World Cultures: Miracle

Taj Mahal in India

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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrUUExajcVAt3Rnvnlhe6wwL9nFB7brKeuVCc2sPY8OhDqYYCgcKxapZPW54niF63uoBElD5DRjqCKf2znonB8X8e2L1NVEIBXLw-Oui5oSgNKg3o2kssdCT7gTu0wUUpSrKlW3hSh0FU/s1600/india-866692_640.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="128" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrUUExajcVAt3Rnvnlhe6wwL9nFB7brKeuVCc2sPY8OhDqYYCgcKxapZPW54niF63uoBElD5DRjqCKf2znonB8X8e2L1NVEIBXLw-Oui5oSgNKg3o2kssdCT7gTu0wUUpSrKlW3hSh0FU/s200/india-866692_640.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This immense mausoleum was built on the orders of Shah Jahan, the fifth Muslim Mogul emperor, to honor the memory of his beloved late wife.</span> Built out of white marble and standing in formally laid-out walled gardens, the Taj Mahal is regarded as the most perfect jewel of Muslim art in India. The emperor was consequently jailed and, it is said, could then only see the Taj Mahal out of his small cell window.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Construction of the mausoleum was essentially completed in 1643 but work continued on other phases of the project for another 10 years. The Taj Mahal complex is believed to have been completed in its entirety in 1653 at a cost estimated at the time to be around 32 million rupees, which in 2015 would be approximately 52.8 billion rupees (US$827 million). The construction project employed some 20,000 artisans under the guidance of a board of architects led by the court architect to the emperor, Ustad Ahmad Lahauri.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The Taj Mahal was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983 for being "the jewel of Muslim art in India and one of the universally admired masterpieces of the world's heritage". Described by the Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore, as "the tear-drop on the cheek of time", it is regarded by many as the best example of Mughal architecture and a symbol of India's rich history. The Taj Mahal attracts 7–8 million visitors a year. In 2007, it was declared a winner of the New7Wonders of the World (2000–2007) initiative. read more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taj_Mahal</span></div>

Taj Mahal in India

This immense mausoleum was built on the orders of Shah Jahan, the fifth Muslim Mogul emperor, to honor the memory of his beloved late wif...

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Machu Picchu

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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaWTTBOzzX59TDxgJWl5Cfd6eZVBLA8NUkZmk2E5B6X-vgLiSwOlDhC7sTKxgrhhWvM_suXbAXeMVihNNdg7Z0YEIwHEpd_AqvqXg5ZmRLvZxktOIMVAhHGf5SX_ECqhf1h2sOLelxSlA/s1600/mountains-1031173_640.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaWTTBOzzX59TDxgJWl5Cfd6eZVBLA8NUkZmk2E5B6X-vgLiSwOlDhC7sTKxgrhhWvM_suXbAXeMVihNNdg7Z0YEIwHEpd_AqvqXg5ZmRLvZxktOIMVAhHGf5SX_ECqhf1h2sOLelxSlA/s200/mountains-1031173_640.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Machu Picchu (in hispanicized spelling, Spanish pronunciation: [ˈmatʃu ˈpiktʃu]) or Machu Pikchu (Quechua machuold, old person, pikchu peak; mountain or prominence with a broad base which ends in sharp peaks,[1] "old peak", pronunciation [ˈmɑtʃu ˈpixtʃu]) is a 15th-century Inca site located 2,430 metres (7,970 ft) above sea level.[2][3] It is located in the Cusco Region, Urubamba Province, Machupicchu District in Peru.[4]</div>
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It is situated on a mountain ridge above the Sacred Valley which is 80 kilometres (50 mi) northwest of Cuzco and through which the Urubamba River flows. Most archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was built as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472). Often mistakenly referred to as the "Lost City of the Incas" (a title more accurately applied to Vilcabamba), it is the most familiar icon of Inca civilization.</div>
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The Incas built the estate around 1450, but abandoned it a century later at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Although known locally, it was not known to the Spanish during the colonial period and remained unknown to the outside world before being brought to international attention in 1911 by the American historian Hiram Bingham. Most of the outlying buildings have been reconstructed in order to give tourists a better idea of what the structures originally looked like.[5] By 1976, 30% of Machu Picchu had been restored;[5] restoration continues today.[6]</div>
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Machu Picchu was declared a Peruvian Historical Sanctuary in 1981 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983.[3] In 2007, Machu Picchu was voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in a worldwide Internet poll.</div>
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Machu Picchu was built in the classical Inca style, with polished dry-stone walls. Its three primary structures are the Inti Watana, the Temple of the Sun, and the Room of the Three Windows. </div>
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read more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machu_Picchu</div>

Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu (in hispanicized spelling, Spanish pronunciation: [ˈmatʃu ˈpiktʃu]) or Machu Pikchu (Quechua machuold, old person, pikchu pe...

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The Great Wall of China

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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7f_XG-9iMDGdj4CclbKLYJ-w9Mm4kPQ6YmvT2XVzDQoKgMEuahNurrJoefTsTLsL2rV9D9sOCRaw4YaA7guvcdIJaMFdAqTsEH5DU7Br0FszFjtHTDtP3nhQSIkz9j2YfbopdLUG_4r8/s1600/chinese-1028101_640.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7f_XG-9iMDGdj4CclbKLYJ-w9Mm4kPQ6YmvT2XVzDQoKgMEuahNurrJoefTsTLsL2rV9D9sOCRaw4YaA7guvcdIJaMFdAqTsEH5DU7Br0FszFjtHTDtP3nhQSIkz9j2YfbopdLUG_4r8/s200/chinese-1028101_640.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Great Wall</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The Great Wall of China is a series of fortifications made of stone, brick, tamped earth, wood, and other materials, generally built along an east-to-west line across the historical northern borders of China to protect the Chinese states and empires against the raids and invasions of the various nomadic groups of the Eurasian Steppe. Several walls were being built as early as the 7th century bce;[2] these, later joined together and made bigger and stronger, are now collectively referred to as the Great Wall.[3] Especially famous is the wall built 220–206 bce by Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. Little of that wall remains. Since then, the Great Wall has on and off been rebuilt, maintained, and enhanced; the majority of the existing wall is from the Ming Dynasty. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Other purposes of the Great Wall have included border controls, allowing the imposition of duties on goods transported along the Silk Road, regulation or encouragement of trade and the control of immigration and emigration. Furthermore, the defensive characteristics of the Great Wall were enhanced by the construction of watch towers, troop barracks, garrison stations, signaling capabilities through the means of smoke or fire, and the fact that the path of the Great Wall also served as a transportation corridor.</span></div>
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The Great Wall stretches from Dandong in the east, to Lop Lake in the west, along an arc that roughly delineates the southern edge of Inner Mongolia. A comprehensive archaeological survey, using advanced technologies, has concluded that the Ming walls measure 8,850 km (5,500 mi).[4] This is made up of 6,259 km (3,889 mi) sections of actual wall, 359 km (223 mi) of trenches and 2,232 km (1,387 mi) of natural defensive barriers such as hills and rivers.[4] Another archaeological survey found that the entire wall with all of its branches measure out to be 21,196 km (13,171 mi).[5]</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Names</span></div>
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The collection of fortifications now known as "The Great Wall of China" has historically had a number of different names in both Chinese and English.</div>
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In Chinese histories, the term "Long Wall(s)" (長城, changcheng) appears in Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian, where it referred to both the separate great walls built between and north of the Warring States and to the more unified construction of the First Emperor.[6] The Chinese character 城 is a phono-semantic compound of the "place" or "earth" radical 土 and 成, whose Old Chinese pronunciation has been reconstructed as *deŋ.[7] It originally referred to the rampart which surrounded traditional Chinese cities and was used by extension for these walls around their respective states; today, however, it is much more often simply the Chinese word for "city".[8]</div>
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The longer Chinese name "Ten-Thousand-Mile Long Wall" (萬里長城, Wanli Changcheng) came from Sima Qian's description of it in the Records, though he did not name the walls as such. The ad 493 Book of Song quotes the frontier general Tan Daoji referring to "the long wall of 10,000 miles", closer to the modern name, but the name rarely features in pre-modern times otherwise.[9] The traditional Chinese mile (里, lǐ) was an often irregular distance that was intended to show the length of a standard village and varied with terrain but was usually standardized at distances around a third of an English mile (540 m).[10] Since China's metrication in 1930, it has been exactly equivalent to 500 metres or 1,600 feet,[11] which would make the wall's name describe a distance of 5,000 km (3,100 mi). However, this use of "ten-thousand" (wàn) is figurative in a similar manner to the Greek and English myriad and simply means "innumerable" or "immeasurable".[12]</div>
