Walls

You're gonna have, you know, a deeper context regarding the nature of walls and what a wall is, uh, the next time you were subjected to the news. Now, I noticed we've been on a tear recently of extremely ancient inventions. I think we did roads and then the wheel, and now we're on walls. It's almost like we're just going further and further back in time. And so I'm sure we'll get back to some some more recent or high tech gadgets soon, but definite biographies involved to the thing

about the more modern inventions. But I do really like doing this kind of thing we're doing by like looking at the most basic technologies that exist like the wheel and the wall, because there's so many interesting ways to look at their you know, they're they're multi millennial legacy and impact on human culture and history. Now, i'd say, in addressing the wall, we are going to be talking a little bit about a few interesting tidbits of of

physical construction. But this isn't gonna be so much an episode about like wall materials and all that. You obviously that is a very rich subject on its own, but I think we're gonna be thinking more about the role that walls play in geopolitical history. Yeah, yeah, because certainly the history of walls is kind of the history of

construction and engineering in a broader sense. And we have to be clear here too about how we're we're looking at walls, because there's there's a very good chance that if you're listening to the show right now, you are either con hanged within walls or perhaps adjacent to a wall. Even if you're just driving down the road. Um, you know, you you can probably see some walls right now. Maybe you're forming part of a human wall, maybe you're walking

on top of a mile high wall. Yeah, all these are possible, and any of us can build a crude wall out of sticks or rocks, etcetera, with only the most basic engineering skills. And in a basic sense, I mean, this is something that exists in nature. I mean, why do we have the idea that certain types of animals and maybe some of our ancestors sought out caves for shelter.

It's because they've got walls and a roof, right, These like they limit the the they limit your exposure to the weather through a roof especially, but they also limit the number of access points through which other animals, say, could reach you exactly. So we're largely going to talk about walls as barriers around cities and then more to the point, as freestanding divisions. And in this we really need to think of them. I think I I believe

a sort of of geoengineering project. Uh. You know, it's easier to see this in walls that are created using elements from the natural surroundings. Say a wooden fence or a beautiful moss covered stone wall in Ireland. You know, something that would you really looks good on a calendar, But it's less obvious when you behold something like say the Great Wall of China or the Peace Lines or Peace Walls of Ireland or the Berlin Wall something of this nature. But a wall essentially seeks to do what

the environment does naturally. It's a sheer, vertical rise in elevation manufactured to impose a particular cultural, political, or personal domain. You know. Well, you can just imagine somebody perhaps you know, a far side cartoon caveman, thinking, you know, I wish my property were on top of a mountain to keep my enemies away. Well, boom, here's how a wall works. Now you have a mountain or something that functions like a mountain, creating a vertical obstacle between your and somebody

else's stuff. But there are multiple different ways to think about the idea of a wall as protection, and this will come out when we talk about the more macroscopic wall projects throughout history as we go on. Because there's one type of being protected in walls that's literally like I need a barrier to like keep people from coming in and stealing all my things, or to keep you, I don't know, a lion from coming and grabbing me

while I'm asleep. But on the other hand, you've also got the type of protection that is the psychological sense of privacy, right that a wall is a barrier that people can't see through that allows you to feel like you are not constantly being say, observed by your neighbors. Yeah, like like a privacy fence in one's backyard. We tend not to think of them as walls of wood. I will erect walls of wood between me and my so

called neighbors. No, it's privacy fence, you know, just in case you don't want to, you know, walk around shirtless in your backyard, which you should. It's your backyard. Do what you want or you don't want people steal in your genius invention that you're building back there exactly so, its stated earlier prehistoric times, before walls, they required humans to depend on naturally occurring barriers. You know. Uh, where can one position themselves so that they're best protected from

the elements, predators, enemies, etcetera. And these could these could be any number of things, right in addition to vertical changes in elevation, Uh that could be uh, rivers, pond streams, swampy areas, etcetera. And of course early humans and Neanderthals were nomadic. Uh. There was nothing to be gained in the creation of heavy duty barriers because you were always or at least cyclically on the move. You had no cities, You had no domesticated herds or crop fields that needed

