The Seven Wonders of the World Suck. What Can We Do About It?

Oct 9

Oct 9 The Seven Wonders of the World Suck. What Can We Do About It?

For as long as humans have existed on Earth, we’ve been obsessed with categorizing, listing, and ranking the world around us. Evidence: all of YouTube. “Top 10s” are truly the kind of genre that you look at think “Hey, I could do that!” Trust me. You could.

But anyway, one of our favorite pastimes as humans is figuring out cool things our ancestors did and putting them on lists. Chief among these lists are those “Wonders of the World” everyone keeps talking about. The most well-known of these are the “Ancient Wonders of the World,” but nowadays we’ve got New Wonders, Natural Wonders, Underwater Wonders, Modern Wonders, Man-Made Wonders, and Solar System Wonders, to name a few. To keep this short, let’s just focus on the classic “Ancient” list.

There’s something striking about that list of great places on Earth. If you thought about it for a while, you’ll come up with it, but here’s a map to jog your thinking.

When you look at it…these Ancient Wonders are shockingly close together. They also happen to be centered in and around the Roman world, hinting toward the fact that these seven locations were chosen in Rome, by Romans.

There are some pretty obvious problems with that. First, Rome sort of declared itself the arbiter of wonderfulness and selected seven locations, all within about 1000 miles of each other. What did they miss out on? Second, for all their magnificence, only the Great Pyramid exists today. These locations sound great, but good luck seeing them in person. And finally, I’m going to take a swing at the Hanging Gardens of Babylon here, which we don’t know the location of and may not have ever existed.

This is no fun! Today, I want to tell you about some new locations that are just as nice as the original seven, exist now, and are conceivable to visit if you live outside Greece, Egypt, or Turkey.

Stonehenge

age: roughly 5,000 years
location: Wiltshire, England
note: A classic, yes, but not represented on the original list. If you’re looking for ancient superstructures that people shouldn’t have been able to build given their circumstances, it’s tough to overlook the OG.

Saint Sophia's Cathedral.jpg — Saint Sophia’s Cathedral

age: about 1,000 years
location: Kiev, Ukraine
note: It’s a bit surprising that we still have this building today: it survived decades of Russian and USSR politics, wars, and revolutions relatively unscathed. It was originally based on the Hagia Sophia, but it’s taken on a life of its own as a symbol of Ukraine and its Christian tradition.

Nazca Lines - Pelican.jpg — Nazca Lines

age: 1,500-2,500 years
location: Nazca Desert, Peru
note: You’re looking at the Pelican, one of about 80 depictions of animals. Beyond that, there are about 1000 other lines and geometric shapes carved into the land. They’re best enjoyed from the air above, so spare a thought for the ancient people who painstakingly built them from the ground.

Poverty Point

age: 3,200-3,800 years
location: West Carroll Parish, Louisiana, USA
note: This artist’s depiction shows how Poverty Point may have looked at its peak. It is an earthworks, meaning that dirt was manually transported to construct large hills, crevices, and dams. The tallest of the six hills constructed is 72 feet (22 meters) tall! It is unclear what the Poverty Point site was used for, although historians suspect a long-term community, religious, or astronomical purposes.

Mont-Saint Michel — Mont-Saint-Michel

age: about 1,500 years
location: Normandy, France
note: Mont-Saint-Michel is located on a tidal island off the northern coast of France. During low tide, it’s a peninsula jutting out into the water, but during high tide, water rises and makes it a true island. There are actually hotels you can stay at *inside* the building! They’re probably prohibitively expensive, admittedly, but it’s worth visiting just for its magnificent architecture.

Nan Madol.jpg — Nan Madol

age: roughly 1800 years
location: Temwen Island, Federated States of Micronesia
note: Nan Madol was a city / temple complex constructed on an island in the Pacific Ocean. Very little is known about the history of the city, leading to a number of conspiracy theories and popular imaginings of the island’s past. According to some, the city was constructed by twin sorcerers. The island is also cited as a modern-day Atlantis, a portion of a lost continent, or a highly advanced civilization wiped out in dramatic fashion.

Costa Rican stone spheres — Stone spheres of Costa Rica

age: about 1,500 years
location: Palmar Sur, Costa Rica
note: There are roughly 300 large stone spheres littered around Palmar Sur. The largest of them are over 6 feet in diameter. Originally, more were created, but some European colonialists blew the spheres up, thinking they had gold inside them. The culture of the people who made them was ultimately destroyed by European arrival. We're not quite sure what they were ever created or used for, but I like to imagine the biggest, most dangerous bowling match in ancient history.

Aren’t those a bit better? At the very least, they’re less condensed than the original seven, although we’re still missing Africa and Asia, if you’re not counting Ukraine as part of Asia. But after searching through the entirety of 1,100+ UNESCO World Heritage Sites, these are the ones that most stood out to me. They look pretty cool, they’re from the far past, and fewer people are missing out on the fun.

Which is your favorite? Are there any you didn’t know existed? Would you visit one? I’ll stop asking questions now. If you go back to the list of locations, you can actually click on each image to visit its Wikipedia page and learn more. Here are my proposed new wonders on that same map from earlier:

The “Seven Wonders of the Ancient World” suck. Here’s hoping mine suck just a little bit less.

~Jacob

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