James Paul 
The Great Wall of China, this architectural colossus that winds over more than 20,000 km through the rugged relief of Chinese territory, is certainly one of the most imposing manifestations of human engineering. While this set of fortifications was extremely well documented, both from a historical point of view and an architectural, this titanic fortification sees today His chronology deeply questioned.
The archaeological excavations carried out between May and December 2024 in the village of Guangli, Changqing district in Jinan, in the Shandong province, have just exhumed vestiges which fell the origin of this monument of around 300 years. The construction of the Great Wall therefore started much earlier than we thought.
The Great Wall, a more complex puzzle than expected
On an area of approximately 1,100 m², archaeologists have Upon a rich range of vestiges : traffic lanes, housing foundations, trenches, clay -earth structures, embankments, ashes and walls built at different periods. Zhang SU, project director at the Shandong Provincial Institute for cultural relics and archeology, has identified three phases in the development of this gigantic site.
The first two correspond to early constructions, with walls 10 meters wide, potentially dated from the Zhou dynasty, during the spring and autumn period (1,046-256 BC). The third section, erected at the peak of the Qi dynasty during the period of combatant kingdoms (475-221 BC), presents an impeccable state of conservation. It was at this point that important architectural progress took place, which allowed builders to widen the walls up to 30 meters.
To better understand the chronology of the construction of this extraordinary building, archaeologists have used several techniques. The optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) – which measures the last moment when minerals were exposed to light – coupled with carbon dating 14 of organic remains, allowed to establish precisely the age of the different strata.
Thanks to these analyzes, the team concluded that we had gone on the age of the fortifications. The first sections of the wall are older about three centuries than the period generally accepted of their construction.
In an interview with Global TimesLiu Zheng, an eminent member of Chinese society of cultural relics, did not hesitate to qualify these vestiges as ” older Great Wall known in China ». An extremely important temporal reassessment for China, since it questions All the stories established on the origins of the Great Wallemblematic symbol of the country par excellence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTH0D1OX-L0
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The ancient history of rewritten China?
The new chronology established by the excavations of the Shandong leads to a domino effect on the entire historiography of Eastern Asia. If the Great Wall precedes the Imperial Qin Imperial era, it is the whole history of political structures, military technologies and interstate relations in pre-imperial China which would require a reassessment.
The erection of fortifications that are so sophisticated from the spring and autumn period are proof of a much more advanced political organization and military engineering than supposed for this time. This also proves that the training of the Chinese state and its ability to mobilize important human and material resources for monumental projects largely precede imperial unification (221 BC). A period traditionally considered as the founding moment of this power that the country later became.
Another dimension should not be overlooked in parallel with this discovery: that of ideology. In the Chinese collective imagination as in national historiography, the great wall symbolizes the unity and permanence of Chinese civilization in the face of external threats. His traditional attribution to the Emperor Qin Shi Huang participated in a story of the origins centered on imperial unification. A beginning of construction prior to this period So considerably complicated this national story. It will certainly be very interesting to see how this new historical element will be integrated into Chinese culture in the coming years to come … to another discovery who will still turn everything upside down ?
- Remains exhumed in the Shandong show that the Great Wall already existed under the Zhou dynasty, three centuries before what we thought.
- The analysis of structures and construction techniques have revealed advanced military engineering long before imperial unification.
- This discovery upsets Chinese historiography, calling into question the exclusive role of Qin Shi Huang in the construction of the wall.