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Because of the wall's association with the First Emperor's supposed tyranny, the Chinese dynasties after Qin usually avoided referring to their own additions to the wall by the name "Long Wall".[13] Instead, various terms were used in medieval records, including "frontier(s)" (塞, sāi),[14] "rampart(s)" (垣, yuán),[14] "barrier(s)" (障, zhàng),[14] "the outer fortresses" (外堡, wàibǎo),[15] and "the border wall(s)" (t 邊牆, s 边墙, biānqiáng).[13] Poetic and informal names for the wall included "the Purple Frontier" (紫塞, Zǐsāi)[16] and "the Earth Dragon" (t 土龍, s 土龙, Tǔlóng).[17] Only during the Qing period did "Long Wall" become the catch-all term to refer to the many border walls regardless of their location or dynastic origin, equivalent to the English "Great Wall".[18]</div>
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The current English name evolved from accounts of "the Chinese wall" from early modern European travelers.[18] By the 19th century,[18] "The Great Wall of China" had become standard in English, French, and German, although other European languages continued to refer to it as "the Chinese wall".[12]</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">History (Early Wal)</span></div>
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The Chinese were already familiar with the techniques of wall-building by the time of the Spring and Autumn period between the 8th and 5th centuries bce.[19] During this time and the subsequent Warring States period, the states of Qin, Wei, Zhao, Qi, Yan, and Zhongshan[20][21] all constructed extensive fortifications to defend their own borders. Built to withstand the attack of small arms such as swords and spears, these walls were made mostly by stamping earth and gravel between board frames.</div>
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King Zheng of Qin conquered the last of his opponents and unified China as the First Emperor of the Qin dynasty ("Qin Shi Huang") in 221 bce. Intending to impose centralized rule and prevent the resurgence of feudal lords, he ordered the destruction of the sections of the walls that divided his empire among the former states. To position the empire against the Xiongnu people from the north, however, he ordered the building of new walls to connect the remaining fortifications along the empire's northern frontier. Transporting the large quantity of materials required for construction was difficult, so builders always tried to use local resources. Stones from the mountains were used over mountain ranges, while rammed earth was used for construction in the plains. There are no surviving historical records indicating the exact length and course of the Qin walls. Most of the ancient walls have eroded away over the centuries, and very few sections remain today. The human cost of the construction is unknown, but it has been estimated by some authors that hundreds of thousands,[22] if not up to a million, workers died building the Qin wall.[23][24] Later, the Han,[25] the Sui, and the Northern dynasties all repaired, rebuilt, or expanded sections of the Great Wall at great cost to defend themselves against northern invaders.[26] The Tang and Song dynasties did not undertake any significant effort in the region.[26] The Liao, Jin, and Yuan dynasties, who ruled Northern China throughout most of the 10th–13th centuries, constructed defensive walls in the 12th century but those were located much to the north of the Great Wall as we know it, within China's province of Inner Mongolia and in Mongolia itself.[27]</div>
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<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Wall_of_China" target="_blank">From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</a></i></div>
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The Great Wall of China

Great Wall The Great Wall of China is a series of fortifications made of stone, brick, tamped earth, wood, and other materials, general...

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