New wonders of the world

About 2300 years ago, somebody decided the world needed a list. Not just any list, but a definitive collection of the seven most spectacular man-made things worth bragging about around the Mediterranean.

Thus we got the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: Great Pyramid of Giza, Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Colossus of Rhodes, Lighthouse of Alexandria, Temple of Artemis, Statue of Zeus and Mausoleum of Maussollos.

It was essentially the ancient world’s bucket list, assembled long before cheap flights, TripAdvisor and people photographing themselves pretending to hold up monuments. Of the original seven, only the Great Pyramid remains. The others were dispatched by earthquakes, fire, war and the general human tendency to ruin impressive things.

Pyramids of Giza.

Since then, various buildings, monuments and geological curiosities have tried to muscle their way onto replacement lists. There are tourist-oriented collections such as the Hillman wonders, lists of natural wonders featuring places like the Grand Canyon and the Great Barrier Reef, and modern engineering lists celebrating enormous dams and other monuments to mankind’s determination to pour concrete on an almost biblical scale.

And because apparently the world was suffering from a dangerous shortage of lists, another initiative appeared in 2001: the New 7 Wonders of the World.

From an original selection of around 200 monuments, 21 finalists were chosen, including the Great Wall of China, Machu Picchu, the Taj Mahal and the Colosseum. All perfectly respectable candidates. Still, I find the absence of St. Peter’s Basilica rather strange. Whatever your feelings about religion, the place knows how to make an entrance.

More than 60 million votes have already been cast, and things have become surprisingly serious. Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva urged his countrymen to vote for Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro. Mexico promoted Chichén Itzá on soft-drink cans. Someone even created a virtual version of the Mayan temple in Second Life, because apparently an ancient civilization isn’t truly immortal until it has been reconstructed with questionable graphics on the Internet. The winners will be announced in Lisbon on July 7.

I’ve visited most of the finalists, though not all of them. Picking seven seems slightly absurd. How exactly do you compare Machu Picchu with the Colosseum? The Great Wall with Petra? Thousands of years of history reduced to something resembling an international beauty contest for very large piles of stone.

Still, humans love lists. Especially lists we can argue about. So which one gets your vote?

Update: The new seven were revealed tonight during the Lisbon ceremony. The great Giza pyramid didn’t make it to the list, and neither did Angkor Vat. Instead we got items such as the Christ Redeemer, a statue created in 1931.