al and cultural unity which is China has remained unbroken.” (Clark, 64) He brought together a society through force, forcefully bringing in all outside nobles into one central civilization and constraining them into a city surrounded by walls. Economically, the Wall has been an item of great success. It has successfully drawn trade routes and even the famous Silk Roads. There wasn’t a choice for outsiders to bring anything into the country without going through the Great Wall and its keepers.Militaristically the wall is a masterpiece, pure genius. Forty Five Hundred miles long, beacon towers every fifteen to thirty miles, the use of smoke signals, and an estimated force of one million men! There is nothing that the wall couldn’t stop. “…Greatest defense structure ever designed and constructed by mankind…” (www.discovery.com) There is no way to describe it better. The halt and expulsion of the Xiongnu (Crushed during the Han dynasty), a force to the north proves this. The wall represents all aspects of the anthropological culture. The Wall shows what I feel is the greatest aspect of anthropology; this is that everything can be linked together in one way or another.With the investigation of the Great Wall of China and its culture context it has lead me to a better understanding of the nature of culture and how culture works. It has done this through a few different ways. First of all, it has lead me to realize that culture is not only about a few certain items that are physically visible or metaphorically understandable. I now see that you cannot understand something completely without a complete investigation of the subject; whether it be a person, a society, or a physical item. Seeing the truth behind something is an undertaking that requires thought and a willingness to be open to anything and everything. We are all the same. I believe this, “We all come from the same pla...
