The subject of this episode
In which our two wandering detectives discover in the remote canyons of China’s Helan Shan mountain range a most peculiar set of small earthen formations – perfectly formed, uniformly distributed and dusted with a topping of white powder.
Was this an unfortunate outbreak of acne on the face of the Earth? The secret target range of a squadron of scatological birds? A display case of frosted mud pies created by an alien race of Nigella Lawsons?
We settled on the last option as our leading hypothesis. Emma ran her finger through the frosting of a pie and sampled it.
“I think we can rule out icing sugar,” she said.
I knew a Christmas pudding was too good to be true
Thus thwarted, we turned to more prosaic possibilities. The mud pies were always located in dry desert washes, at the mouths of canyons some distance from the nearest town. It appeared they were put there deliberately and carefully, most likely by humans, at some cost in time and money. And it was obvious they would wash away with the first decent rainstorm.
The mud pies in an especially large wash
The best we could come up with is that the pies might serve as a method of measuring the flow of these desert washes after significant storms. The local terrain clearly shows that some very large flash floods come out of the mountains during the summer “rainy” season. There’s probably no way of getting out to the area by car when the canyons are flooding, and all of the water would sink through the gravel before reaching any practical observation point. However, after the event it would be possible to drive out, see which pies washed away and which didn’t, and thereby derive an estimate of the volume of the flood.
We couldn’t think of any rational purpose the white powder might serve.
If you have a better solution, remember, there’s a Walking the Wall fridge magnet waiting for you if you submit a verifiably correct answer. Until someone does, the mud pies will have to remain an Unsolved Mystery of the Great Wall.
Hi Folks, sounds like things are going well, now that you are back on the wall…
What is the plan for you two at Christmas? We will be here, so let us know if we are including you in the Christmas dinner plans or not. We even have gingerbread house!
Cheers, and hope to hear from you soon.
By the way, are the mounds not meadow muffins? horse puckies? cow pies?
Karen xo
Hi
My guess is that they are the ancient equivalent of today’s speed bumps and the white powder covering them is there to entice the occasional passerby into having a new taste experience/sensation!
As usual great photos!
Eleanor
I’m guessing a massive Chinese government public works project employing thousands of workers to “Help make our desert more beautiful”. There are acorns in each mudpie, and the frosting is fertilizer. Seriously. We saw lots of obviously planted trees around China, probably to try hold back the desert and make the country more green. The fact that they are located in a place where they will wash away with the next rain is just how they ensure jobs for the people next year. And the next, and the next…..
If livestock is moved through the area… maybe they are salt licks? Possibly placed on a raised platform so that the salt licks are’nt washed away when there is a minor flood?
Hello again! re “mud-pies” – must surely have a visual purpose. P’haps they are leftovers from exercises in target-shooting practice or some other sort of military training activity. The army spends a lot of time in that part of the world. There’s a big airforce base nearby, too.
Although the annual rainfall near Helan Shan is very low, there are occassional extraordinary flash floods – hence the washouts along the Wall. Hard to imagine that the pies would have a role to play with the volumes of water that come through…..
How about droppings from line-dancing dinosaurs ???? Mx
If fires burned at night it would make it easier to see invadining armies bby night