How was the Great Wall built?

Use the terrain and use local materials. Where there are mountains, try to make use of steep and dangerous ridges. The outside is steep and straight, and the inside is gentle. Stones were taken from the mountains and cut into neat strips of stones, filled with soil and lime, which were very solid.

Loess areas are mainly built with rammed earth. In desert areas, reeds and red willow branches are used to pave sand and small stones in layers. For example, the Great Wall of Han Dynasty in the Yumenguan area is like this. On the preserved city wall, the sand and stones have been compacted and are not easy to damage. Some sand and stones are bonded with reed branches. Pretty solid.

The stairs of the watchtower are made of dozens of layers of fiber glue. The Great Wall of the Ming Dynasty was built with bricks and stones in important sections, and kilns were set up on site to burn bricks and tiles, and quarry stones to burn lime.

The labor force for building the Great Wall was mainly the garrison troops, followed by the civilian men who were forcibly recruited, and the third was the prisoners sent to the army. When the Great Wall was built, there were no construction and transportation machinery, so it was mainly carried by humans. The transportation method is mainly to pass in long queues, and simple tools such as hand carts, rolling logs, crowbars, and winches are also used. Although animal power was sometimes used, much of the work was done manually. It is no exaggeration to say that the Great Wall embodies the wisdom, blood and tears of the Chinese nation for thousands of years.