David Frye - Walls: A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick

Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.

We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.

Scribner

An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2018 by David Frye

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Scribner Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Scribner hardcover edition August 2018

SCRIBNER and design are registered trademarks of The Gale Group, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, Inc., the publisher of this work.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or .

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

Interior design by Kyle Kabel

Maps by David Lindroth Inc.

Jacket design by David Litman

Jacket photographs: Wall by Roger Coul Am/Getty Images;

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018022463

ISBN 978-1-5011-7270-0

ISBN 978-1-5011-7272-4 (ebook)

For Noelle, the muse of everything but history

THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST, 2500500 BC

GREECE, 600338 BC

CHINA, 214 BC

EURASIA, 2000 BCAD 1800

TIMELESS FOLKLORE

CHINA AND CENTRAL ASIA, C. 100 BC

THE ROMAN EMPIRE, AD 11738

THE ROMAN EMPIRE, C. AD 300

THE ROMAN AND BYZANTINE EMPIRES, AD 400600

CHINA, AD 2801600

WESTERN AND CENTRAL ASIA, AD 5001300

CONSTANTINOPLE, AD 1453

IRELAND, SCOTLAND, AND THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE, AD 1494C. 1800

SOUTH, CENTRAL, AND NORTH AMERICA, PREHISTORYAD 1800

CHINA AND FRANCE, 193340

BERLIN, 196189

EARTH, 1990PRESENT

Because few historical walls can be dated with precision, and many cant be dated at all, the following timeline includes only a small set of prominent rulers and events highlighted in the text. All dates are AD unless otherwise indicated. The designation c. indicates circa.

An ancient wall, at least four thousand years old, sits abandoned in a desolate region of Syria. To its west lie cities, some ancient, some modern, many now ruined by wars, also both ancient and modern. To its east lies only wasteland, a vast dry steppe that becomes progressively drier as one follows it farther east until it finally ends in desert. The wall stretches well over one hundred miles, and at its southernmost tip it turns sharply west, as if to cut off the mountains to its south. It briefly climbs the Anti-Lebanon Range, where it ends abruptly on a crest.

The Syrian wall is a tumbled ruin now, so unremarkable as to have gone completely undiscovered for thousands of years. Even in its heyday, it wouldnt have been especially impressive. The dry stones that sprawl across the sunbaked ground couldnt have been stacked much higher than a few feet. An additional layer, consisting of dirt, might once have extended the height of the structure, but only by another foot or so.

Historians, frustrated by the lack of inscriptions on the stones, find the monument a bit of a cipher. They study a map whose design has changed little in four thousand years: civilization on one side of the structure, barren waste on the other. Its as if some ancient king had ordered the construction of a wall against the wasteland. But who builds a wall against wasteland?

* * *

Well north of Syria, a far more famous wasteland sprawls across two continents, where interconnected meadows and deserts form the dominant physical feature of the Eurasian landmass. The immense Eurasian Steppethe Great Steppe, to manyextends some five thousand miles from its western end in the Carpathian Mountains to its eastern end in Manchuria. It is a forbidding place. In many areas, its vast oceans of grassland appear only seasonally, before the summer sun roasts the hardy weeds and nearly extinguishes plant life altogether. Scorching winds then blow across the dusty landscape like the hot air released by the opening of an oven door. Eventually, winter arrives, bringing not relief but another kind of hell. Unbearable cold prevails, along with a layer of snow frozen so hard that grazing animals bloody their muzzles trying to poke through the icy shell for something to eat.