7 fascinating UNESCO World Heritage Sites

Here are 7 often-overlooked World Heritage Sites, each with its own history.

Photo by Raunaq Patel on Unsplash
  • 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.
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Culture & Religion

Behold, the face of a Neolithic dog

He was a very good boy.

Image source: Historic Environment Scotland
  • A forensic artist in Scotland has made a hyper realistic model of an ancient dog.
  • It was based on the skull of a dog dug up in Orkney, Scotland, which lived and died 4,000 years ago.
  • The model gives us a glimpse of some of the first dogs humans befriended.
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Surprising Science

Your expressive face tells the story of human evolution — conveying emotion was essential

There are reasons you look the way you do.

Image source: 80's Child / ArtFamily / Shutterstock / Big Think
  • A panel of eight experts in the evolution of the human face have collaborated on a new summary of how we've changed.
  • Their paper promotes the importance of social interaction as a factor in the structure of our visages.
  • We can visually express more than 20 categories of emotion. Early humans not so much.
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Surprising Science

The return of the 'stoned ape' theory

A long-ridiculed theory about humankind's early leap of consciousness is revived.

Photo credit: Elena Schweitzer / procy / Shutterstock / Big Think
  • Terence McKenna first proposed psychedelic mushrooms as the trigger for our rapid cognitive evolution.
  • McKenna's theory was called the "Stoned Ape Hypothesis."
  • The hypothesis is being revisited as a possible answer to a vexxing evolutionary riddle.
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Mind & Brain

Ancient Egyptian sarcophagus to be opened on live TV this weekend

The artifact will be opened on Sunday, for the first time in millennia, at an undisclosed location in Egypt.

Egyptian mummy. (Photo Andrea Izzotti/Shutterstock)
  • The show is called Expedition Unknown: Egypt Live and it airs Sunday, April 7, at 8 p.m. E.T.
  • The undisclosed site is reported to have produced multiple ancient artifacts.
  • It might be little more than a media spectacle, but some say that's not a problem as long as it gets people interested in the preservation of ancient artifacts.
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Culture & Religion