Just as your parents today might put a fence around your property to keep out unwanted guests or animals, Emperor Shih Huang Ti built a wall to keep out China’s enemies in 221 B.C.
But his wall, the longest in the world, was 1500 miles long, or about the distance from New York City to Key West, at the southern tip of Florida.
The Great Wall of China is 25 feet high and 25 feet thick at its base, tapering to a thickness of 15 feet at the top. The wall, which may have taken 300,000 men ten years to build, was constructed completely by hand.
Workers used earth, brick, and stone, and even paved a roadway at the top. The wall has 30- to 40-foot-high watchtowers every few hundred yards, as it goes over mountains, through valleys, and across deserts.
The Great Wall of China is the only man-made structure that astronauts have seen with the naked eye from space!
