- UNESCO World Heritage Sites are locations of high value to humanity, either for their cultural, historical, or natural significance.
- Some are even designated as World Heritage Sites because humans don't go there at all, while others have felt the effects of too much human influence.
- These 7 UNESCO World Heritage Sites each represent an overlooked or at-risk facet of humanity's collective cultural heritage.
There are over 1,000 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in places ranging from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, each with some significant cultural or natural history attached. While many of these places serve as tourist destinations, the World Heritage Sites are designated as such for their cultural, historical, and natural significance. Understanding the significance of over 1,000 areas around the world is far too daunting a task, so here's just seven of the most unique UNSCO World Heritage Sites. For the most part, this list will avoid mentioning already well-known sites like Machu Pichu and will instead focus on those sites that don't get as much love.
1. The Buddhas of Bamiyan
The Buddha statue in 1963 (left) and after its destruction in 2008 (right).
Wikimedia Commons
In Afghanistan's Bamiyan valley stood two massive Buddha statues, hundreds of feet tall, carved straight into the side of a cliff. The Silk Road cut through Bamiyan, which became an important monastery for Buddhist monks as well as a center of art and philosophy in the ancient world. The monks carved caves throughout the Bamiyan mountains where they lived, and some time between the 3rd and 6th centuries, they carved these massive Buddha statues.
Unfortunately, the Taliban blew up the two Buddha statues in 2001, declaring them to be idols and in protest of funds reserved for the statues' preservation that could have been used to feed the Afghani population, which was experiencing a famine at the time.
Since then, the various UNESCO member states have gone back and forth on plans to restore the statues. As of this writing, it seems like a restoration will be going ahead in the near future. Even without the Buddha statues, however, the site is still an impressive place, perhaps even more so for its tragic history.
2. Petra
Al Khazneh, or "the Treasury" of Petra.
Photo by Andrea Leopardi on Unsplash
Over 11,000 years ago, a people called the Nabataeans settled in a mountain basin in modern-day Jordan in a place we call Petra. Over time, they carved a massive city out from the rose-colored stone of the surrounding mountains. At its peak, the city hosted 20,000 inhabitants.
The city sprawls across the mountain side, half-carved and half-built, covering 102 square miles. Incredibly, archaeologists estimate that 85% of the city still remains buried and unexplored.
3. The Rock Islands
Jellyfish Lake in the Rock Islands of Palau. The lake is so-named because of the diversity of the many jellyfish species that inhabits it.
Wikimedia Commons
Located in the island state of Palau, the Rock Islands' name belies their stunning natural beauty. There are about 300 islands in this archipelago, and the last census conducted in the region put their population at 6.
The islands are the remains of ancient coral reefs and limestone, and while they themselves are quite beautiful, the real treasure lies beneath them, in the waters. The coral reefs and diverse marine life make this spot a mecca for divers. The islands also boast a number of blue holes, marine sinkholes that make for a striking landscape and diving environment.
4. Hampi
The Vitthala temple of Hampi.
The more-than 1,600 ruins of Hampi are the remains of the Vijayanagara Empire, the last great Hindu kingdom in India. The exact age of the site is difficult to pin down, but the oldest archeological finds date to the 3rd century BCE.
Hampi is primarily known for the incredible architecture used in the design of its many temples, forts, shrines, halls, and complexes. Of particular note is the Vitthala temple and its community hall, which contains 56 stone pillars of varying shapes and sizes that produce musical notes when struck.
5. Samarra
The spiral minaret of Samarra.
Unfortunately, many world heritage sites are located in places with a history of conflict. Samarra can be found in Iraq and was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, which existed from the 6th century to the 16th.
Samarra contains a great number of Islamic holy sites, including the Great Mosque of Samarra and its spiraling minaret. Many of these sites became the target of sectarian violence in the mid-2000s, particularly the al-Askari Mosque. In 2006, the mosque's golden dome was bombed, and in 2007, its minarets were destroyed by al-Qaeada. While Iraq remains a dangerous place to travel to, it has fortunately become much less so in modern times. Hopefully, its cultural history can be preserved.
6. Gough and Inaccessible Islands
The steep cliffs of Gough and Inaccessible Islands.
By Ron Van Oers
Although they tend to attract tourists and sightseers, not all of the UNESCO World Heritage sites are intended to be visited. As the name might suggest, Gough and Inaccessible Islands are famous for being remarkably untouched by humans. As a result, their natural ecosystem is unprecedentedly pristine, making these islands among the most untampered-with places on Earth.
Located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the islands jut out of the water, forming steep cliffs that make them… well, inaccessible. They're home to several species that breed exclusively on the islands, and owing to their isolation and pristine nature, they're invaluable to biological research.
7. The Everglades National Park
The Everglades from above.