to be cut off from other aspects of the natural world. Um, there were also precious few of you to begin with. But of course all that changed. Cities gave rise to walls, and city states and empires gave rise to even more. Wall is a division between the ever expanding, ever advancing tribes of humanity. Right, you're correct to point out that

the wall revolution. I mean, we we don't know when the first wall was created, but it would have to be linked to the idea I would think of of a sedentary lifestyle, like as people stop moving around and settle in places, to live in one place and stay there. And we do, in fact see some of the earliest archaeological evidence of walls in the most ancient of the sort of city states of the ancient Near East, for example, like there are ten thousand year old walls that have

been discovered in the city of Jericho. Now, when it comes to what we were talking about, the more sort of freestanding barrier walls that might mark the border of a territory or uh, you know, or something more like the Great Wall of China, which will discuss it more length as we go on. Among the world's earliest known defensive barrier walls, or the walls of ancient Mesopotamia specifically, uh some walls constructed in the twenty one century BC

by the sumer Arian rulers Shulgi and shu Sin. And these were constructed in the region that is modern day Iraq in order to defend the ancient civilization of Summer against attacks of nomadic people's known as the Amorites. And so this wall was also known as the Wall of the Land or the Amorite Wall. We think that it probably reached more than a hundred miles in length, stretching between the twin rivers bound that bound Mesopotamia as the

Tigress and the Euphrates. And while this wall was probably meant to protect Sumerian cities, it was not, as we said, a city wall. It's kind of a border wall. I found one piece of ancient Sumerian poetry in fact, that seems to be referring to the wall, or at least to a fictional analog of it, and it's translated and explained in a book called Reading Sumerian Poetry by the

scholar Jeremy Black. And in this ancient Sumerian poem, you've got the legendary Sumerian king in Merkar, and he's out with his army at war, laying siege to a foreign city, and he gets all demoralized, feeling he's not having a good time, and he arranges to send a message back to the mighty goddess in Ana, one of our favorites

from stuff to blow your mind. She you know, she shrieks power through the rebel lands, and he's out at war while Innana is residing back in her temple in the city of Unugs, a Sumerian city also known as Uruk, and so in Makar's message implies that you know, once within on his help, his reign had been really great. It was great and glorious, and he built powerful, impressive structures.

But now things have gone bad, and he feels abandoned by the goddess and Anna while she sits at home refusing to come to his aid to help him accomplish glorious things again. And this is Black's translation of this passage from the poem The Wall of Unug extended out over the desert like a bird net. But here and now, my attractiveness to her has ended. My army hangs on me as a cow hangs on its calf, like a

son who hating his mother, leaves his city. My princely sister Holy Anna has run away from me to brick built Coolaba. So that first line there, that line the wall of Unug extended out over the desert like a bird net. I love that image, and Black writes that this metaphor actually does refer to a real technology, quote, a long net of a type used for snaring low flying birds, extending out across the open country. Though I do find it interesting that here the metaphor for the

wall is an animal trap, not a defensive structure. Yeah, something to snare, and uh, I guess it makes it feels maybe metaphorically more imposing, like this is a thing in which upon which you die, as opposed to this is a thing that stands between the two of us. Yeah. Though it's funny because the wall, as invoked in the poem is not so much invoked as a literal defensive measure that is effective at its purpose. Instead, it's invoked as an emblem of the city of Unug's former power

and prosperity. This is a fictional account being told in this poem. Uh the historical context when the poem was being read probably meant to call to mind more like the more recent and real construction of that defensive wall I mentioned earlier, the walls built by the king's Shulgi and shu Sin, known as we mentioned earlier, as the Wall of the land, and also as the keeper at bay of the nomads. That's a good title, nice and formal, and that that's that's kind of a recurring theme in

these older walls. It's a way of keeping out the nomadic people's. But no matter how much the author of this poem thought of this wall as this great building accomplishment, you know that symbolizes the glory and splendor of Invercar's former rule, Ultimately the real wall failed to protect Summer and the Sumerian civilization. It fell to attacks from multiple enemies, the Amorrits and the Elamites. The wall didn't work all right.

