The New 7 Wonders

Today a new list of the world’s “New 7 Wonders” was revealed today by way of a massive public internet voting campaign by a private organization. The final top seven vote getters were:

1. Great Wall of China
2. Colosseum, Italy
3. Petra, Jordan
4. Manu Pichu, Peru
5. Chichen Itza, Mexicó
6. Taj Mahal, India
7. Christ Redeemer, Brazil

There’s been some controversy over modernizing the original concept of the “Seven Wonders of the World” including the Vatican’s critcism that Christian monuments were deliberately ignored from the list, to Eygpt’s vehement objections to the Great Pyramid of Giza even being put to a vote at all since it is the last of the original ancient wonders remaining (thus it was given “honorary status” by the ‘New 7 Wonders’ committee).

However, I like the idea of a revisiting the list of impressive man-made cultural structures from around the world. And I don’t believe that by composing an “updated” 21st century list that we reject, diminish or even forget about the original 7, but rather the opposite. Clearly, there is more than seven “wonders” around the world today, and of course of lot of this fanfare will help boost the local tourism of the “new wonders”, but I think the promotional effort during the campaign helped to educate everyone worldwide of some of the remarkable cultural engineering achievements around the world as well as the need to protect such sites for future generations to be able to appreciate as we do today.

Though candidates like Easter Island, the Eiffel Tower, and the The Statue of Liberty were on the ballot, with all due respect, I’m glad they didn’t make it to the final seven when compared to the other sites listed. However, I find it disappointing that the Christ Redeemer statue in Brazil, although an impressive monument no doubt, would beat out other candidates such as Alhambra, Angkor and The Hagia Sophia — any of those three (in my opinion) are much more deserving of that 7th slot. But it was a public vote, and thus so it goes… but personally, my choice would have been for the Parthenon.

What would have been yours?

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