Wikimedia Commons
While the Everglades are certainly better known than many of the UNESCO sites on this list, it was included because it may not exist for very long. The Everglades, which have been described as "a sea of grass flowing imperceptibly from the hinterland into the sea," is an important ecological area with diverse animal life, including crocodiles, wading birds, and the threatened manatee.
UNESCO added the Everglades to its list of World Heritage Sites in Danger in 2010, and for good reason. Poor water management has resulted in the drainage of much of the park as well as high levels of nitrates and mercury. Developers have begun constructing buildings along the park's borders, often encroaching into the boundaries of the park itself. Invasive species have moved into the area, disrupting the natural balance of the native ecosystem. But the biggest threat is rising sea levels as a result of climate change, which threaten to put most of the park underwater. If you're hoping to visit the park and experience its rare and unique ecosystem, now's the time.
This is going to force a major shift in the way we see these early hominids. Researchers had thought that Neanderthals were profoundly primitive, and just barely human. This cave in France's Aveyron Valley changes all that: It's suddenly obvious that Neanderthals were not quite so unlike us.
According to The Atlantic, Bruniquel Cave was first explored in 1990 by Bruno Kowalsczewski, who was 15 at the time. He'd spent three years digging away at rubble covering a space through which his father felt air moving.
Some members of a local caving club managed to squeeze through the narrow, 30-meter long tunnel Kowalsczewski had dug to arrive in a passageway. They followed it past pools of water and old animal bones for over 330 meters before coming into a large chamber and a scene they had no reason to expect: Stalagmites that someone had broken into hundreds of small pieces, most of which were arranged into two rings—one roughly 6 meters across, and one 2 meters wide—with the remaining pieces stacked into one of four piles or leaning against the rings. There were also indications of fires and burnt bones.
Image source: Etienne FABRE - SSAC
What the?
A professional archeologist, Francois Rouzaud, determined with carbon dating that a burnt bear bone found in the chamber was 47,600 years old, which made the stalagmite structures older than any known cave painting. It also put the cave squarely within the age of the Neanderthals since they were the only humans in France that early. No one had suspected them of being capable of constructing complex forms or doing anything that far underground.
After Rouzard suddenly died in 1999, exploration at the cave stopped until life-long caver Sophie Verheyden, vacationing in the area, heard about it and decided to try and uranium-date the stalagmites inside.
The team she assembled eventually determined that the stalagmites had been broken up by people 176,000 years ago, way farther back even than Rouzard had supposed.
There weren't any signs that Neanderthals lived in the cave, so it's a mystery what they were up to down there. Verheyden thinks it's unlikely that a solitary artist created the tableaux, and so an organized group of skilled workers must've been involved. And “When you see such a structure so far into the cave, you think of something cultural or religious, but that's not proven," Verheyden told The Atlantic.
Whatever they built, the Bruniquel Cave reveals some big surprises about Neanderthals: They had fire, they built things, and likely used tools. Add this to recent discoveries that suggest they buried their dead, made art, and maybe even had language, and these mysterious proto-humans start looking a lot more familiar. A lot more like homo sapiens, and a lot more like distant cousins lost to history.
Paul Hudson/Flickr
Obscure freaky smiling psycho man
When considering what precisely makes someone a psychopath, the lines can be blurry.
Psychological research has shown that many people in society have some degree of malevolent personality traits, such as those described by the "dark triad": narcissism (entitled self-importance), Machiavellianism (strategic exploitation and deceit), and psychopathy (callousness and cynicism). But while people who score high in these traits are more likely to end up in prison, most of them are well functioning and don't engage in extreme antisocial behaviors.
Now, a new study published in Cerebral Cortex found that the brains of psychopathic criminals are structurally and functionally similar to many well-functioning, non-criminal individuals with psychopathic traits. The results suggest that psychopathy isn't a binary classification, but rather a "constellation" of personality traits that "vary in the non-incarcerated population with normal range of social functioning."
Assessing your inner psychopath
The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare the brains of violent psychopathic criminals to those of healthy volunteers. All participants were assessed for psychopathy through commonly used inventories: the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised and the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale.
Both groups watched a 26-minute-long medley of movie scenes that were selected to portray a "large variability of social and emotional content." Some scenes depicted intense violence. As participants watched the medley, fMRI recorded how various regions of their brains responded to the content.
The goal was to see whether the brains of psychopathic criminals looked and reacted similarly to the brains of healthy subjects who scored high in psychopathic traits. The results showed similar reactions: When both groups viewed violent scenes, the fMRI revealed strong reactions in the orbitofrontal cortex and anterior insula, brain regions associated with regulating emotion.
These similarities manifested as a positive association: The more psychopathic traits a healthy subject displayed, the more their brains responded like the criminal group. What's more, the fMRI revealed a similar association between psychopathic traits and brain structure, with those scoring high in psychopathy showing lower gray matter density in the orbitofrontal cortex and anterior insula.
