World Heritage Sites includes both cultural and natural - Australia has a far greater range of environments and more biodiversity than those countries.
oh, well, okay. I didn't actually know that. Still, I can name 30 sites in Jerusalem alone that are priceless archaeological treasures that ought to be considered part of the heritage of the world, just off the top of my head. Australia may have more interesting nature and biodiversity going for it than Israel does but it's also got about 13,000 fewer years of civilization.
Australia has had civilisation for about 30-50,000 years. But agree Australia does not have as rich built history as elsewhere (another one is Canada and arguably USA and Brazil). But the real problem is that there is a pretty strong Eurocentric bias in UNESCO it seems, otherwise you'd see many more Asian and African countries on this list eg Indonesia, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Morocco, Syria, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Zimbabwe etc. It's not just about missing Israel, Jordan and Egypt.
World Heritage Sites have to be presented to the UNESCO by the member states. The richer, well educated states have the time and the resources to open a procedure. Poorer countries will have more pressing concerns than preserving cultural sites.
gandalf: what are you talking about? I don't know what you are implying. That Israel doesn't protect it's historical sites? They go to absurd lengths to preserve their history, it's a cornerstone of their national identity. Are you implying that Israeli sites have not been adequately researched?? Archaeology, as a discipline, was INVENTED in Israel. The first archaeologists in history were Christians looking for religious artifacts in the holy land to validate their faith. No place has been researched more. And presentation? What's that mean? That they haven't properly developed their tourism sector? Or at least not as much as Iran has?
ponnuki: that actually makes sense. Though there are dozens if not thousands of places outside of the Old City in Jerusalem, and then outside Jerusalem you've got Bethlehem, Nazareth, Tiberias and the Sea of Galilee, Jericho, Samaria, the Dead Sea, Ceasarea, Jaffa, Acre... everywhere you go there is something.
ponnuki is correct. Number of "sites" on the list is not a good metric since similar heritage sites are grouped. In Belgium the whole city centre of Bruges is one heritage site, the beguinages of Flanders are sprawled across different cities but are grouped into one and the belfries of France and Belgium (55 in total) similarly are counted as one. I presume the same goes for e.g. the Egyptian pyramids and Nubian monuments.
wageslave: Australia has not had civilization for 50,000 years. The first humans arrived in Australia about 50,000 years ago. But having people is not the same thing as having civilization. Invent agriculture, writing, trade, currency, pottery, animal husbandry, and start organizing into cities.... then you've got a civilization.
Pretty ignorant objection, honestly. Civilization involves settling in to permanent villages or cities, developing agriculture and other common technological advancements such as writing, pottery, and animal husbandry. This is not an opinion. It's an anthropological definition that gives meaning to the word.
For those who are too lazy to click through (or read the whole thing) but are still interested: yes, there is some debate as to what technological innovations are prerequisites for the term civilization to be used to describe groupings of humans. Not up for debate, though, is that nomadic hunter-gatherers do not count.
For the purposes of this quiz, that's pretty relevant, as hunter-gatherer tribes do not build monuments or leave behind great ruined cities for people in later generations to come visit. What exactly are you going to designate as a UNESCO site in the Australian outback that relates to the aboriginal people who lived there 50,000 years ago? "well... this patch of dirt here may have once been home to some people, though there's no evidence that it was and we can't know for certain, and that patch of dirt over there may have similarly been home to some people for a few months or so. Who knows. Please visit our gift shop."
Israel isn't too much smaller or less populous than Belgium, which makes the cut, but it's got a heck of a lot more history that could be considered part of the world's shared cultural heritage. And Jordan is substantially larger.
I’ve seen that you have adopted a very colonial view as to the societal structures that the Indigenous Australians put in place.
They are able to claim native title in Australia which requires demonstrating an ongoing link to a place (i.e. not just a bit of dirt from a gift shop).
