4 ms·

What's Behind the Mysterious Ancient Wall in the Gobi Desert?

87 points by derbOac 1y ago

Aspos 1y ago
Does it exist? I could not find a wikipedia article about it. This Gobi Wall can not be a part of what is known as the Great Wall of China as it was built 5 centuries later, no? Can someone explain?
- slwvx 1y ago
  Ontology in the 21st century: no wikipedia page means non-existence :-)
  - LeoPanthera 1y ago
    It is at least a good warning that you might be reading an AI hallucination, and should do further research.
    - Mr_Minderbinder 1y ago
      It is also a good warning that the people who typically create and edit Wikipedia articles in your local language do not find the subject interesting or are prevented from effectively documenting it due to the language barrier. I was doing research on the history of a certain illness and one physician I was investigating did not have an English Wikipedia article. Of course this does not mean he did not exist, I found him later on the Russian Wikipedia: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%86%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%83%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2,_%D0%9C%D0%B8%D1%85%D0%B0%D0%B8%D0%BB_%D0%98%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87 https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%B0.... I cannot find an article about this wall even on the Chinese Wikipedia but Baidu Encyclopedia has one: https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E8%A5%BF%E5%A4%8F%E9%95%BF%E5%9F%8E%E9%81%97%E5%9D%80/20834475 https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E8%A5%BF%E5%A4%8F%E9%95%BF%E5%...
- AlotOfReading 1y ago
  The Great Wall is just part of a larger series of fortifications in eastern Central Asia. One of the others is the less studied Medieval Wall System (MWS). The gobi wall here is a few hundred kilometers of one of the individual walls within the MWS, which as the name suggests is within the gobi desert in the modern country of Mongolia. And just to preclude the usual follow-up, these walls probably weren't major defensive fortifications intended to keep out armies of nomadic raiders. Their primary function was closer to airport customs, visible outposts that reinforce the boundaries and laws of the state.
  - mmooss 1y ago
    From a/the related paper: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/5/1087 https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/5/1087 > The Medieval (10th to 13th century CE) Wall System (MWS) stretches approximately 4000 km across extensive regions in northern China and Mongolia, as well as shorter sections in Russia (Figure 1). It represents one of the most extensive yet enigmatic architectural features in East Asia. In recent years The Wall Project, funded by the European Research Council, as well as other projects, has extensively studied and published on different sections of this wall line. Such research demonstrated that this extensive system of earthen walls was built by different empires from c. the 10th to the 13th centuries CE [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Among the different sections of the MWS, the wall section located in the southern Mongolia’s Gobi Desert is the least explored and still poorly understood. This study focuses on a 321 km-long segment of this wall line, located in Ömnögovi province of Mongolia, that we refer to as the Gobi Wall (Figure 2).
  - Aspos 1y ago
    I don't know, looks like hunting walls to me. When chased, animals naturally follow such walls, however insignificant they are (sometimes they follow even a line drawn on the grass), and get onto predictable trajectory leading them into ambush.
    - AlotOfReading 1y ago
      I'm curious how you came to that conclusion. Nothing about these walls resembles desert kites that I can see, except that they both use natural materials in an arid climate.
mattmaroon 1y ago
That article ends so abruptly and lacking anything you want to know (how was it used for non-defensive purposes?) that I almost wonder if it was written by AI. Hard to tell bad writers from computers anymore.
- jazzyjackson 1y ago
  Computers were, after all, trained on bad writing
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  Adblock on Chrome isn't working anymore, given the huge luxury watch ads every three paragraph I can't read it as anything but content slop to get ad impressions. Doesn't need to be AI, slop has existed for decades.
  - mattmaroon 1y ago
    That was honestly what made me finally switch back to Firefox after what must have been close to two decades.
ungreased0675 1y ago
So, what was it for? The article sparked my interest then just ended.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
gnatman 1y ago
I’m guessing this is the source paper? > https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/5/1087 https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/5/1087 >> This study challenges the perception of such structures as being purely defensive, revealing the Gobi Wall’s multifunctional role as an imperial tool for demarcating boundaries, managing populations and resources, and consolidating territorial control
jpollock 1y ago
I seem to remember reading somewhere that low walls like this weren't really about defense, they were about funneling travelers (with carts) to the tax collectors.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  What would the point be, in the Gobi desert? The structure of traveling through that is that you follow the silk road between a bunch of major cities built around oases. It's not necessary to divert anyone with walls - the fact that they need to drink, and that they won't be willing to wander off into the desert, get lost, and die, is sufficient. You don't move people to the tax collectors. You move the tax collectors to them.
