Great Wall of China Great Wall of China The Great Wall of China is a series of fortifications made of stone, brick, tamped earth, wood, and other materials, generally built along an east-to-west line across the historical northern borders of China to protect the Chinese states and empires against the raids and invasions of the various nomadic groups of the Eurasian Steppe with an eye to expansion. Several walls were being built as early as the 7th century BC; these, later joined together and made bigger and stronger, are collectively referred to as the Great Wall. Especially famous is the wall built in 220–206
History of the Great Wall of China walls. However, these efforts were based solely on written records that contain obscure place names and elusive literary references. The rise of modern archeology has contributed much to the study of the Great Wall, either in corroborating existing research or in refuting it. However these efforts do not yet give a full picture of the Great Wall's history, as many wall sites dating to the Period of Disunity (220589) had been overlaid by the extant Ming Great Wall. Western scholarship of the Great Wall was, until recently, affected by misconceptions derived from traditional accounts of the Wall. When the Jesuits