A big hole has been dug into one of the Seven Wonders of the World: Here’s what happened

From the Taj Mahal to the heights of Machu Picchu, the Seven Wonders of the Worlddo make you, well, wonder. Unfortunately, one of these mystical, magical sites has recently had a big hole dug out of it with an excavator.

The BBC reports that a section of China’s Great Wall has been dug out by two people, a 38-year-old woman and a 55-year-old man, who were working near the area. It is suspected that they used an excavator to dig the hole so that the machine could pass through, thereby creating a shortcut for the construction work they were carrying out.

The Great Wall's significance

The Great Wall of China is one of the largest building construction projects ever undertaken,and it was most definitely erected before we had machines like excavators to help the process along.

The structure is actually made up of several walls, many of them parallel to each other, and the earliest parts of it date back to around 220 BC. The Great Wall became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1987.

What the police are saying about the hole

The police were notified that there was a big hole in the wall on 24 August. This becomes more significant when you realise how little of the wall remains in good condition. A report from the Beijing Times suggested that more than 30% of the Ming Great Wall has disappeared already, with 8% of it still considered well-preserved. That was in 2016, so we can imagine the situation has only worsened since then.

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Police have stated that these two people have caused ‘irreversible damage to the integrity of the Ming Great Wall and to the safety of the cultural relics’. The BBC’s China correspondent, Stephen McDonell, has added that large sections of the wall have been damaged over the years as farmers have stolen stones and portions of the structure have even become unrecognizable.

That being said, McDonell explains that the government has made huge efforts recently to preserve this significant structure. He therefore suggests that officials will be very upset by the actions of this pair of vandals.

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Sources used:

BBC:China's Great Wall damaged by workers looking for shortcut

Beijing Times