On that note, let's take a quick break, and when we come back, we're gonna talk about the Great Wall of China. Okay, we're back now on the subject of city walls, kind of the the initial precursor to these dominion walls. Um To really drive home the importance of

walls here, the interconnectedness between walls and cities. Uh consider that the Mandarin Chinese word for wall, ching is also the word for city, so chang shih more specifically means town, and the Great Wall of China, which we're about to get into here is uh chiang Ching. And they the Chinese also had a god of walls and moats. Let's not forget that moats are very much in the same geoengineering vein here right along with things like trenches and ditches.

If a wall is a fake mountain, the moat is a fake river. Exactly to make a kind of observation. Sorry, So the name of this god was shing Wong, and it's it's a bit complex, but the god, this city god, is sort of a representative spirit and protective deity that

looks after the city. But it also encompasses deified to see city leaders that protect the city via the spirit realm, and they also represent the residents of the city and dealings with the King of the dead, so of the King of the dead comes for residents of the city. He's like the immediate contact that sort of thing. Is there a reason for that? You know why him? Well, it gets kind of it's kind of a complicated history there,

because with several phases to it. On one hand, there's this idea of like veneration of an individual that was important to the people UH during their life, and then it makes sense that their their spirit would sort of hang around and be important after death, part of the whole veneration of ancestors. But then also this ends up being emphasized at different points by by by China, by Chinese rule as well. Now along these lines, in Chinese traditions,

there's more to a wall than mere physical construction. A wall is also kind of a spell that keeps out evil forces in addition to say, you know, invaders, physical invaders, nomads, northern barbarians. So yeah, let's talk a little bit about the Great Wall. So the original wall was built more than two thousand years ago, UH during the the Chin dynasty UH led by Emperor Chin Xi Wong, who stuffed

all your mind. Listeners may remember, we've we devoted an entire episode UH to to his life and his tomb, his undisturbed tomb, which has been legendarily appointed with many fine booby traps which we we very much hope are real, but we don't know. Yeah, possibly rivers of lead, I believe, or of mercury. It was mercury, yes, So anyway, he was,

he was an imposing figure. He united the seven warring kingdoms, and uh, there were these separate walls built by independent kingdoms that he then had linked together to protect against those marauders, those northern barbarians. And the oldest parts of this wall system seemed to date back to the seventh century b C. Now, hundreds of thousands of workers uh spent ten years uh working on this. We're talking prisoners, political enemies, peasants, uh, and then various dynasties would go

on to work on it some more. But it wasn't until the rise of the Ming dynasty in thirteen sixty eight that the Great Wall of China as we know it today really was brought to full fruition. So how great is this wall? Well, it's reported length is widely disputed and ranges anywhere from fifteen hundred miles or two thousand, four hundred fourteen kilometers to four thousand, one hundred sixty three miles or sixty seven hundred kilometers. Uh. You know essentially the idea here as it can go from the

construction from the Gobi Desert to the Yellow Sea. But it came about in installments, right, Yeah, So it wasn't just one day a great import decided to build the wall. They were like, look, we have all these these existing walls, let's stitch these together. And also let's reinforce areas. So there were areas that they didn't know you only add length to it. They added double and triple walls in

some places to reinforce what was already there. Um and and that's why in some areas you have a wall that is thick enough to drive a car on top if if if you wanted to and had permission to do so. Obviously, how do you get permission for that, Well, there's a there's a whole system you have to go through. Joe, I bet they're stingy with those permissions. I imagine they are. Now. I think most people know this anti factoid at this point.

But as we've discussed on stuff to blow your mind before that that old trope that you can see the Great Wall of China from space. Not true. I'm not true. I mean it's still very impressive, don't be wrong, But but no, idea, it is not visible from space. There are plenty of things that humans have made that are visible from space, but the Great Wall of China is

not really one of them. Now, I was looking at one interesting study about ancient Chinese construction methods, specifically with with walls in ancient China, and this is that many of them were built with a powerful mortaring material that was made with the secret ingredient of sticky rice. Have you read about this? No, I'm not familiar with this one. So I first came across this because our friend and colleagues got Benjamin linked us to a piece on it.