  - manwe150 1y ago
    Unless maybe the point of the wall was to provide the road marker itself that guided folks to the nearest survival point? The article mentions there were frequent wells and encampments, but so few other details
    - thaumasiotes 1y ago
      > The article mentions there were frequent wells and encampments They aren't arguing that wells were dug to support the wall garrison. They're arguing that, because the wall needed to be garrisoned, it could only visit places where there were or could be wells: >> our spatial and ecological analysis demonstrates that the distribution of local resources, such as water and wood, was critical in determining the route of the wall and the placement of associated garrisons and forts. ( https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/5/1087 https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/5/1087 )
  - AlotOfReading 1y ago
    Are you thinking of the Taklamakan? People wander around the Gobi as a way of life. It's not quite as extreme as you're painting it. In any case, the traditional routes for the northern silk roads passed south of these walls through the Hexi corridor, at least until the Mongol period when many of them rerouted through the Orkhon valley north of the Gobi. Separate from the silk roads, there was a lot of trade/conflict between the northern Chinese states and the various Mongolian polities like the Liao. Managing that was both economically and existentially necessary for the border states like the xixia. Also, nomads usually moved to the tax collectors instead of the other way around. More practical that way.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
fred_is_fred 1y ago
Any time you build a series of forts (for any reason) you end up creating commerce and trading. You also end up many times with towns. Even if it was not the original intent. Although the article seems to just randomly end, I assume that’s where it was headed.
flowerthoughts 1y ago
There's a lot of application of methods in this paper. However, they're mostly saying there wasn't much in terms of artifacts to be discovered. And it's a wall made from unpolished stones, sand and maybe some wood. There' basically nothing here. They find some coins from 160 CE and then go on to attribute the wall to being built in the 10-13 CE centuries, as was already established. > This research supports a broader reconceptualization of medieval frontiers—not merely as static defensive barriers, but as dynamic administrative infrastructures. The Gobi Wall exemplifies a mode of Xi Xia statecraft that used architectural investments to manage re-sources, population movement, and territorial boundaries. This understanding aligns with theoretical models framing frontiers as zones of control and interaction, rather than rigid dividing lines [57], and invites broader comparative analysis across Eurasian contexts. Yeah, they _maybe_ used a big wall they had built for defensive purposes to charge customs. There are no answers here. I'm sure it's interesting for other archaeologists to study the methods used, but there are no interesting rigid conclusions to be had from reading it. 1. https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/5/1087 https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/5/1087
decimalenough 1y ago
Well, that was pretty anticlimactic. Suggest you go read about a more interesting abandoned city in the Gobi Desert instead: > Built in 1032, the city thrived under the rule of the Tangut-led Western Xia dynasty. It has been identified as the city of Etzina, which appears in The Travels of Marco Polo. ... > According to a legend of the local Torghut population, in 1372 a Mongol military general named Khara Bator was surrounded with his troops by the armies of the Ming dynasty. Diverting the Ejin River, the city's water source that flowed just outside the fortress, the Ming dynasty denied Khara-Khoto water for its gardens and wells. As time passed and Khara Bator realised his fate, he murdered his family and then himself. After his suicide, Khara Bator's soldiers waited within the fortress until Ming troops finally attacked and killed the remaining inhabitants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khara-Khoto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khara-Khoto
- mikhailfranco 1y ago
  Khara Khoto appears to be on or near the extension of the 'Gobi Wall' into present day China, presumably as part of the same system. https://cms.interestingengineering.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/land-14-01087-g001-550.jpg?w=1920 https://cms.interestingengineering.com/wp-content/uploads/20... The name 'Gobi Wall' seems to refer to the section of the wall within Mongolia. Its garrisons and forts are numbered from G01 at the western end of the section, where the wall crosses the border. https://cdn.grid.id/crop/0x0:0x0/700x0/photo/2025/05/31/land-14-01087-g002jpg-20250531095149.jpg https://cdn.grid.id/crop/0x0:0x0/700x0/photo/2025/05/31/land... Khara Khoto is about 100 km WSW of G01.
- forshaper 1y ago
  > a Mongol military general named Khara Bator wait is this dude's name basically 'Black Knight'?
  - decimalenough 1y ago
    Even better, it's Black Hero.
rjknight 1y ago
Surely the answer is "the other side of the Gobi Desert".
- mattmaroon 1y ago
  Why did the chicken cross the Gobi wall?
  - nilarimogard 1y ago
    This isn't reddit.
    - mattmaroon 1y ago
      No, to get to the other side.

