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Subject: Archaeologists Uncovered the Oldest Section of the Great Wall of China Yet
Date: Tue, 04 Mar 2025 17:17:28 -0300
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The ancient construction still has its secrets.

The oldest known part of the Great Wall of China was recently 
excavated, dating 300 years earlier than the previous record-holding 
section.
This new find is part of the larger oldest part of the Great Wall—known 
as the Great Wall of Qi, it’s named for the Qi state that rose to power 
before China became a unified nation.
Older, narrower parts of this ancient fortification are made of packed 
earth and stone, while the newer, wider parts were made of yellow earth 
strengthened by metal rammers.
Winding 21,196 kilometers (12,171 miles) from the east to the midwest 
of northern China, the Great Wall of China has remained standing for 
thousands of years, through the bloodshed and devastation of war after 
war. Now, a newly excavated part of the fortification meant to fend off 
the Huns (and later Mongols) pushes the beginnings of the construction 
of the Great Wall 300 years earlier than previously believed.

An excavation led by archaeologist Zhang Su of the Shandong Provincial 
Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology has unearthed the most 
ancient section of the Great Wall of Qi, which is 641 km (almost 400 
mi) long and already the oldest known part of the wall. It took Zhang 
and his team from May to December of 2024 to carry out an excavation 
that spanned about 11,840 square feet. This section of the Qi Wall has 
been previously surveyed and investigated, but never actually excavated 
before.

The Great Wall of China, a UNESCO World Heritage site, was constructed 
using different methods during different time periods, and this 
excavation showed the evidence. Techniques such as carbon-14 dating and 
optically stimulated luminescence (which reveals when grains of soil 
were deposited and blocked from exposure to light or heat) showed that 
the earliest parts of the Qi Wall were built as far back as the Spring 
and Autumn period of the Zhou Dynasty (1046 B.C. - 256 B.C.) and 
continued to rise during the overlapping Warring States Period (475 
B.C. - 221B.C.).

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a63975972/oldest-section-great-wall-of-china/

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Eduardo.M - Brasil
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