The ancient construction still has its secrets.

The oldest known part of the Great Wall of China was recently
excavated, dating 300 years earlier than the previous record-holding
section.
This new find is part of the larger oldest part of the Great Wall—known
as the Great Wall of Qi, it’s named for the Qi state that rose to power before China became a unified nation.
Older, narrower parts of this ancient fortification are made of packed
earth and stone, while the newer, wider parts were made of yellow earth strengthened by metal rammers.
Winding 21,196 kilometers (12,171 miles) from the east to the midwest
of northern China, the Great Wall of China has remained standing for
thousands of years, through the bloodshed and devastation of war after
war. Now, a newly excavated part of the fortification meant to fend off
the Huns (and later Mongols) pushes the beginnings of the construction
of the Great Wall 300 years earlier than previously believed.

An excavation led by archaeologist Zhang Su of the Shandong Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology has unearthed the most
ancient section of the Great Wall of Qi, which is 641 km (almost 400
mi) long and already the oldest known part of the wall. It took Zhang
and his team from May to December of 2024 to carry out an excavation
that spanned about 11,840 square feet. This section of the Qi Wall has
been previously surveyed and investigated, but never actually excavated
before.

The Great Wall of China, a UNESCO World Heritage site, was constructed
using different methods during different time periods, and this
excavation showed the evidence. Techniques such as carbon-14 dating and optically stimulated luminescence (which reveals when grains of soil
were deposited and blocked from exposure to light or heat) showed that
the earliest parts of the Qi Wall were built as far back as the Spring
and Autumn period of the Zhou Dynasty (1046 B.C. - 256 B.C.) and
continued to rise during the overlapping Warring States Period (475
B.C. - 221B.C.).

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a63975972/oldest-section-great-wall-of-china/

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Eduardo.M - Brasil
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