87 points by derbOac 1y ago

Does it exist? I could not find a wikipedia article about it. This Gobi Wall can not be a part of what is known as the Great Wall of China as it was built 5 centuries later, no? Can someone explain?

slwvx 1y ago
Ontology in the 21st century: no wikipedia page means non-existence :-)
- LeoPanthera 1y ago
  It is at least a good warning that you might be reading an AI hallucination, and should do further research.
  - Mr_Minderbinder 1y ago
    It is also a good warning that the people who typically create and edit Wikipedia articles in your local language do not find the subject interesting or are prevented from effectively documenting it due to the language barrier. I was doing research on the history of a certain illness and one physician I was investigating did not have an English Wikipedia article. Of course this does not mean he did not exist, I found him later on the Russian Wikipedia: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%86%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%83%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2,_%D0%9C%D0%B8%D1%85%D0%B0%D0%B8%D0%BB_%D0%98%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87 https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%B0.... I cannot find an article about this wall even on the Chinese Wikipedia but Baidu Encyclopedia has one: https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E8%A5%BF%E5%A4%8F%E9%95%BF%E5%9F%8E%E9%81%97%E5%9D%80/20834475 https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E8%A5%BF%E5%A4%8F%E9%95%BF%E5%...
AlotOfReading 1y ago
The Great Wall is just part of a larger series of fortifications in eastern Central Asia. One of the others is the less studied Medieval Wall System (MWS). The gobi wall here is a few hundred kilometers of one of the individual walls within the MWS, which as the name suggests is within the gobi desert in the modern country of Mongolia. And just to preclude the usual follow-up, these walls probably weren't major defensive fortifications intended to keep out armies of nomadic raiders. Their primary function was closer to airport customs, visible outposts that reinforce the boundaries and laws of the state.
- mmooss 1y ago
  From a/the related paper: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/5/1087 https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/5/1087 > The Medieval (10th to 13th century CE) Wall System (MWS) stretches approximately 4000 km across extensive regions in northern China and Mongolia, as well as shorter sections in Russia (Figure 1). It represents one of the most extensive yet enigmatic architectural features in East Asia. In recent years The Wall Project, funded by the European Research Council, as well as other projects, has extensively studied and published on different sections of this wall line. Such research demonstrated that this extensive system of earthen walls was built by different empires from c. the 10th to the 13th centuries CE [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Among the different sections of the MWS, the wall section located in the southern Mongolia’s Gobi Desert is the least explored and still poorly understood. This study focuses on a 321 km-long segment of this wall line, located in Ömnögovi province of Mongolia, that we refer to as the Gobi Wall (Figure 2).
- Aspos 1y ago
  I don't know, looks like hunting walls to me. When chased, animals naturally follow such walls, however insignificant they are (sometimes they follow even a line drawn on the grass), and get onto predictable trajectory leading them into ambush.
  - AlotOfReading 1y ago
    I'm curious how you came to that conclusion. Nothing about these walls resembles desert kites that I can see, except that they both use natural materials in an arid climate.

mattmaroon 1y ago

That article ends so abruptly and lacking anything you want to know (how was it used for non-defensive purposes?) that I almost wonder if it was written by AI. Hard to tell bad writers from computers anymore.

jazzyjackson 1y ago
Computers were, after all, trained on bad writing
Cthulhu_ 1y ago
Adblock on Chrome isn't working anymore, given the huge luxury watch ads every three paragraph I can't read it as anything but content slop to get ad impressions. Doesn't need to be AI, slop has existed for decades.
- mattmaroon 1y ago
  That was honestly what made me finally switch back to Firefox after what must have been close to two decades.

ungreased0675 1y ago

So, what was it for? The article sparked my interest then just ended.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

gnatman 1y ago

I’m guessing this is the source paper? > https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/5/1087 https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/5/1087 >> This study challenges the perception of such structures as being purely defensive, revealing the Gobi Wall’s multifunctional role as an imperial tool for demarcating boundaries, managing populations and resources, and consolidating territorial control