But I was I was reading about this a little deeper, and so basically, here's the deal. So you've got mortar, right. Mortar it's the building material that you used to help bond stones or bricks or other hard elements together into a structure. And mortar goes way back. You use a paste like this, even it was used in the Pyramids. Uh. Now a common mortar used throughout history is lime or

slake clime. Uh. Then slake clime is limestone that has been heated to a high temperature and hydrated with water. But about fifteen hundred years ago, it seems that construction engineers in a China discovered a way to make this powerful and resilient composite inorganic organic mortar by mixing slaked lime with soup or porridge based on sticky rice, and together the slaked lime and the sticky rice soup make a mortar that is much stronger than other known technologies.

So there was a study about this in two thousand and ten by fu Weei, Yang, Bingjian Jong, and Chinglen Ma and it was called study of sticky rice lime mortar technology for the Restoration of Historical masonry construction in Accounts of Chemical Research in two thous and the research identified the most important ingredient as a polysaccharide known as a melo pecton, which is an element of starch, which is of course found in rice, but is also in

all kinds of starchy foods like potatoes and corn and stuff. And the author's right that when they tested the sticky rice based mortar against more traditional lime only mortars, the sticky rice based one quote has more stable physical properties, has greater mechanical strength, and is more compatible, which makes it a suitable restoration order for ancient masonry. Um so they suggest we could even use this today if we're

like restoring ancient buildings that need their bricks stuck together better. Interesting. I mean, I hate to waste good, good sticky rice, yeah, in in building a structure. But but it sounds convincing. Well, this wouldn't be the only case actually where food crop based starches have proven useful as a non food adhesive. Apparently, potato starch makes a popular kind of wallpaper paste. Have you ever read about this? I looked it up there,

like recipes online for for making your own wallpaper paste outtatos. Interesting. I mean, I guess now it makes sense here as well, because I have learned from the Fallout games that if you have vegetable starch, you can turn that into adhesive at a workstation. Really so so so it lines out up with the Fallout technology trees. I never knew those games are so educational they but that is a great

kind of ingenuity. Like you take the things you say, well, we eat this for breakfast, but what if we also used it to hold bricks together. Yeah, yeah, like it's sticky in my mouth. I bet we could. We could use this if we had to in constructing a wall. Now, following the Manchu invasion of the seventeen hundreds, the Great Wall of China was largely abandoned as a military priority. What's more, maus a tongue um, he ended up encouraging the Chinese people to use bricks in other parts of

the wall or building projects. Uh So a large portion of the wall was essentially vanished during all that as well. But ultimately the big question here that that one might ask is did the Great Wall of China work right? Did it like repel invaders from the north right? And there's a there's a you know, there's a lot of

fascinating history and discussion on this topic. I will point out that there's an excellent article in National Geographic called The Great Wall of China's Long Legacy by Bore Pellaguero Alcade and uh it's I'll try to link to it on the landing page for this episode, but it's well worth checking out. It really goes goes in deep but

but in a very readable, digestible manner. So the most specific threat that the wall was dealing with were again the northern barbarians, the neumatic people's uh you know from from Mongolia and and so forth, And it was never the only protection in place. It's always important to note with walls, like it's easy to just have that stark image of the wall in your mind. Is this this tremendous human geoengineering project. I have made a mountain and

nunshell cross. But generally there's other stuff going on with a wall, be it just a military or certainly there was. The Chinese did have military forces, but there were also economic policies under various rulers to keep the northern people in check. Economic policies what could that amount to ransom? Basic essentially yes, like economic stimulus et cetera, making payments and saying hey, here's here, you don't want to come and invade us, just here take some some of this.

But this only worked for so long, and then the Genghis Khan led the Mongol invasion in twelve eleven captured the capital, and in twelve fifteen his son Kubla Khan conquered all of China and founded UH, the Yon dynasty and UH ultimately the con rule lasted less than a century, and following a peasant uprising, the Ming dynasty again uh took power in thirteen sixty eight. And again this is where the wall as we know it really came together.

