07-05-2006, 09:56 PM
Quote:The Roman limes ... never physically resembled the Great Wall.
Even the Great Wall didn't always resemble the Great Wall!
As I pointed out many years ago (Historia 38, 1989, 371-6, an article that seems to have been universally ignored
), the Chinese frontier wall built during the reign of Wu-Ti (c. 100 BC) -- which modern scholars call the Tun-huang limes -- was no "Great Wall of China". Sir Aurel Stein's excavations there revealed a simple earthwork barrier covering a chain of detached watch-towers.The comparison between the Great Wall of China and Hadrian's Wall is a chestnut that crops up again and again. But the Great Wall as we know it is, as far as I know, a medieval construction of the Ming dynasty.
Stein reckoned that his earthwork barrier (the Tun-huang frontier) was still being maintained in the 2nd C AD, but I would hesitate to call it "a special, complicated structure of frontier defence".
But perhaps some amazing new evidence has appeared since 1989.
Is there a Sinologist in the house?!
