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Gotta love Benin's flag: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Benin

The walls of Benin were earthworks; the Great Wall of China is a massive, impressive stone fortification. The latter tends to captivate people's attention much more (most people don't realize that the modern, stone walls of the Great Wall of China are not how it existed for most of history).

>I'm surprised the longest wall in the world is not even mentioned in western education

It's no surprise it's not mentioned in the US. Thanks to a bunch of college students and religious extremists (granted they look like the Amish compared to more recent extremists but in the day they were certainly extremists) 40yr ago Iran went straight to the bottom of the priority list and there's never enough time to teach everything so only the highest priority items get covered.

But it doesn't exist anymore - not as useful for show and tell.