Um according to that National Geographic article. You know, they were employing economic means as well um foreign aid to keep the barbarians at bay. But this didn't work perfectly. Border attacks continued until one when trading posts were built on the board, which apparently helped ease tensions. But again this is kind of a uh An economic solution, UH that is working alongside all of this wall building that's

going on at the time. Now, this ongoing Mongol conflict weakened the Ming dynasty and it fell to another peasant uprising. And then under the Ching dynasty, China's northern border expanded well beyond the wall, making it even more unnecessary. But though it remained a symbol of cultural pride, but a relic of the past at the same time. So I

feel like the Great Wall of China side. Besides being one of the most iconic examples of a you know, a free standing dominion wall in human history, it also has some some potential lessons about the limitations of walls, the life cycle of walls, um, you know, and just again the nature of walls not working in isolation because obviously any wall, they're in their numerous ways to get under it, to go over it, to go through it, etcetera. Uh,

there have to be other things in place with it. Absolutely, But then you know, another interesting thing to think about when we consider historical walls, barrier walls of this type is to think about, um, do we always just accept the assumed stated purpose that that were given for why they were built. I mean, you can assume that probably it was a major reason that the Great Wall of China was built that you know, you want, they wanted to keep out invaders from the north, to prevent raids

and attacks and that kind of thing. But there can be other things to consider as well. And I wannah, I want to bring up the idea of Hadrian's Wall to take another look at this. All right, well, let's take a quick break first and then we'll come right back with Hadrian's Wall. All right, we're back. So another famous defensive barrier wall in history is known as Hadrian's Wall.

Around the year one twenty two, see the Roman emperor Hadrian, who ruled from one seventeen to one thirty eight, commissioned the construction of a giant wall from shore to shore in what is today Northern England, supposedly to protect the inhabitants of Roman Britain from tribes in Northern Britain, which is present day Scotland, such as the Picks. And this was a big project, I mean we are talking about going from from sea to see. It was a military

construction project, taking about fifteen thousand soldiers to build. And Hadrian's Wall remains today the longest stone wall in Europe, stretching about a hundred and seventeen kilometers or seventy three miles, and the way it goes from shore to shore, it's not hard to see this is the historical inspiration for the Wall in Game of Thrones. Uh. In fact, I think that's pretty explicit, right that that that Martin, George R.

Martin has has mentioned this as the inspiration. Yeah, he's he's he's come out and said the White Walkers are Scots, just straight up. Now he hasn't said that, but but yeah, it's like clearly, the the wester roast Um Wall, the Ice, the Wall of ice goes from sea to sea, just like Adrian's Now, unlike in the fantasy books, this is not a giant, you know, thousand foot tall wall made

of ice. This wall was about fifteen feet tall or about four point five meters we actually, I think it was different heights at different areas, but generally about fifteen feet tall. And it took about six years to complete building. And it remained in some phase of use more or less until the end of Roman power in Britain, which was in the early fifth century. Uh. Though some parts of the wall remain in place, a lot of it has fallen into disrepair, and much like the Great Wall

of China, has been plundered over the centuries for building materials. Yeah, because here you have just a wonderful collection of bricks or whatnot. Uh, it would it would just be irresistible to loot it a little bit. I mean we see that with other constructions throughout history. I mean just think about the example of the Rosetta stone, Uh, the the tablet that it was so instructive in understanding ancient Egyptian It was found not in its original location, but it

reused in building another structure. Well, it's like palam sests, you know, reusing priceless literary artifacts of the ancient world to write other stuff on. Yeah, or that you don't like what's on the canvas, paint over it. I'm hoping that the end of Game of Thrones involves a lot of like steady looting of the ice wall for use in cocktails among the northern people. I thought you were gonna say for use and igloes. Well it was too I guess that would be more practical iglues and cocktails.

