Fact-Checking the Great Wall: Two Accounts of Ancient China
0 / 10Corroborate a tour brochure and a historian's article with a dynasty timeline.
The tour company, its brochure and the historian are made up for this worksheet, but the facts in Account B are real. Read both accounts. Then answer the questions.
Welcome to the Great Wall! This mighty wall was built in a single burst of work by Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor, in about 220 BCE. He was a wise follower of Confucius, and he built the wall to keep out the peoples of the north. Every brick you touch today was laid by his workers. China was also the birthplace of silk, which was first woven under the Han dynasty, and of paper, which the official Cai Lun invented out of nothing in 105 CE.
1Rulers in China built walls long before the First Emperor. During the Warring States period, rival states built walls of packed earth to defend against one another and against horse-riding peoples to the north. After Qin conquered the other states and united China in 221 BCE, Qin Shi Huang ordered workers to connect and lengthen some of the northern walls. Historians believe many of those workers died from the hard labor.
2Later dynasties kept building. Han rulers extended walls far to the west to guard their trade routes. Most of the stone-and-brick wall that tourists visit near Beijing today was built during the Ming dynasty, more than 1,500 years after the First Emperor.
3The First Emperor did not govern by Confucius's ideas. He followed Legalism, a philosophy that said people obey only strict laws and harsh punishments. Later Han historians wrote that he ordered books burned, including works that taught Confucian ideas. Confucius taught that rulers should lead by good example and that people should respect their parents and elders. The Han dynasty later made his teachings the core of education for government officials.
4Silk and paper are also older than many guidebooks say. Archaeologists have found pieces of silk cloth in China that are more than 4,000 years old, and for centuries the Chinese kept the method of raising silkworms a secret. In 105 CE a court official named Cai Lun reported an improved way to make paper from tree bark, hemp, old rags and fishing nets. Archaeologists, however, have found scraps of paper made earlier in the Han dynasty.
Use the timeline and both accounts.
| Date | Dynasty or event |
|---|---|
| About 1600–1046 BCE | Shang dynasty |
| About 1046–256 BCE | Zhou dynasty |
| About 551–479 BCE | Life of Confucius |
| About 475–221 BCE | Warring States build walls |
| 221–206 BCE | Qin dynasty unites China |
| 206 BCE–220 CE | Han dynasty |
| 105 CE | Cai Lun reports a paper method |
| 1368–1644 CE | Ming dynasty |
About how many years after Confucius died did the Qin dynasty unite China? years