Selected Timeline

Because few historical walls can be dated with precision, and many can’t 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.”

	NEAR EAST AND CENTRAL ASIA	EUROPE	CHINA	AMERICAS
c. 2000 BC	Shulgi, king of Ur, builds the Wall of the Land
c. 1900s BC	Pharaoh Amenemhat I builds the Wall of the Ruler
c. 1600–1100 BC		Mycenaean Greece
c. 800 BC			Border wall of Nan Chung
500s BC	Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, wall builder	Spartan reforms, rejection of walls		Walls of El Mirador, Guatemala
c. 450 BC		Athenian Long Walls
214 BC			First Emperor constructs Long Wall
141–87 BC			Emperor Wu of Han, wall builder
c. 78		Earliest literary reference to Alexander’s Gates
100s		Roman emperor Hadrian, wall builder
c. 280–380	Shah Shapur II, wall builder	Roman emperor Diocletian, wall builder	Western Jin dynasty walls
c. 400s	Oasis walls at Samarkand, other cities	Fall of Western Roman Empire	Northern Wei dynasty walls
c. 500s	Shah Khosrow I, Persia, wall builder	Byzantine emperor Justinian, wall builder	Northern Qi and Sui dynasty walls
c. 600s			Emperor Yang of Sui, wall builder
c. 700s	Various Central Asian border walls
c. 900–1200		Dragon Walls, Ukraine	Liao and Jin dynasty walls
c. 1200s	Mongol invasions	Mongol invasions	Mongol invasions	Extensive palisades at Cahokia, Illinois
c. 1400s		Fall of Constantinople and construction of Irish Pale	Ming dynasty begins construction of Great Wall	Great Wall of the Inca, Bolivia
1989		Fall of Berlin Wall