So there there are some really differing historical interpretations about why Hadrian's Wall was actually built, like what purpose it served and whether it was effective and to what extent. In the words of Hadrian's biographer, the purpose of the wall was to quote separate the Romans from the barbarians, because that's pretty clear. So they've got a caledone me up above the wall and they think, oh, those are the barbarians. We got to cut ourselves off from them.

But modern historians differ about how effective it would be, what it was really meant for, and all that. As a true military defensive wall, I think it's clear that it would serve some purpose, but that it would not be a totally effective barrier, and in fact it wasn't there. There were times when it failed to stop, say, picked raids in an area, even after the wall had been constructed.

But it would serve some kind of military purpose, like the wall would help help you hold a border area from advancing raiding parties or armies with fewer numbers of troops that would be required without walls, so you wouldn't have to like send out a military response to absolutely every uh, you know, teeny raid that's going on, like

every time somebody throws a rock at your border. Right, But at the same time, a lot of modern historians seemed to doubt the idea that the wall was purely or even primarily for like military defensive purposes, and they kind of de emphasized this as the motivation for building it or as the actual function of it once it was built. And if these doubters are correct, what could

the purpose of the wall be. One common explanation I came across is that the wall is not a defensive structure as much as a way of controlling traffic, essentially to route travelers and traders through military controlled gates where taxes, customs, and tolls could be extracted, which would make it essentially a fundraising operation. And then well, well no really, and this is this is I think a very plausible way

of explaining things. Uh. This hypothesis is often supported by reference to the placement and design of the many big gates of the wall and the archaeological record of trade and goods on either side. It looks like there was a lot of economic commerce going back and forth across the wall, and the Empire would have wanted a way to make money off of that. Another explanation I've come across is that it was essentially a giant make work project.

So like, imagine you've got a big army, your Hadrian, and you've sent an army north to try to conquer all of Great Britain or what was what is now Great Britain, and they essentially failed. They didn't conquer all of Caledonia, they couldn't get up into the highlands. Um, so you've got an army after a failed campaign, hanging around down in what is now England, in Roman Britain. And it's generally, I think a bad idea in ancient Rome to have thousands of military men sitting around board

at an imperial frontier. Uh So, perhaps one explanation is that it was just sort of a boondoggle to keep the legionaries of the Roman of Roman Britain busy, though this last hypothesis is considered unlikely by some. For example,

the author I'm about to site. So there's an article about Hadrian's Wall and a smaller, more northern situated wall known as the Antonine Wall in the edition of Current Archaeology by the author and Current Archaeology Editor Matthew Simons, who has recently written a book for Cambridge University Press about Roman efforts to protect the borders and frontiers of their empire. And Simon's points out a few things about

Hadrian's Wall. One of them is that we might be thinking about the function of a wall in a way that is colored by modern understandings of nation states and borders. Usually, though not always, but usually today, if somebody puts up a barrier wall around a territory, they're trying to control an existing, agreed upon border. So the idea being like one nation has drawn a line in the sand and said, oh, if this is the border, and then and then there's

a sense, oh, maybe you're not respecting that border. Now I'm gonna build a wall on that line in the sand. So now it's it's it's even it's even more clear,

and you can't get over exactly. But maybe in Roman times the purpose of a border wall is not so much to reinforce a clear and agreed upon existing border, but to create one right to sort of mark off territory as clearly yours and Simon's writes that, you know, the Romans controlled the southern part of Great Britain, but they could not fully conquer the northern part that's now

Scotland due to strain on military resources. So in order to cement control and establish a border, maybe they built a wall essentially as a way of saying here we are, which would have been at least as important as a symbol as it was as a practical barrier to like prevent incursions. This brings me back to the idea of of walls and Chinese traditions as being not only physical structures, but a kind of spell. Yes, you know, because because a symbol is a powerful thing, it it communicates an idea,

and a wall of course has two sides. It can communicate one message in one direction, and another in the other direction, one for those beyond the wall, and another message for those within exactly. And so I was reading another article where speaking to n PR, there is a woman named Linda Tuttiet who was the chief executive of the Hadrian's Wall Trust, and she says that there's quote quite strong evidence that the wall was painted white in Roman times, so as you can imagine, that would have

been visible from miles and miles and miles away. So it's it's there in this idea, it's there is like a symbol, a beacon, a thing for people to see and be reminded that this is Rome, right, because they, especially to the north, they do not have a map. I'm guessing they can't just you know, pull up a map on their smartphone or out of their glove compartment and say, oh, yeah, this is where the Roman territory begins.

