keep Mongol nomads out of China, were built of earth and stones in wood frames during the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BCE). Some additions and modifications were made to these simple walls over the next millennium but the major construction of the “modern” walls began in the Ming Dynasty (1388-1644 CE). The Ming fortifications were established in new areas from the Qin walls. They were up to 25 feet (7.6 meters) high, 15 to 30 feet (4.6 to 9.1 meters) wide at the base, and from 9 to 12 feet (2.7 to 3.7 meters) wide at the top (wide enough for marching troops or wagons). Sima Qian wrote in the Records of the Historian史記 (Shiji), that under the order of Qin Shihuangdi, “General Meng Tian蒙恬mobilized 300,000 soldiers… and built a Great Wall which followed the contour of the land, taking advantage of natural
