
Iran's Great Wall Is Now Buried and Forgotten - benbreen
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/irans-great-wall-is-now-buried-and-forgotten
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scottshea
On more than one occasion I have lamented the issues with traveling to Iran
(as an American). There is so much history there that is fascinating.

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bbctol
The modern-day tensions are frustrating for many reasons. I always feel like
Persia is an under-discussed historical civilization in pop culture, and I
think that's due to modern perceptions, too much baggage associated with the
region. I might be imagining it, but when people talk about the great empires,
it's always Rome, Egypt, China, the Mongols... the first Persian empire
controlled up to half the world's population at its height, and is one of the
really fundamental civilizations of human history.

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behnamoh
You can see many tourists in Tehran and other cities of Iran. I don't think
foreigners have much trouble traveling to this historical country anymore,
esp. since most things (accommodation, transportation, food, and Persian
souvenirs!) cost much less than they do in France, Italy, etc.

I just don't understand the reason for all this hatred toward Iran and
Persians. Not saying that Persian Empires were all nice to other nations, but
seriously, remember what Mongols did to the middle Asia and you can understand
the difference between a well-cultured society and a vicious, barbaric one...

What did Persians do to deserve this much hatred? After all, they did not burn
black people alive in Africa just like the Spanish did.

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owenversteeg
Hmm. I agree that the hatred towards Iran and Persians is horrible, and I love
the Iranian people. And I agree that everything is inexpensive, and that it is
a fantastic place to travel to. I'll definitely be going back.

But traveling there is actually somewhat difficult. Information online about
the visa process is very hard to come by. Embassies will give you conflicting
answers, and the Iranian embassy in the Hague hung up on me twice. I just came
back from a visit to Iran and I have to say that seeing westerners is a rare
sight, even in Tehran. Excluding Tehran Khomeini airport (where I saw maybe 10
western tourists), I can count the number of westerners I saw - the entire
time I was there - on one hand.

Iran definitely doesn't have "many tourists" \- they have fewer than
Kazakhstan according to official figures. And the majority of these tourists
are Iranian in some way, which is probably because you need an invitation from
an Iranian to enter the country, and because if you don't speak Persian (or
have a Iranian friend to accompany you) you're SOL.

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LeifCarrotson
It's unfathomable to me that the (kiln-fired, admittedly) mud bricks in these
pictures are nearly unaffected after 1,500 years of being eroded by that
river.

>
> [http://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/36872/image.jp...](http://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/36872/image.jpg)

>
> [http://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/36873/image.jp...](http://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/36873/image.jpg)

> Even the river bed was diverted and channeled through the wall’s
> structures... Where the wall crosses a river, additional fortifications and
> dams were built to prevent covert infiltration by water. Bits of these
> fortifications still stand proudly, guiding the river’s course to this day.

What are we actually seeing in these images? Have they recently been
uncovered, or has the river course recently changed?

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stellar678
I thought the same thing at first, but I noticed the caption for the second
image called them "stones" and it looks more like a stone than a mud brick. I
guess they probably switched to a more durable material like stone when they
needed to build in the water?

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alistoriv
On a similar note, the Walls of Benin in Nigeria are almost entirely forgotten
today. Their combined length was almost 10,000 miles.

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aminok
"In northwestern Iran, running for almost 200 kilometers from the southeastern
shores of the Caspian Sea to the mountains of Bilikuh in the east"

This should read: "In northeastern Iran ..."

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eternalban
"40 x 40 x 10 centimeters"

I wonder if those are exact numbers. Entertaining notions of a sort of prob-
distribution of size for a human picked unit of length, and then the
probability of both 40 and 10 hitting precise centimeter units.

(why: I saw this out there youtube /g video a while back that claimed a unit
meter stone in front of a pyramid, and went for broke by suggesting it is in
fact an ancient unit secretly introduced by occult groups via the French
enlightenment thing. :)

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_ph_
Fascinating story - would have been great if there were a map of where the
wall was placed. Makes one wonder how much of human history has been
overlooked or forgotten.

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Kpourdeilami
This reminds me of the wall in Game of Thrones especially since "Gorgan", the
province that the wall is at, means wolves.

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pavlov
_In North America, running for over 3000 kilometers from the western shores of
California through vast lifeless deserts to the Rio Grande and the Gulf of
Mexico, lies the remains of the Great Wall of Don 'Ald - once the largest
defensive structure ever built._

 _Despite laying dormant and unknown for more than 1,500 years, recent
excavations have revealed that the Great Wall of Don 'Ald was a mighty
enterprise of significant cost and investment. The sheer size and scale of the
construction — larger than the combined area of the Roman-built Hadrian’s Wall
and Antonine Wall in the United Kingdom — shows how strategically important it
must have been to defend this open flank of the ancient American empire._

#FutureHistory

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nickik
Could you provide some more links (maybe podcast) for this.

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qb45
On a tangential note, Google isn't easily fooled:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=Great+Wall+of+Don'Ald](https://www.google.com/search?q=Great+Wall+of+Don'Ald)

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nickik
I can google shit myself. The problem is that google shows a lot of horseshit
as well, maybe the person who posted something has link to a great article or
something like that.

Specially with historical subject 'just googling' is dangerous because you
often land on pages that have a agenda. Very often nationalistic
Interpretation of history for example. Specially if you are not familiar with
a subject that is a huge problem.

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qb45
You have been duped and it wasn't even me who did it. Just click this damn
link already :)

> you often land on pages that have a agenda

Oh, that's totally true in this case. But really, any one will do. Or the
first few if you are _completely_ uninitiated.

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mannykannot
The problem was that the Huns wouldn't pay for it.