But making a highly visible white wall like that is like making it is making the the the demarcation on the map physical in a way that you can see miles ahead. Yeah, exactly. So it's meant to stand out visually for psychological impact and to bolster that. Also, I mentioned the idea of the Antonine Wall the wall that not as not as big as Hadrian's Wall, but it's

a little bit north of it. I was reading an article from last year about the research of an archaeologist named Luisa Campbell from the University of Glasgow and some colleagues of hers, who have found that the wall was also brightly painted in its time with yellow and red paints and decorated with all these bits of propagandistic sculpture to show the power of rome and like. There was a lot of emphasis on the use of red paint

to show like power and bloodiness. So that would again this applies to the Antonine Wall, but would make it

very much like a symbol, a signaling mechanism. Now I don't know which of these hypotheses is correct, obviously I'm not a historian of Roman Britain, but all of them seem at least somewhat plausible to me, Like the idea that, okay, it did serve some military purpose in a defensive sense, but it also or alternatively may have served mainly like a fundraising traffic controlling function to get traders into one place where you could tax them, Or that it was

just a big make work project, or that it was mainly about symbolism, and as you mentioned a minute ago, that the symbolism could wouldn't just be going one way, right, Like, symbolism could be aimed at the people within your territory of control as well. Right, Yeah, this is the this is the place where are our rule extends to and

and you are safe within these these walls. Yeah, like there there there's definitely a lot of writing about historical walls, especially, I know I've read one medieval historian talking about city walls in this context being about a sense of security versus necessarily like truly fully effective security. Because what you know, what do you need to happen in a city? You want there to be commerce, You want people coming in doing business, trading, you know that, to help make the

city rich. And so a way to do that is to try to create a psychological effect and impression on people that this is a safe place to do business. And a wall could help do that. Yeah, and the idea that yes, the gates are open, but we have control over the gates. Uh, this this place is closed off and yet open to whatever degree we need it

to be. Yeah. And again, so I don't feel qualified to adjudicate which of these historical interpretations for Hadrian's Wall in particular is correct, like which is which was the real main purpose of the construction. But I do think it's clear that very often barrier walls all throughout history are presented as simple and intended function, but in fact that they're complex and they may serve many purposes other than the explicitly announced one, often symbolic or psychological purposes,

right and and whatever whatever. And even if they don't have the symbolism in mind, like overtly in mind when they are designed and built, they'll often take on this symbolic power as well. Uh, you know, I I can't help but think of some of the more modern examples of walls, you know, stuff that we can we can relate to with our through modern culture, for instance, the

Berlin Wall being a primary example of that. Well, I mean think of the power of like how come the fall of of Soviet or Communist rule in Europe is put into a single image in the crushing and destruction of the Berlin Wall. You know that that one day, Uh, this, this is clearly such a powerful image for people, and

it's all there on that one wall. Oh yes, plus all those wonderful images of the intense UH graffiti creativity that went into the one side of the wall versus a the starkness that that one encountered on the other. And it does feel that it was it was largely created UH with that symbolic power in mind, though, the idea, I mean, not the the artistic flourishes that were added to one side, but just the idea that here is

a thing to represent the division. Here is a thing to to drive home the division while also functionally separating people's But then, of course we shouldn't forget that this wall was quite literally I think, meant to be effective at preventing transit, at least especially one way, like it definitely had a had a functional purpose. I mean, it

was manned and guarded with lethal force. Speaking of which, another barrier that comes to mind is the Korean Militarized Zone or the d m Z, which of course snakes across the width of the Korean peninsula, creating this hundred sixty mile long, two and a half mile wide buffer zone between North and South Korea. Another barrier border that is frequently in the news. Another another one that Dolphin

