PolledHistory: Weekly, Non-Vote: History of Walls

(idea and source: geohistory)

Hello!

Walls has always been a staple defensive structure in history. They have been around in some form or another for a long time. Its use and strength has changed a lot throughout the course of time. 

Already in the beginnings of settled civilization and when the first true permenant settlements were established, protective walls made of sun-dried mudbrick were built both around their townships and also religious/ritual sites. These more civilized people built longer fortifications, such as the one built by Shulgi of Ur to fend off the Amorites off the Sumerian land. Said fortifications remain short.Walls are also erected for other uses, such as friendlier borders.

City walls in the Middle East are particularly impressive. Later on, Babylon had a wall of 97 meters high, while Uruk had a wall of about 55 meters high. Practically everywhere in the Near East had some form of defensive wall. 

By 221 BC, the famous Qin Shi Huang of the Qin dynasty ordered the construction of a lengthy wall on the northern front of his empire to block the Mongol and Turkic nomads. This wall, the Great Wall, still stands today as a famous attraction. Said wall was, however, built through slavery. The dynasties that replaced the Qin (the Qin was short lasting) will extend the wall. Following extension after extension, the Great Wall becomes the longest wall on earth.

In Europe, the power shifted, to Persia, then to the Greek sucessors of Alexander, then to eventually Rome, which needed to defend its territories, especially to the north, which was threatened by Germanic nomads and other nomads. They too have walls, called "Limes", in the northern Rhine and Danube frontiers and also in North Africa. These Limes have watchtowers and other adapting features. One of the most famous of  these Roman limes is Hadrian's Wall, made of stone and has a small moat-like pit. The Roman limes are very long in total, clocking in at  over 5,000 kilometers.

The Medieval era Europe though known for castles and walls itself are basically just regular walls but larger and taller. The Constantinople Theodosian walls is an example of a strong medieval wall, with a moat and three layers of wall. However, the introduction of gunpowder begins to weaken the strength of walls. Still, gunpowder is not always enough to defeat a walled city, as the Siege of Vienna, where the Ottomans used strong cannons, was a failure.

In the modern era "walls" are no longer effective for city defence against militaries because of aviation, explosives, etc. Still, some kind of wall-like defensive structure exists. The Maginot Line, though not a wall, was a French defensive group of structures such as forts, artillery, and bunkers. This made the German offensive in World War 1 have to take a different route. The same kind of fortification series were built by the Fascist Germans in World War 2 in fear of a landing. These fortifications consisted of bunkers and obstacles. D-Day, however, did not fail even when these defenses were built.

Other modern walls include the dangerous DMZ in the Korean border, which is still there and  the Berlin Wall in Berlin, which was taken down. One of the recent more controversial ones is the US Mexico border Wall intended to block illegal immigrants coming from Mexico. Modern walls or defenses often try to block less armed people instead of militaries.