Heritage

Do you know how many World Heritage Sites there are? Have a guess before you read on. No Googling. My guess was ... around 40.

Nope. There are 1,120 sites listed by Unesco, under whose auspices the sites are chosen. And sometimes unchosen. 868 on the list are cultural sites, such as Angkor Wat and Auschwitz Birkenau, 213 are natural, e.g. the Giant's Causeway and the Kilimanjaro National Park, and 39 are both - the Tasmanian Wilderness and Meteora, for example.

The United Kingdom is a State Party of the World Heritage Convention, which enables a state to identify and nominate properties in their national territory to be considered for inscription on the World Heritage List. In order to be a State Party, you have to agree to adhere to the World Heritage Convention which defines the kinds of sites eligible for inclusion and the responsibilities of the State Party in terms of conservation and other criteria.

Being a State Party provides access to the World Heritage Fund but also the Party contributes to that fund. A report commissioned for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport by PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2007 on the costs and benefits of World Heritage Site Status in the UK is so opaque and unhelpful to the casual reader that I gave up after 20 pages of what I can only describe as pure management consultancy speak. It describes benefits such as tourism, civic pride and social capital in terms that a sixth former could have done and is clearly a copy and paste job, for which the PWC partners were undoubtedly rubbing their hands with greedy glee. If you want your garden to be recommended for World Heritage status, don't read this report, ask me.

Of the 1,120 sites on the list, three are shown as Delisted. In other words, booted out:

• The Arabian Oryx Sanctuary
• Dresden Elbe Valley
• The City of Liverpool

The Arabian oryx, a kind of antelope,

was declared extinct in the wild and reintroduced, after a captive breeding programme, in 1982, in an area of Oman known for its unique desert ecosystem and protection of other endangered species. The site was delisted in 2007 after the government of Oman reduced the size of the conservation area by 90% amid "plans to proceed with hydrocarbon prospection". I take this to mean that digging for oil was more important than protecting the remaining 65 oryx (down from a peak of 450).

The Dresden Elbe Valley was originally listed for "outstanding cultural landscape with ... exceptional testimonies of court architecture and festivities". It was delisted in 2009 "due to the building of a four-lane bridge in the heart of the cultural landscape which meant that the property failed to keep its 'outstanding universal value as inscribed.'".

Liverpool - Maritime Mercantile City was originally listed as a World Heritage Site in 2004 for demonstrating "Outstanding Universal Value in terms of innovative technologies and dock construction from the 18th to the early 20th century and the quality and innovation of its architecture and cultural activities are contained within the boundaries of the six areas forming the property." Subsequently the city was placed on the "List of World Heritage in Danger" in 2012 following concerns about the proposed development of Liverpool Waters. When the residential development went ahead, the city was delisted this year and is no longer a World Heritage Site.

It seems that this bureaucratic organisation is flexing its muscles - "don't take us for a ride". Now there is concern that the proposed tunnel replacing the A303 near Stonehenge

will jeopardise that site's World Heritage status. Unesco has advised the Department of Transport that it would have an "adverse impact" on the site's status. The site will be placed on the "in danger of delisting" list if the project goes ahead.

I should declare that I have an interest in this. The A303 is my primary route from Cornwall to London and Kent, a journey I drive on a regular, albeit not frequent, basis. The part of the journey past Stonehenge is always extremely slow as two lanes merge into one from both directions. At times it can delay the trip by an hour or more. I believe that the argument against the tunnel by Save Britain's Heritage and others is that the Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites' "Outstanding Universal Value" could be affected by the "adverse impact it may have on the landscape, archaeological remains, hydrogeology and ecology of the site".

Now I am supremely unqualified to make judgements on hydrogeology, whatever that is, but I am instinctively suspicious of the "numerous messages from citizens from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" that Unesco's World Heritage Centre claims to have received on this issue. OK, it's a lobbying campaign and that's how pressure groups go about things but surely there is a balance here to be had. One the one side the undoubted benefits of removing a severe blockage of the flow of traffic from London to the South West; on the other, the potential damage to the site. I say "potential" because as far as I can see the archaeological damage is unspecified - there might be artifacts below the surface of the land to be removed in order to build the tunnel.

Of course there is often a balance to be had between development and conservation. But the World Heritage Convention has all the hallmarks of a huge bureaucratic leviathan, gobbling up money from contributor countries and, after deducting substantial management costs, giving it back to those countries. And taking upon itself to decide what is of "universal" cultural value and what is not. Is any of that really necessary or desirable?

I don't argue against the notion of heritage, nor that cultural sites can have historic, social and civic value. No nation claiming to be civilised would destroy sites such as Stonehenge. I do question whether there are sites of such great "universal" value that need protecting from rapacious, uncivilised governments. Who are we to judge whether the Pyramids should be protected? In any case, there is no serious danger of the Pyramids or the Parthenon being destroyed. And if they were, the World Heritage Convention would have only one sanction available: "you're no longer on our list, so there!"

My problem is that the World Heritage monster has grown out of control - 12 sites in its first year of existence, now over 1,100 - and needs to add more sites every year in order to justify its existence. In doing so, it seems to have broadened the definition of sites included and diluted the significance of "world heritage".

The UK has 32 World Heritage sites. In what way is "Dorset and East Devon coast" of "universal value"? Sure, we'll protect our coast but that's a choice we make as a nation. And have the means to decide whether to do so: elections. There is nothing an international quango can contribute.

The origins of the concept of shared international cooperation to protect historic sites - such as the campaign to dismantle and move the Abu Simbel temples in Egypt, so that they weren't destroyed by the construction of the Aswan High Dam in 1959 (50 countries contributed money) - are worthy of acknowledgement. But not as a precursor to an unnecessarily grandiose bureaucracy. 