comes up is the West Bank Barrier UM. This one currently runs along the our myst disagreement line or the green line that separates Israel from the territories of the West Bank. And another one that is UH I've seen making the news recently are the Peace lines or the peace walls. UH. These are separation barriers built in Northern Ireland to separate Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods, intended to men minimize violence between the two groups, especially during the troubles

from nine. But they're they're still standing. UH. You'll see them mostly in Belfast, but there of course is UM. In on the subject of of Brexit, there has been a lot of concern over this because currently you have a what a soft border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and um you have in the case of a what a hard Brexit, you have the potential

for that to be a hard border. Again. UM. You know, not necessarily a wall in the strictest sense of the words, but when we're talking about like the channeling of commerce and the controlling of commerce and the UH and and so forth, it is it is essentially the wall and everything but form. And that sounds like a nasty echo

of the past. Yeah, but you know, certainly speaking to it, two walls like the piece walls that that still stand, you know, like they're a constant reminder of what has come before and what you know, to some extent still resonates within the culture and what could come again. Um, you know, I mean, walls are potent reminders, potent symbols

of division, and very often perceived to be symbols of oppression. Yeah, I mean, certainly that's the case if one is trapped within walls, if you were within the walls of a prison cell or a prison ground, um, you know, you can feel the force of those walls, and likewise it's communicating something else to the people on the outside, right saying, Uh, those that we have deemed appropriate to incarceraate are are safely set aside from you. They are they are walled

off within this prison. Again back to the symbolic and psychological power that these barriers so often served. So we only mentioned a few walls. Obviously there are there there are a number of other historic walls of note. Uh number of other walls that are currently used in today's world. I hope coming out of this episode and sort of trying to deconstruct what a wall is and what it does, and what it doesn't do, what it depends on, all

these other things. For uh that it will you know, force us to maybe you know, think twice, think three times if we need to, uh, the next time any of these barriers comes up, uh in conversation in the news cycle. Certainly we can think about the nature of walls in discussions of proposed future walls. Um. Again, the wall is something that is so universal it is easy to just not think about it, to not think about what it is and what it is supposed to do.

A wall is something that's so simple in form it it almost asks to be taken very much at face value. But given what we know about history, we we should do exactly the opposite. I mean, you shouldn't just take it at face value. It's actually, uh, this almost kind of magical, talismanic kind of thing. Yeah, really coming back around to the idea of of a wall as a kind of magical spell. You know, we mentioned Game of Thrones, but we really didn't get into fictional walls much at all.

But when we look to literature, films, music, their walls pop up quite frequently. I mean, one key example being Pink Floyd's uh treatment of the Wall. You can tell a lot about a person by what Pink Floyd they like best. Do they like the like dark, screaming, depressing like the Wall and UH animals kind of Pink Floyd, Or do they like the classic rock radio dark side of the moon kind of pink Floyd. Or do they like the psychedelic, freak out astronomy dominate kind of pink Floyd.

That's like, that's basically the three kinds of humans. No, it's not, that's right. There would have to be at least a fourth category for people who don't like pink Floyd. Yeah, and maybe there's another category for people who just like the song the Warrior Shooting at the Walls a heart heartache, yeah, shooting out, Yeah, you know what? That is my favorite the Wall song. Absolutely. All right, Well, now it's time

for us to stop as well. Obviously, we'd love to hear from everybody out there, your experience with with walls, some of your favorite examples from history and modern times, your favorite examples from from film and literature and music. All that is fair game. You can find us online the mother ship for this particular podcast is invention pod

dot com. That's where you'll find all the episodes of the show that we've put out so far, as well as uh a few links out to social media and if you if you want to support the show, I would say the best thing you can do is to rate and review Invention wherever you have the power to do so, and make sure that you've subscribed. Big thanks to Scott Benjamin for research assistance on this episode and

to our excellent audio producer TORII Harrison. If you would like to get in touch with us directly with feedback on this episode, with suggestions for future topics, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at invention pod dot com th week very day. You can sure your la