There were some key differences between the groups, however. The researchers noted that the structural abnormalities in the healthy sample were mainly associated with primary psychopathic traits, which are: inclination to lie, lack of remorse, and callousness. Meanwhile, the functional responses of the healthy subjects were associated with secondary psychopathic traits: impulsivity, short temper, and low tolerance for frustration.
Overall, the study further illuminates some of the biological drivers of psychopathy, and it adds nuance to common conceptions of the differences between psychopathy and being "healthy."
Why do some psychopaths become criminals?
The million-dollar question remains unanswered: Why do some psychopaths end up in prison, while others (or, people who score high in psychopathic traits) lead well-functioning lives? The researchers couldn't give a definitive answer, but they did note that psychopathic criminals had lower connectivity within "key nodes of the social and emotional brain networks, including amygdala, insula, thalamus, and frontal pole."
"Thus, even though there are parallels in the regional responsiveness of the brain's affective circuit in the convicted psychopaths and well-functioning subjects with psychopathic traits, it is likely that the disrupted functional connectivity of this network is specific to criminal psychopathy."
A year ago, the Center for Countering Digital Hate warned of the parallel pandemics — the biological contagion of COVID-19 and the social contagion of misinformation, aiding the spread of the disease. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, anti-vaccine accounts have gained 10 million new social media followers, while we have witnessed arson attacks against 5G masts, hospital staff abused for treating COVID patients, and conspiracists addressing crowds of thousands.
Many have refused to follow guidance issued to control the spread of the virus, motivated by beliefs in falsehoods about its origins and effects. The reluctance we see in some to get the COVID vaccine is greater amongst those who rely on social media rather than traditional media for their information. In a pandemic, lies cost lives, and it has felt like a new conspiracy theory has sprung up online every day.
How we, as social media users, behave in response to misinformation can either enable or prevent it from being seen and believed by more people.
The rules are different online
If a colleague mentions in the office that Bill Gates planned the pandemic, or a friend at dinner tells the table that the COVID vaccine could make them infertile, the right thing to do is often to challenge their claims. We don't want anyone to be left believing these falsehoods.
But digital is different. The rules of physics online are not the same as they are in the offline world. We need new solutions for the problems we face online.
Now, imagine that in order to reply to your friend, you must first hand him a megaphone so that everyone within a five-block radius can hear what he has to say. It would do more damage than good, but this is essentially what we do when we engage with misinformation online.
Think about misinformation as being like the coronavirus — when we engage with it, we help to spread it to everyone else with whom we come into contact. If a public figure with a large following responds to a post containing misinformation, they ensure the post is seen by hundreds of thousands or even millions of people with one click. Social media algorithms also push content into more users' newsfeeds if it appears to be engaging, so lots of interactions from users with relatively small followings can still have unintended negative consequences.
The trend of people celebrating and posting photos of themselves or loved ones receiving the vaccine has been far more effective than any attempt to disprove a baseless claim about Bill Gates or 5G mobile technology.
Additionally, whereas we know our friend from the office or dinner, most of the misinformation we see online will come from strangers. They often will be from one of two groups — true believers, whose minds are made up, and professional propagandists, who profit from building large audiences online and selling them products (including false cures). Both of these groups use trolling tactics, that is, seeking to trigger people to respond in anger, thus helping them reach new audiences and thereby gaming the algorithm.
On the day the COVID vaccine was approved in the UK, anti-vaccine activists were able to provoke pro-vaccine voices into posting about thalidomide, exposing new audiences to a reason to distrust the medical establishment. Those who spread misinformation understand the rules of the game online; it's time those of us on the side of enlightenment values of truth and science did too.
How to fight online misinformation
Of course, it is much easier for social media companies to take on this issue than for us citizens. Research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate and Anti-Vax Watch last month found that 65% of anti-vaccine content on social media is linked to just twelve individuals and their organizations. Were the platforms to simply remove the accounts of these superspreaders, it would do a huge amount to reduce harmful misinformation.
The problem is that social media platforms are resistant to do so. These businesses have been built by constantly increasing the amount of time users spend on their platforms. Getting rid of the creators of engaging content that has millions of people hooked is antithetical to the business model. It will require intervention from governments to force tech companies to finally protect their users and society as a whole.
So, what can the rest of us do, while we await state regulation?
Instead of engaging, we should be outweighing the bad with the good. Every time you see a piece of harmful misinformation, share advice or information from a trusted source, like the WHO or BBC, on the same subject. The trend of people celebrating and posting photos of themselves or loved ones receiving the vaccine has been far more effective than any attempt to disprove a baseless claim about Bill Gates or 5G mobile technology. In the attention economy that governs tech platforms, drowning out is a better strategy than rebuttal.
Imran Ahmed is CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
