The history of wall

Whether stacked brick by brick, sculpted from corrugated metal, tubes, barbed wire, concrete or drywall, a wall in its most basic form is a physical barrier. Maybe, it supports a roof, protects a town from floods or separates your bedroom from the living room. In isolation, a wall it is not political. But a wall can also keep people out, hold people in, and almost always create some sort of divide. In China, it is a defence system turned national landmark. In Berlin, it was an infamous blockade. And in America, it is an emblem of a fiery divisive political debate. And sometimes when a wall is built it eventually comes crashing down. President Trump wants to build a wall between the United States and Mexico. But what will it really accomplish?

David Frye: A wall is only going to succeed in its purpose if there is the political will to continue to guard it.

Trump on the left corner: We must be very strong on the border.

Trump on the right corner: Border security to the people of our country. Very important.

This is what some oh the famous walls in history can tell us about the U. S. Mexico border today. The history of walls can be traced back roughly 12,000 years and in the beginning they were not nearly as socially divisive as they are now.

David Frye: For most of history, walls were not controversial at all. A city is a community with walls. The belief that well-marked boundaries reduced conflict was universal and arguably innate, given the tendency even of animals to mark their own territories.

Territory, it is the core of so many wars in history. In a territorial dispute, even Wall Street got its name from yes, a wall.

The Wall Street Wall: It was originally built by the Dutch to protect themselves from British colonists and keep Native Americans out. The financial district has earned a reputation of vast wealth: the centre of capitalism. It is become a symbol of a system that is created more wealth than the world has ever seen. But it is also earned of reputation of exploitation, deepening the divide between the haves and the have nots. And that is been ingrained in the area from its very inception. In 1664, Governor Peter Stuyvesant ordered his citizens to build a wooden barricade on the northern edge of the New Amsterdam settlement. A few years later, the Peach Tree War broke out between the Dutch and Native Americans, and Stuyvesant ordered an expansion of the wall to defend against future attacks. It worked for a while but then the British came by boat through the southern end of the colony, took the land and named it New York. The wall itself was taken down by the end of century, but the name stuck. In 1711, Wall Street was turned into the city’s official market for a very valuable resource at the time, slave labour. And that is something that’s through many walls of the past no matter how emblematic they may be.

Great Wall of China: Today, you will fine one of the most iconic, grandiose walls ever built swarming with tour groups, selfie sticks and even shopping malls. People marvel at its sheer scale, which took a lot of human power to build.

D.Frye: Generations, upon generations of Chinese peasants were dragged from their homes and in dragooned into these forced labour crews and required to build these walls. And if they survive the very difficult construction of these walls, they were required to live by the walls in these desolate frontier zones.

Roughly 650 years ago the massive project was ordered by the Ming Dynasty to prevent invasions, protect the Silk Road and preserve its culture. Some say the building process began around 200 B.C, though most of that is not standing today. From 1368 to 1644, the Great Wall was the world’s largest military structure. And it is so extensive, there is no definitive record of how long it is or how much it would cost to build something like that today. People estimate its length is anywhere from 5,000 to 30,000 miles. And something of that magnitude would obviously cost tens of billions of dollars or more. These days tourists flock to the landmark because of it is almost unthinkable size. It is a very different attraction from this next wall, the DMZ.

The De-Militarized Zone: The demilitarized zone between North and South Korea is no historical emblem. To this day, its used as a physical barrier to keep people from leaving. And it stands a tangible symbol of the separation of governments, cultures and families who once lived together.

Jean Lee: To us, we think of it is a symbol of this military conflict. To Koreans, it is a symbol of the division of our country.

The DMZ stretches roughly 150 miles long and has divided communist North Korea from its southern counterpart since an armistice was signed during the Korean War in 1953. The zone itself incorporates land from both sides of the territory line and it is decorated with barbed wire fences, abandoned bridges, tunnels guard posts, highly trained army squads and artillery units.

Jean Lee: These are two countries that in 70 years of division have just gone completely different directions in terms of their economies. You cannot see it, to be honest, at the DMZ. You can however see it, in the difference between the soldiers. They do send some of their tallest, fittest North Korean soldiers. Because of chronic hunger and malnutrition, they are still quite a bit smaller than the South Korean soldiers.

But the area between the fences is surprisingly peaceful. Since nobody can enter, the lack of human interference has allowed wildlife to thrive. The wall at the DMZ was not the only barrier to separate the communist block of the Soviet Union from the West.

After World WAR II, there was a big territorial question: which superpower would control Europe? In the 1945 Potsdam agreement, the U.K., U.S., and Soviet Union decided to split Germany down the middle. Berlin fell in the eastern half of Germany. But the U.S. still wanted to keep a presence in the capital city where it helped topple the Nazis. It became an island of Western influence and a haven for people escaping Soviet oppression. The East German government ordered the wall’s construction in August 1961.

The Berlin Wall: Television: On the dividing line between West and East Berlin, this was the sight that greeted Berliners on the morning of Sunday, August 13. East German police and military units busy sealing the entire length of the city’s dividing line with barricades and obstruction.

The Berlin Wall came to symbolize the Iron Curtain dividing Europe. The 96-mile wall cost about 25 million dollars to build at time which comes out to about 200 million dollars today. It was 12 feet high and layered with concrete and brick, topped with barbed wire and used more resources with 302-armed guard towers and 55,000 landmines.

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