Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
magnificent structure that it is the only man-made object on the earth
that can be seen from orbit or, by some accounts, the moon.
All of this makes tantalizing copy for travel brochures and grist
for the publishing mills that endlessly crank out glossy, coffee-table
picture topics about China. There is, however, one major problem with
this standard and sensationalized description of the Great Wall: it is
wrong in its entirety. Historian Arthur Waldron has exploded hoary
legends and proven conclusively that much of what we once thought
we knew about the Great Wall is pure myth. First of all, the Great Wall
of China is not ancient but was built during the Ming dynasty (A.D.
1368-1644). Many traditionally minded historians of China have long
maintained that although the Great Wall as it stands today was last
renovated during the Ming, the site of the wall itself goes all the way
back to Qin Shihuang's day. Waldron, however, has shown that there
is only the flimsiest of evidence to support this notion. Earlier Chinese
dynasties, including the Zhou and the Qin, did in fact build walls, but
the locations of these walls were scattered throughout many areas of
northern China and never constituted the one continuous and fixed
wall that Chinese and foreigners recognized as the Great Wall. He
points out that Marco Polo, whose travels during the thirteenth cen-
tury A.D. often took him through areas where the Great Wall suppos-
edly existed, never even mentioned it. Waldron maintains that the
Great Wall was built for the first time during the Ming and did not
exist in any form before that dynasty. Of course, this is not to say that
the Great Wall is not magnificent. It is, as anyone who has traveled to
it and stared along its length knows firsthand. All Waldron maintains
is that the wall is not ancient. Qin Shihuang had nothing to do with
its construction.
Another myth concerns the Great Wall's supposed visibility from
outer space, either in orbit or on the moon; however, no astronaut
has ever claimed to see the Great Wall, either from orbit or from the
moon. Waldron verified this by reviewing all NASA voice transcripts
for the Apollo and space shuttle flights. (The wall is visible with satel-
lite magnification and imagery, of course, but it is completely invisible
to the naked eye.) One of Waldron's earlier articles on the Great Wall
even quotes a NASA scientist to the effect that seeing the Great Wall
from the moon with the naked eye would be like seeing a Popsicle
stick with the naked eye from a height of about 350 kilometers
(approximately 217 miles)! He has established that the myth of the
wall's visibility from the moon predates manned space flight.
Included in his topic is a Ripley's Believe It or Not cartoon from the
1930s that advances just such a claim.