Breaking news! Since I started writing this, five more sites have been added to the World Heritage list, including "the great spa towns of Europe". Including Bath.

Which was there before being listed and will still be there if it is no longer listed.

I instinctively felt that "world heritage" sounds like a good thing. Not so sure now. It didn't help the poor oryx.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

I'm unsure what I think about attempts to re-engineer the past. Statues, such as those of Cecil Rhodes. I wonder whether Rhodes would have been a fan of The Clash.

... if you want me off your back
Well, come on and let me know
Should I stay or should I go?

I generally approach these apparently binary issues with a touch of cynicism. I doubt they are simple matters. In the case of Rhodes, it may boil down to what a statue is for. Things change; the culture of a nation changes, as do the values of humankind. Statues don't; they are either there or not (ask Saddam Hussein). Perhaps statues should be temporary, with a limited lifespan. He's no longer interesting; let's put her up instead for the next year or so. Made of some cheap material to facilitate that. Or holograms, with a coded time limit; you wake up one morning and discover that David Lloyd George is no longer in Parliament Square Garden. "Oh, we switched him off; his time was up; Madonna will be there next week."

I know virtually nothing about Cecil Rhodes so am unwilling to venture an opinion of his suitability for deification in concrete. I can consider the arguments on both sides: leaving the statue standing is a necessary reminder of how we, the British, condoned genocide vs removing the statue means we no longer share those imperial values and should not appear to celebrate them. Both arguments seem to me flimsy, sounding a bit Orwellian. I suppose I think statues coagulate the past and I am much more interested in the future.

I rather think Rhodes would have echoed The Clash:

If I go there will be trouble
And if I stay it will be double
So ya gotta let me know
Should I stay or should I go?

The Colossus of Rhodes

One of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the Colossus of Rhodes is a statue of the Greek sun-god Helios. This is he.

Rhodes is an island in the Dodecanese group of Greece. The medieval city is a World Heritage Site. It's a beautiful island. I've been there but I didn't see the Colossus. Maybe I'm not ancient enough (although getting there). Mr Wiki tells us that "Rhodes' nickname is The Island of the Knights, named after the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, who ruled the island from 1310 to 1522." I didn't see any knights either.

The Colossus is referenced in Emma Lazarus' poem The New Colossus:

The ancient Colossus and the new Colossus are both about 33 metres high. One built to celebrate success in a year-long defensive war, the other defying oppressors and encompassing all humankind (the seven stars on her crown may represent the seven continents; although the above drawing shows Helios with a seven star crown, no-one knows what the statue actually looked like). So freedom in both cases.

Of the seven ancient wonders of the world, I think the one I'd most like to have seen is the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Although it's not certain they ever existed, as no archaeological evidence has ever been found. They seem so pretty and Babylon sounds a nice place to live. Maybe not so much recently though.

Why seven wonders? The number seven was chosen because the Greeks believed it represented perfection and plenty. Worked for them.

You thought the Mayans died out four centuries ago?

Maya was a pre-Columbian civilisation in Mesoamerica.

The Spanish arrived in the Caribbean in the early 16th century and eventually conquered the whole region of what we now call Central and South America. Except for Brazil, where the Portuguese got there first. Until then, the major Mesoamerican cultures were the Maya, the Incas, Aztecs and Olmecs.

The name Maya was not in fact what the people called themselves. Their political culture developed as a number of city states and it wasn't until the city of Mayapan became the  predominant political and cultural capital that the name Maya came into usage, in the 13th, 14th and early 15th centuries. Mayan peoples still identified themselves by their sub cultures such as the Yucatecs, the Tztzil and the Tzeltal. I'm not sure why there are so many instances of the letter z in Mesoamerican names but they can be useful in Scrabble - if your house rules allow proper names.

Rather than bore you with a dry historical journey, which I am definitely not qualified to write, my interest was piqued by the discovery that Mayan people still live today. Can you guess how many? I'd have ignorantly thought maybe a few hundred thousand but it's actually around six million! Primarily in Mexico, they also live in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Belize. There are apparently 31 distinct groups, speaking different, mutually unintelligible (at least according to the Canadian Museum of History) languages. I imagine that's a bit like a Cornishman trying to understand a Geordie. When I was a young teenager, a Londoner, I went with my parents to an event in Scotland and I literally could not understand a word of what the locals said.

The modern Mayan people maintain many of their historical customs. They engage in agriculture and practise various crafts.

Although of course many have adapted to and adopted modern cultures, traditional groups still follow the old ways. The Lacandón of the Chiapas rain forest, in Mexico, hunted with bow and arrow until the 1950s. One of the biggest threats to the Mayan culture is their felling of tropical rain forests to to make way for corn fields. This obviously doesn't endear them to the modern world. Or Greta Thunberg.

I would love to be able to visit Mayan sites such as Chichen Itza.

This is one of the "new seven wonders of the world", voted by tens of millions of people in a contest run by a Swiss company, The New 7 Wonders Foundation (which, frankly, isn't the catchiest name they could have used). I'm going to post separately about them. You might like to think about what you'd include in the list, before I start.

I guess modern nations have been pretty slow to recognise and respect the old civilisations and peoples in their midst. The Native Americans, the Aborigines, the Kikuyu and many others have suffered greatly at the hands of colonial conquerors and today's nation states perhaps don't understand the concepts of city states, tribal groupings and diverse languages, or the desire of their people to maintain their traditions. Homogeneity rules! I hope one day I will get to see Chichen Itza; in doing so, I will do my part in honouring an amazing culture.