If the goal is to sanitize history there is an extensive list of candidates for potential destruction.
Destroying some of these objectionable monuments and other reminders of oppression will disappoint the untold numbers--even those who would take down statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton--whose bucket lists of places to visit might be wiped clean.
Let's start with the Great Wall of China, which began in 470-476 BCE It took more than seven dynasties, some 2000 years, to complete the 13,170-mile wall. It was initially completed during the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC). Some sections were rebuilt and extended during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1648).
Over the centuries different emperors used slaves and low-paid workers who were forced to toil like slaves. For example, Emperor Qin "used peasants, captured enemies, criminals, scholars, and anyone else who irritated him... Laborers were not paid for their work. It was slave labor." And the treatment of the workers was abominable: "Rocks fell on people. Walls caved in. Workers died of exhaustion and disease. Laborers were fed only enough food to keep them alive."
More than a million workers are estimated to have died during the construction. A well-known Chinese saying captures their grim fate: "Each stone in the wall represents a life lost in the wall's construction."
4500 years ago slaves and forced laborers built the Egyptian pyramids. The Torah, in the Book of Exodus, tells the story of the more than two hundred years when Jewish slaves were forced to work on the pyramids under the most unimaginable brutal conditions.
Jews were not alone. Many other people suffered similar fates in constructing tributes to the Pharaohs, who had little respect for the sanctity of life.
Classical Greece and imperial Rome launched massive projects across their empires such as the Acropolis (Greek) and Colosseum and Circus Maximus (Roman). The Greeks and the Romans were known for their brutal warfare. Their battles not only expanded their domains and power, they also fed their need for slaves to do domestic work--and more importantly, to construct imposing monuments. For example, after defeating the Scythians in 339 BC E, Alexander the Great's father, Philip II of Macedon, reportedly sold 20,000 women and children into slavery. And in one Roman victory in the first Punic war (264-241 BCE), a massive 75,000 slaves were acquired.
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