Archeologists discover ancient graffiti on China's Great Wall

Yahoo News ^ | July 11, 2004 | AFP

[FairOpinion]

BEIJING (AFP) - Chinese soldiers sent to the Great Wall centuries ago did not just spend their time keeping alien invaders out -- they also decorated their watch towers with ancient graffiti, state media said.

Archeologists studying a section of the wall in northeastern Liaoning province were surprised to find carvings of symbols representing love and peace, the Xinhua news agency reported.

The historical record may offer an explanation, as it shows the general in charge of this part of the wall in the late 16th century allowed soldiers to bring their families along in order to boost morale.

Each household was put in charge of one watch tower, and the graffiti could reflect their endeavors to add a homey touch to the otherwise austere surroundings.

[FairOpinion]

"Archeologists studying a section of the wall in northeastern Liaoning province were surprised to find carvings of symbols representing love and peace, the Xinhua news agency reported."

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[Dog Gone]

Archeologists studying a section of the wall in northeastern Liaoning province were surprised to find carvings of symbols representing love and peace

Unlike today's graffiti which tells you which gang is going to open fire on you if you make the wrong hand signal....

[fat city]

Bet it says "F*** the French".

[Fintan]

 

 

[Old Grumpy]

Oh, that is hilarious!

[PJ-Comix]

My favorite movie scene involving graffiti was in Dumb And Dumber where the Jim Carrey character enters a toilet stall at a gas station and sees some graffiti on the stall wall that says something about being there at exactly 2 AM for some hot sex. Carrey looks at his watch and it is exactly 2 AM and suddenly there is a loud banging on the stall door and he hunches over in a frightened fetal position. Every time I see that scene I just crack up!

[RightWhale]

Each household was put in charge of one watch tower

China still uses this system.

[xJones]

Bet it says "F*** the French".

That is universal sentiment, but if any Great Wall graffiti were even quasi-prophetic they could read: "Beware the big fat northern Chinese peasant with green teeth who's named Mao and has a problem with great leap forwards".

[cardinal4]

"For a good time call Ling.."

[vetvetdoug]

Me like Manchurians, Love you long time....

I bet that was all over the wall.....

[andy58-in-nh]

Genghis Sucks!

[js1138]

Caius is a dumbell?

[DustyMoment]

I heard that it says "Chan Li Tao make rousy egg roll".

[SunkenCiv]

The search for Li-jien, built by Romans in China 1300 years before Marco Polo.

Black Horse Odyssey: Search for the lost city of Rome in China by David Harris

[FairOpinion]

Looks like an interesting book.

Thanks.

[SunkenCiv]

Romans in China?
by Erling Hoh
Archaeology
Volume 52 Number 3, May/June 1999

This idea was first proposed by Homer Hasenphlug Dubs, an Oxford University professor of Chinese history, who speculated in 1955 that some of the 10,000 Roman prisoners taken by the Parthians after the battle of Carrhae in southeastern Turkey in 53 B.C. made their way east to Uzbekistan to enlist with Jzh Jzh against the Han. Chinese accounts of the battle, in which Jzh Jzh was decapitated and his army defeated, note unusual military formations and the use of wooden fortifications foreign to the nomadic Huns. Dubs postulated that after the battle the Chinese employed the Roman mercenaries as border guards, settling them in Liqian, a short form of Alexandria used by the Chinese to denote Rome. While some Chinese scholars have been critical of Dubs' hypothesis, others went so far as to identify Lou Zhuangzi as the probable location of Liqian in the late 1980s.

[SunkenCiv]

[SunkenCiv]

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