In the world of ice and fire, towering into the far north, the Great Wall of Despair, which blocks wild people and ghosts from the cold winter. According to the interview, its prototype is the famous "Hadrian's Wall", so what is the same as the Great Wall, what is more than ours?
01 Hadrian's Wall
In the setting of the original "A Song of Ice and Fire", the Great Wall of Despair is 300 miles long and reaches a staggering 700 feet in height. As for its construction process, it is also quite legendary, and it can be called a masterpiece of the combined efforts of all races at that time.
It was built under the leadership of Bran the Builder ( who also built Winterfell ) , the ancestor of the Wolf Family and known as the "City Builder" (winterfell also built it), and let the giants use stones and ice, let the children of the forest use magic, and build the Great Wall of Despair with human soldiers and craftsmen.
According to this setting in the play, the height of 700 feet and 210 meters is obviously beyond the reach of all the real city walls. However, when the author admits that his inspiration came from Hadrian's Wall, which is only 10 feet and 3 meters high, it is still a bit of a stoicism.
Despite such a large difference in size, its role is the same, and the Great Wall, which stretches across the border between Britain and Germany, also bears witness to the history of human collision. However, what the Romans wanted to defend was the continuous invasion of the Scots from the north.
Like the Great Wall of China, Hadrian's Wall also has a complete system of defense facilities. First of all, a V-shaped trench was dug in the north, ranging in width from 8-12 meters and a depth of about 3 meters, so that the walls and trenches, one high and one low, complemented each other and formed the first line of defense of Hadrian's Wall.
In addition, the Great Wall needs a lot of guards, so there are a series of garrison fortresses including castles, forts, and corner towers. Every other Roman castle there was a mile fort, two corner towers between the two castles, and 16 large castles were distributed along the line, and the three cooperated with each other to form the mobile defense line of Hadrian's Wall.
As for whether it was useful after the construction of Hadrian's Wall? We might as well discuss it in conjunction with the Great Wall of China's Qin and Han dynasties.
02The Great Wall of Qin and Han
Regarding the role of the Great Wall, it has been classically discussed in the "Zizhi Tongjian", which is summarized as five functions.
First of all, Hadrian's Wall, the original purpose may be "to separate the Romans from the barbarians", as the people say, the Romans regarded the LowLand peoples as barbarians, believing that they were not civilized and difficult to contact.
Similarly, the direct purpose of the Great Wall at the time of the Qin and Han Dynasties was to block the Xiongnu. The xiongnu were "against heaven, incest, and tyrannical and abusive", from the point of view of purpose, the two are extremely similar.
Interestingly, Bryz David, author of Hadrian's Wall, pointed out that Hadrian's Wall was built to control the flow of people rather than to completely block it. That is, merchants, shepherds, and locals north of the Great Wall had to be allowed to enter the north through the city gates, although this required the surrender of certain customs duties and the observance of the relevant order.
China's Qin and Han Great Wall also has the same magic, the main purpose of the Great Wall is still economic blockade, now along the Great Wall line many towns called "mouth", are based on border trade and gradually developed, the Central Plains are rich, but once the northern peoples encounter bad weather, and then want to invade the material population to the south, they are locked by the Great Wall throat.
In the west, the Western Roman Empire completed the conquest of Europe, making the Mediterranean Sea its own inland sea; in the east, the Qin and Han dynasties ended the long period of division and war and established a unified empire. Their common north is relatively backward nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples. The difference in the natural geographical conditions of living space not only delineates the two types of production methods and cultural forms, but also brings about an imbalance in the timing of social development.
On the one hand, the control of the strings and horses is erratic, using nomadic plunder as a means of survival, and has a great dependence on the agricultural economy in the supply of cloth and millet; on the other hand, the other side is living in the sunrise and resting day by day, obsessing over the land and fixed farms, hoping for a good harvest and peace. This inevitably creates friction and collisions.
Perhaps it is also as presented in "Game of Thrones": only when everyone belongs to the camp of the living, the North and the wildlings who need to be guarded against in the past can become partners to fight side by side and resist the invasion of the ghosts.
"Brothers are on the wall, the royal is insulted", everyone is struggling hard, just to get a simple survival resource.