The mysterious Gobi wall uncovered | Hacker News Reader

The mysterious Gobi wall uncovered

phys.org

70 pointsbikenaga20 comments

This wall is usually referred to as Wall of Chinggis, although it has nothing to do with Genghis Khan. Here’s another paper from Nature about it: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-020-0524-2.

Here’s an interesting link that gives place names so you can look up the wall on Google maps (not much to see): https://www.escapetomongolia.com/blog/wall-of-chinggis-in-do.... According to it the wall starts at Bayan-Adarga (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayan-Adarga,_Khentii) and continues to Gurvanzagal (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurvanzagal).

A better link:

https://www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2025/05/the-mysterious-gob...

I wish people would stop linking to phys.org. It's primarily a spam ad promoting agregation site...

Or, just link directly to the paper which isn't paywalled:

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/5/1087

Thanks for that link!

I didn't find it in my search...

In the phys.org article:

> The paper is published in the journal Land.

the word 'published' links to the MDPI paper

It's good to know the link was in the phys.org article. I didn't read it.

When I have interest in an article at that site, I search for the text of the headline, and try to identify the original source.

What aggregators do you prefer that surface papers similar to this one?

I generally don't use aggregator sites.

I scan/read ~20 journalistic websites each morning. In the modern meaning of "journalism", obviously these sites are also publishing news from elsewhere, but they also have their own staff, and generate original articles.

The usual ones: Wash Post, NY Times, Guardian, El Pais, Asahi Shimbun. But also a number of local news sites: San Diego Union, LA Times, San Jose Mercury, SFGate (aggregator?). I used to have tabs for Ars Technica and El Reg, but now I only open those in response to a specific article.

Probably the only true aggregator I use, is HN. Which I monitor via the ##hntop IRC channel on libera.chat.

I also subscribe to RSS feeds from about a dozen blag sites.

> Until now, its origins, function, and historical context remained largely unknown.

I'm pretty sure we know its function, though. Walls have one function, to be a barrier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_Veterans_Memorial is a wall, but not really intended to be a barrier.

One would hope it would be a barrier to future war, but humans seem to love crossing that one.

"The Gobi Wall was not just a barrier—it was a dynamic mechanism for governing movement, trade, and territorial control in a challenging environment."

Dynamic, like it moved around?

Or it had moving parts maybe, this mechanism? Oh, I guess they're thinking of soldiers. Part of the wall in a way.

I think they mean the wall gates could be opened and closed to control where people could travel.

Barriers can have different purposes though. e.g. One wall might be built because the people on one side want nothing to do with the other. Another might be built because the people on both sides are in a close economic relationship, but somebody else entirely wants to funnel that through choke points where intercourse can be taxed, monitored for information, etc..

Walls are just as commonly used as borders. Want your neighbour to not nick your land? Put up a wall. Make it heavy and a pain in the ass to move.

That's like saying the purpose of a blade is to cut, which while true, is a fairly useless statement. A blade may be an artisan's tool, or a soldier's weapon, or something you use to cut your food. All cutting implements but with quite different applications and functions.

So the question regarding the wall's function is what was it a barrier against? When we build houses, we put holes in the walls so that they are less of a barrier to people, yet remain an effective barrier against the external environment. Other walls are meant to be barriers to specific animals, yet completely permeable to others.

And it goes on to explain why that's not so straightforward:

"Contrary to the traditional view of such walls as solely defensive structures, the research highlights the Gobi Wall's multifunctional role in boundary demarcation, resource management, and the consolidation of imperial control."

Okay, so what's the Western Wall in Jerusalem for?

wall(8) (previously invoked from /bin) is a Unix command to "write all", and wall used to emit a humorous error message, which IIRC was output when you provided no text to send as a message:

  But what do you want to do with the wall?

And I believe this was, in turn, a reference to adventure games like Infocom's, where the parser may detect that you typed a recognized noun without a verb in front, like "hit wall" or "push wall" and give exactly the same message as a prompt to include a verb.

> Okay, so what's the Western Wall in Jerusalem for?

It's a retaining wall, it's a barrier holding back earth, supporting the man-made Temple Hill next to it. There used to be a Jewish temple there, and this wall kept the temple stable. That's why people pray there today, there used to be a temple. The wall itself was never meant to be a religious site.

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