The Great Wall of China needs little introduction. It is actually a series of walls, together measuring more than five thousand miles in length, built at different times by different Chinese emperors, beginning at approximately 700 BC and continuing intermittently to approximately the year 1600 AD. The Great Wall was constructed for the purpose of repelling the Mongols and other warlike tribes who lived in the mountains and deserts north of the Chinese heartland. It was built and rebuilt many times over the course of Chinese history, but it was decisively breached in 1644 by the armies of the
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