Have you seen the "hand grenade" of the Ming Dynasty? Ancient "military intelligence" in the Great Wall weapons warehouse!

Recently, there are new discoveries in the archaeology of the Great Wall. In the western section of the Badaling Great Wall in Yanqing District, Beijing, 59 neatly arranged stone mines were unearthed at a building foundation. Archaeologists comprehensively judged that the building foundation was a warehouse for storing weapons along the Great Wall. This is the first time that such a building has been discovered in the archaeology of the Great Wall in Beijing. Shang Heng, deputy research curator of the Beijing Institute of Archaeology, said that there may be many such "weapons warehouses" along the Great Wall, which will subvert previous cognition.

Stone mine: a simplified version of the "hand grenade"

Stone mines are called simplified versions of "ancient hand grenades" and were common weapons used by the Ming Dynasty Great Wall guards. These seemingly inconspicuous stones have a round hole in the middle, which is used to fill gunpowder. After filling, the hole is sealed and thrown out, which can not only hit the enemy, but also produce explosive power, achieving a surprising victory.

The enemy towers No. 60 and No. 61 are hollow enemy towers, and a large number of neatly arranged stone mines were found on the south side of the enemy towers, with a total of more than 300 mines, which is the first time in the city. Through excavation, the layout structure, building form, building materials, construction technology and traditional practices of the building were clarified, and the remains of the kang and stove were revealed inside the enemy tower, enriching the cultural connotation of the Great Wall remains.

59 stone mines exposed the weapons storage room

At a building foundation on the south side of No. 64 enemy tower, the house was built against the Great Wall, facing south and north, with a small size of 4.3 meters long and 4.3 meters wide. Only the door stone remains, and there is a stone step inside the door connecting the room to the Great Wall. The ground is paved with square bricks, and no living facilities are found. The building structure needs further study.

59 stone mines were unearthed in the house. The diameter of the stone mines ranged from 13 to 19 cm, the height ranged from 18 to 28 cm, and the hole diameter was 6 cm. The stone mines were arranged neatly. Comprehensive judgment shows that the site should be a warehouse for storing weapons along the Great Wall. This is the first time that such a building has been found on the Great Wall in Beijing, providing important basis for studying the function and nature of such houses.

The discovery of stone mines reveals the military engineering attributes of the Great Wall - a very long military defense system

The Great Wall, known as "the first military project in ancient China", is unprecedented in its length, danger and difficulty in construction. It runs across 15 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, including Hebei, Beijing, Tianjin, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu, Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Shandong, Henan, Qinghai, Ningxia and Xinjiang.

In 2012, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage announced that the total length of the Great Wall in China, based on a six-year survey, was 21,196.18 kilometers. Future surveys may increase this number. Figuratively speaking, if you were to build a straight wall between the South Pole and the North Pole, the length of the Great Wall would be a little longer than this wall.

The Great Wall was first built during the Zhou Dynasty, the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. During the reign of Qin Shihuang, the Great Walls of Qin, Zhao, Yan and other states were connected to form the Great Wall. After that, large-scale construction was carried out during the Han Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty.

At present, the Ming Great Wall is the best preserved Great Wall relic. In the 1980s, archaeologists discovered the ancient city wall and foundation ruins in front of and behind Hushan on the Yalu River on the Sino-North Korean border in Dandong City, Liaoning Province. After a long period of archaeological investigation, archaeologists and Great Wall scholars finally confirmed that this section of the Great Wall stretches for more than 1,000 kilometers in Liaodong and extends westward to Shanhaiguan, which is part of the Ming Dynasty Great Wall. Since then, it has become a consensus in the academic community that the Great Wall starts from Hushan in Liaoning in the east and ends at Jiayuguan in Gansu in the west.

Source: Science Popularization China, Xinhua News Agency, Yanqing District Cultural Relics Management Office, etc.