{"id":672178,"date":"2025-05-29T06:19:02","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T03:19:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/the-other-great-wall-exploring-asias-medieval-wall-system\/"},"modified":"2025-05-29T06:19:02","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T03:19:02","slug":"the-other-great-wall-exploring-asias-medieval-wall-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/the-other-great-wall-exploring-asias-medieval-wall-system\/","title":{"rendered":"The other great wall? Exploring Asia’s Medieval Wall System"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n Aerial photograph of the square garrison and archaeologists excavating there. Credit: Tal Rogovski
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Archaeologists have excavated a medieval frontier garrison in Mongolia, suggesting some monumental walls on the Eurasian steppe were not built to defend against enemy attack, but rather to control the movement of people and display dynastic power.<\/p>\n

The Great Wall of China may be the best-known, but it is far from the only system of walls constructed across northern East Asia. The diverse groups on this frontier built many physical barriers to serve as functional and symbolic borders for their empires.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the least-known of these is the Medieval Wall System (MWS), a network of walls, trenches and enclosures stretching app<\/a>roximately 4,000 kilometers across parts of China, Mongolia and Russia. It was built in the 10th to 12th centuries AD by several dynasties, most notably the Jin dynasty, which was founded by Jurchen people from Siberia and northeast China.<\/p>\n

To shed light on the poorly understood MWS, researchers from Israeli, Mongolian and U.S. institutions surveyed its 405-kilometer-long Mongolian section, known as the Mongolian Arc, and excavated at one of its enclosures. Their findings are published in Antiquity<\/i>.<\/p>\n