"Lost" Great Wall of China Segment Found?

Google Earth, carbon dating suggest wall network even bigger than thought.

A forgotten section of the Great Wall of China has been discovered deep in the Gobi Desert—and outside of China—researchers say.

With the help of Google Earth, an international expedition documented the ancient wall for roughly 100 kilometers (62 miles) in a restricted border zone in southern Mongolia in August 2011.

The defensive barrier formed part of the Great Wall system built by successive Chinese dynasties to repel Mongol invaders from the north, according to findings published in the March issue of the Chinese edition of National Geographic magazine. (The National Geographic Society is responsible for both the magazine and National Geographic News.)

Preserved to a height of 9 feet (2.75 meters) in places, the desert discovery belongs to a sequence of remnant walls in Mongolia collectively known as the Wall of Genghis Khan, said expedition leader and Great Wall researcher William Lindesay.

Named after the founder of the Mongol Empire, the Wall of Genghis Khan usually survives only as "a faint trace," Lindesay said in an email.

But "we found a 'real wall', standing high and existing as a dominant landscape feature," he said.

What's more, it wasn't the work of Genghis Khan or his heirs but actually a long-lost segment of the Great Wall of China network, the team's findings suggest.

First to Investigate New Great Wall?

Close to China in the border region of Ömnögovi Province, the ancient structure hadn't been scientifically explored or studied before, said Lindesay, director of the International Friends of the Great Wall conservation group, based in Beijing, China.

"We're the first to investigate the ruins," he said.

"According to the army officers who minded us, we were the first outsiders to be allowed into the area," Lindesay added. "We assumed various local Mongolians had been to the area, but had not considered the structure of much interest."

At times seeking out topographic clues seen in Google Earth—the wall is visible on satellite images—the team located two well preserved but contrasting stretches of wall.

One section had been made mainly with wet mud and a woody desert shrub called saxaul, the other from blocks of black volcanic rock.

Along its vast length, Lindesay suspects, the wall originally stood at least 2 meters (6.5 feet) taller than it does today.

"What we found was just the last remaining piece of a 'fossil'—the skull or the large thighbone, with the rest missing," he said.

"One can expect the wall was both much higher and continuous for vast distances."

That dark basaltic rock seems to have been an obvious choice for the second stretch, which crosses the rugged remains of extinct volcanoes.

The clean, straight edges to the blocks indicate that the stone was quarried, which would have required a large, organized workforce and an efficient transport system, the team said.

Rewriting History

Ancient Mongolian texts suggest that the so-called Wall of Genghis Khan was built as an animal fence by Khan's son Ögedei to keep wild gazelle on his land.

But the recently explored Gobi Desert wall segment isn't in a region where large herds of gazelle occur.

"There would be no reason to build an animal wall in the Gobi," said anthropologist and Mongolia historian Jack Weatherford, formerly of Macalester College, Minnesota.

Chinese researchers, perhaps not surprisingly, have speculated that China's Han dynasty had erected these little-studied stretches in about 115 B.C.

But radiocarbon dating of partly exposed wood and rope remains extracted from the wall indicates that the saxaul-segment construction went on for more than a hundred years—and occurred about a thousand years later than thought, from A.D. 1040 to 1160.

Those dates hint that the Western Xia dynasty built the walls—or at least rebuilt old Han walls on the sites.

Holding Back the Mongol Tide

This northwestern Chinese dynasty isn't known to have contributed to the Great Wall system, but in at least one aspect, a Western Xia origin makes sense.

During the Western Xia period, Mongol tribes were rising in strength and making forays south, Lindesay noted.

"If one imagines the wall as a platform, with some kind of battlement—perhaps of wooden stakes, functioning as a shield to those manning its top—then it would have been an effective defense installation," he said.

But, mysteriously, the expedition team found no pottery, no trash, no coins, no weapons—nothing to prove the wall was ever actually manned. Nor did they find any of the watchtowers that mark surviving sections of the Great Wall within China.

"The wall system was incomplete," Lindesay said. "It not only lacked the signaling capability [to make smoke signals]—it didn't appear to be capable of accommodating troops."

Unfinished Business

"I believe the wall here is only half built and that there was, for some reason, a rethink on locating the wall here," Lindesay said.

It isn't difficult to imagine how the purported Great Wall segment's harsh desert location might have led to the remote frontier defense being abandoned, he added.

Weatherford, the Minnesota-based anthropologist, agrees with Lindesay's conclusion that the newfound remains were Chinese constructions.

There's a good reason, Weatherford added, that the stretch nevertheless carries Genghis Khan's name.

Mongolians, he said, are sensitive to the idea of "Chinese structures built on their land, since it carries the possible claim that the land was once Chinese.

"By calling it the Genghis Khan Wall, the name makes the place Mongolian and rejects foreign influence," Weatherford said.

He also describes the expedition new findings as "very important, because to my knowledge this wall has not been studied."

"I would risk saying that it is the largest human-made structure or artifact in all of Mongolia," he added. "It is amazing to me that it is not already much better analyzed."

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References:

Owen, James. 2012. ""Lost" Great Wall of China Segment Found?". National Geographic News. Posted: March 19, 2012. Available online: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/03/120319-great-wall-of-china-mongolia-science-lindesay/

Victim of the Kamikaze

The wreck of a ship, believed to be from the ill-fated fleet that attempted to invade Japan in 1281 has been found in Imari Bay off Matsuura.

Discovered near Takashima island, the ship is believed to have gone down during the Battle of Koan in 1281 when Kublai Khan sent 140,000 troops in over 4000 ships to subjugate Japan. According to Prof. Yoshifumi Ikeda, an archaeologist with University of the Ryukus, Okinawa, this will be the first time a nearly intact ship’s hull has been excavated from this infamous period of Mongol invasions.

Fragments of Yuan dynasty (1279-1368 AD) ships, anchor stones, cannonballs and many other artefacts had been found around the island, but this is a unique find.

A substantial wreck

Part of the ship’s hull was located last year at a depth of one metre below the seabed itself, 25 metres underwater, using the latest ultra-sound equipment.

According to sources from the University, the keel of the vessel is around 15 metres long, and substantial sections of planking – up to 5 metres in length – on either side of the keel are still intact. The archaeologists think the ship may have been more than 20 metres long when afloat.

In the short term, the team will only undertake conservation measures to protect the wreck until a strategy can be considered for its future.

The site was surrounded by Chinese pottery and other items identified as coming from the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279). It is the date of these artefacts, that leads Ikeda’s team to consider the ship as a Mongolian vessel which sank during the second Mongolian invasion of 1281.

The Mongol invasions and the Kamikaze

Fukuoka’s Hakata bay is Japan’s gateway to Korea and China. In 1268 the ruler Kublai Khan of the Mongol Empire turned his attention to Japan. At first he sent an envoy to Japan to force the Shogunate to acknowledge the Khan’s suzerainty but the Kamakura Shogunate refused. Mongolia sent more envoys, each time urging the Shogunate to accept their proposal, but it was always refused.

In 1274 Kublai Khan mounted the first invasion of the northern part of Kyushu with a fleet of 900 ships and 33,000 troops, which included troops from Goryeo (the present day Korean peninsula). This first invasion was compromised by a combination of incompetence and storms

After this invasion, the Japanese samurai built a stone barrier 20 kilometres long bordering the coast of Hakata Bay in what is now Fukuoka city. The wall, between 2-3 metres in height and 3 metres wide was constructed between 1276 and 1277.

Kublai Khan sent another envoy to Japan in 1279, but this time Hojo Tokimune of the Hojo clan (1251-1284) not only declined the offer but beheaded the five Mongolian emissaries after summoning them to Kamakura. Angered and frustrated, Kublai Khan made preparations for another invasion in 1281 reinforcing the numbers of troops to 140,000 soldiers and 4,000 ships. The Japanese samurai numbering around 40,000 were no match for the Mongolians and the invasion force made it as far as Dazaifu, 15 kilometres south of the city of Fukuoka. By sheer luck the Japanese were aided by another typhoon which struck a crushing blow and the invasion was thwarted.

It was this typhoon that was originally called the Kamikaze or Divine Wind.
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References:

Past Horizons. 2011. "Victim of the Kamikaze". Past Horizons. Posted: October 26, 2011. Available online: http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/10/2011/victim-of-the-kamikaze

Ship from failed Mongol invasion found off Japan

The wreck of a ship thought to have taken part in a failed Mongol invasion of Japan has been found off the Japanese coast.

A team of researchers uncovered a 12-metre (36ft) section of keel buried in deep sand off Nagasaki prefecture.

They said it was the first time such a large piece of hull had been recovered from the Mongol invasion fleets.

The 13th Century attacks on Japan were a rare setback for the Mongols at the height of their powers.

Experts expressed surprise that the wreck was so well preserved after so many centuries on the seabed.

The researchers from the Okinawa-based University of the Ryukyus used ultrasonic equipment to detect the remains of the ship.

The wood on the hull was painted whitish grey and held together by nails. Bricks, weapons and other instruments were found on board.

The discovery is expected to shed light on the shipbuilding skills of the time and give clues about the nature of the Mongol defeat.
'Divine wind'

The Japanese have always attributed their victory to storms that wrecked the Mongol fleets during both attempted invasions in 1274 and 1281.

They concluded that Japan was protected from invasion by a divine wind, or Kamikaze, which was invoked in World War II to inspire pilots to launch suicide attacks on allied ships.

As Central Asian nomads, the Mongols had little experience of the sea and used subjugated Chinese and Koreans to build their fleets.

The structure of the ship is said to resemble Chinese ships of the era.

The Mongols that did manage to land are reputed to have had some success against the Japanese, who struggled to match their skilled use of mounted archers.

But on both occasions, the Mongols and the Chinese and Korean troops under their command, headed back out to sea to try to ride out approaching typhoons - and that proved to be their downfall.
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References:

BBC News. 2011. "Ship from failed Mongol invasion found off Japan". BBC News. Posted: October 25, 2011. Available online: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-15452071