jpollock 1y ago

I seem to remember reading somewhere that low walls like this weren't really about defense, they were about funneling travelers (with carts) to the tax collectors.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
thaumasiotes 1y ago
What would the point be, in the Gobi desert? The structure of traveling through that is that you follow the silk road between a bunch of major cities built around oases. It's not necessary to divert anyone with walls - the fact that they need to drink, and that they won't be willing to wander off into the desert, get lost, and die, is sufficient. You don't move people to the tax collectors. You move the tax collectors to them.
- manwe150 1y ago
  Unless maybe the point of the wall was to provide the road marker itself that guided folks to the nearest survival point? The article mentions there were frequent wells and encampments, but so few other details
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    > The article mentions there were frequent wells and encampments They aren't arguing that wells were dug to support the wall garrison. They're arguing that, because the wall needed to be garrisoned, it could only visit places where there were or could be wells: >> our spatial and ecological analysis demonstrates that the distribution of local resources, such as water and wood, was critical in determining the route of the wall and the placement of associated garrisons and forts. ( https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/5/1087 https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/5/1087 )
- AlotOfReading 1y ago
  Are you thinking of the Taklamakan? People wander around the Gobi as a way of life. It's not quite as extreme as you're painting it. In any case, the traditional routes for the northern silk roads passed south of these walls through the Hexi corridor, at least until the Mongol period when many of them rerouted through the Orkhon valley north of the Gobi. Separate from the silk roads, there was a lot of trade/conflict between the northern Chinese states and the various Mongolian polities like the Liao. Managing that was both economically and existentially necessary for the border states like the xixia. Also, nomads usually moved to the tax collectors instead of the other way around. More practical that way.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

fred_is_fred 1y ago

Any time you build a series of forts (for any reason) you end up creating commerce and trading. You also end up many times with towns. Even if it was not the original intent. Although the article seems to just randomly end, I assume that’s where it was headed.

flowerthoughts 1y ago

There's a lot of application of methods in this paper. However, they're mostly saying there wasn't much in terms of artifacts to be discovered. And it's a wall made from unpolished stones, sand and maybe some wood. There' basically nothing here. They find some coins from 160 CE and then go on to attribute the wall to being built in the 10-13 CE centuries, as was already established. > This research supports a broader reconceptualization of medieval frontiers—not merely as static defensive barriers, but as dynamic administrative infrastructures. The Gobi Wall exemplifies a mode of Xi Xia statecraft that used architectural investments to manage re-sources, population movement, and territorial boundaries. This understanding aligns with theoretical models framing frontiers as zones of control and interaction, rather than rigid dividing lines [57], and invites broader comparative analysis across Eurasian contexts. Yeah, they _maybe_ used a big wall they had built for defensive purposes to charge customs. There are no answers here. I'm sure it's interesting for other archaeologists to study the methods used, but there are no interesting rigid conclusions to be had from reading it. 1. https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/5/1087 https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/5/1087

decimalenough 1y ago

Well, that was pretty anticlimactic. Suggest you go read about a more interesting abandoned city in the Gobi Desert instead: > Built in 1032, the city thrived under the rule of the Tangut-led Western Xia dynasty. It has been identified as the city of Etzina, which appears in The Travels of Marco Polo. ... > According to a legend of the local Torghut population, in 1372 a Mongol military general named Khara Bator was surrounded with his troops by the armies of the Ming dynasty. Diverting the Ejin River, the city's water source that flowed just outside the fortress, the Ming dynasty denied Khara-Khoto water for its gardens and wells. As time passed and Khara Bator realised his fate, he murdered his family and then himself. After his suicide, Khara Bator's soldiers waited within the fortress until Ming troops finally attacked and killed the remaining inhabitants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khara-Khoto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khara-Khoto

mikhailfranco 1y ago
Khara Khoto appears to be on or near the extension of the 'Gobi Wall' into present day China, presumably as part of the same system. https://cms.interestingengineering.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/land-14-01087-g001-550.jpg?w=1920 https://cms.interestingengineering.com/wp-content/uploads/20... The name 'Gobi Wall' seems to refer to the section of the wall within Mongolia. Its garrisons and forts are numbered from G01 at the western end of the section, where the wall crosses the border. https://cdn.grid.id/crop/0x0:0x0/700x0/photo/2025/05/31/land-14-01087-g002jpg-20250531095149.jpg https://cdn.grid.id/crop/0x0:0x0/700x0/photo/2025/05/31/land... Khara Khoto is about 100 km WSW of G01.
forshaper 1y ago
> a Mongol military general named Khara Bator wait is this dude's name basically 'Black Knight'?
- decimalenough 1y ago
  Even better, it's Black Hero.

rjknight 1y ago

Surely the answer is "the other side of the Gobi Desert".

mattmaroon 1y ago
Why did the chicken cross the Gobi wall?
- nilarimogard 1y ago
  This isn't reddit.
  - mattmaroon 1y ago
    No, to get to the other side.