Who Built the Great Wall?

GitBook allows you to organize your book into chapters, each chapter is stored in a separate file like this one.

In total, the Great Wall of China took more than 2,000 years to build - between 770 BC and 1633 AD. However, its construction was completed in stages - spanning over several dynasties and leaderships. The most recent portion was built during The Ming Dynasty.

In 1368, Hero General Qi Jiguang ordered for the Great Wall to be rebuilt around the country's capital of Beijing. The project was finally completed in 1644.Though the beginning of the Great Wall of China can be traced to the third century B.C., many of the fortifications included in the wall date from hundreds of years earlier, when China was divided into a number of individual kingdoms during the Warring States Period.

The construction of the entire wall didn’t occur in a winkling of an eye. However, it was built in different areas by different states or dynasties to protect different territorial borders.

The Qin dynasty is believed to have laid the grounds for the construction of the Great Wall however, various school of thoughts believe he wasn’t the first. Around 220 B.C., Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a unified China, ordered that earlier fortifications between states be removed and a number of existing walls along the northern border be joined into a single system that would extend for more than 10,000 li (a li is about one-third of a mile) and protect China against attacks from the north.

It's often said that the First Emperor of Qin built the Great Wall. Actually he was not the first to build it. See below: