| OCR Text |
Show Keeping Up WitjvScience 'vN VV? 1! !y Sc fence Sen vec 3c: X 1 China's Croat Vi'all Markoil North Lino of Spiralling Empire r iMii.v c. tvu is Now York. Why ancient China built hot' Groat Wall-that Wall-that twisting dragon of a wall, 1.500 miles across the north is a problem for geographers. geog-raphers. They see more in China's stony guardian than a military defense. As f war-time barrier the wall was tneiTeetive. though thousands of Chinese Chi-nese were worked to death to build it. One jester summed up the re-su-t: The Chinese never got over it; -iut th.e Tartars did. Some Chinese have accounted for their Great Wall as a powerful stone dragon built to keep evil spirits out. But geographers, probing into ancient an-cient China's political and social problems, are beginning to look upon Die Great Wall as a geographic geograph-ic atTair. In a report to the Geographical Review, Owen Lattiniore. geographer, geogra-pher, points out that the Chinese were great wall builders long be-tore be-tore the day of the Great Wall. In feudal days, when China was still made of separate states. Fifth to Third centuries B. C. these states built walls against one another as well as against the northern barbarians. barbari-ans. Vague Northern Boundary. So, when Emperor Huang Ti formed the states into an empire, the idea of rigid boundaries was familiar, and all China was driven to concentrate on marking the empire's em-pire's northern line. This was done, it appears, to keep undesirables out and to keep desirables de-sirables in. The wall marked plainly plain-ly the northern limit beyond which the empire did not wish to spread. This separating sheep from goats was highly desirable for civilized China. Tribes in Manchuria, Mongolia Mon-golia and Central Asia were uncouth, un-couth, and their life in forest, desert, des-ert, or plain was far different from China's intensive farming economy. But the Great Wall. Mr. Lat'.i-more Lat'.i-more explains, was never more than a vague boundary. There was pressure pres-sure and pull in a wide border region. re-gion. Barbarians would become partly Chinese, and frontier Chinese would drift into ar.ti-Chir.ese traits. The balance of power in many of China's struggles has rested with betwix's - and - betweer.s. in zones spreading out from the Great Wall. |
