New discovery shows that the Chinese wall is probably much older than expected

What we know today as a Chinese wall is the result of a construction activity in different places that lasts more than 2500 years. The individual wall sections served as protection for the Chinese states enforced among themselves and later also as a bulwark against the peoples from the north. Their length is sometimes given as up to 21,000 kilometers. In Chinese it is called Wànlǐ Chángchéng, which literally means about as much as “the ten thousand Li long wall”, or mostly only “big wall” for a short time. The Chinese distance LI varied in the past depending on the region and era, today it corresponds to 500 meters. Strictly speaking, the number of 10,000 in Chinese, however, is a symbol of an innumerable amount.