You may also want to further your knowledge by reading “Dark Emu” by Bruce Pascoe which sets out that the Indigenous Australians actually were engaging in agriculture etc but that it suited the “Terra Nullius” position of the colonial settlers to downplay that.
for 50,000 years? So Australia was the first place to ever have civilization in the world by some 30 or 40,000 years? It's all just some evil conspiracy by the colonizers to cover it up? Wow that's amazing. Let us know when you get your Huxley Medal.
SHB2000 No, it is not widely acclaimed, that is a flat out falsehood.
You people arguing against Kal seem to be confusing culture with civilization. The term comes form the latin for "city", and denotes a complex human society with a central goverment, the State.
As for the eurocentrism accusation, none of the widely accepted first civilizations are european; they were located in the Near East, India, South America and China. Archaeology started as a colonialist tool, but it isn't anymore and hasn't been for a long time.
It is *not* a bigoted opinion to say the australian aboriginal culture wasn't civilization, but a factual statement according to the scientific definition of the term. Unless you wanna argue that the archaeological community as a whole is racist.
Also, saying that a certain culture wasn't "civilized" does not mean they were "savages", which seems to be the underlying notion people critizising here have. The dualism "civilization-barbarism" is a very outdated concept.
Re: Aboriginal civilisation, that's currently the centre of a good old-fashioned Australian culture war. https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/media/2019/11/30/bolt-pascoe-and-the-culture-wars/15750324009163
Culture warriors are never taken seriously by proper scientists or historians. That's a whole separate debate. (though often the influence of culture can bleed into scientific research, usually leading to errors and misunderstandings, so they do impact the field in some ways indirectly)
How about CNN, The Guardian newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, The BBC, and several other similar publishers who run articles stating that indigenous Australians are affirmed as the oldest civilisation on Earth?
Just google "are indigenous Australians civilised?' for evidence.
Whether or not they are the oldest is a moot point. But it does confirm that it was and is a civilisation, does it not?
Depends on your definition of "Civilisation" I suppose. I tend to agree with Kalba that to be "civilised", a culture should have developed permanent settlements, trade, agricultural practise and some form of political structures. Indigenous Australians are very similar to other hunter-gatherer cultures across the globe.
The claim that Australian indigenous culture is the oldest on the planet is a bit spurious too; assuming all people evolved from the same prehistoric ancestors, aren't all cultures the same age? They just developed in different directions depending on circumstances
I'm not sure why I would even need to say this, but, no, reporters for CNN or the Guardian are also neither scientists nor historians.
Easy way to settle this, though. Please direct me to where on Google Earth I can spy the Kufu's Pyramid, Ur Ziggurat, Great Wall, or Machu Picchu of the Outback, dating to at least 3,000 years ago (necessary to render my own comment incorrect), and everyone responding to my comment above won't seem like total goobers.
I think a big reason as to why Israel isn't on the list is because the whole territory of Israel is a bit disputed and a lot of their country consists of illegal occupation so it might make it a bit harder to apply for heritage site in Israe's name
^That's not it. But other commenters above have given plausible reasons, including that many different sites in Jerusalem, etc., are lumped together as a single site, and also that UNESCO world heritage sites include natural wonders, too, and Israel is a small country.
Australia has a lot of natural sites - should have far more than Belgium and some of the other European nations tbf. Surprised Egypt, Thailand, Vietnam, Israel didn’t make it though. Seems to have quite a European bias.
Sites are only added to the World Heritage list if UN member states propose them to UNESCO, and the organisation then accepts them. That's why sites in Western countries are overrepresented on the list: Western countries care more about preserving cultural heritage (or at least have more faith in UNESCO as a tool to achieve that) and have done for longer than non-Western countries.
THIS NEEDS TO BE UPDATED:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_World_Heritage_Sites_by_country#Countries_with_major_concentrations_of_World_Heritage_Sites The diagram shows that Peru and Turkey have more sites, Portugal has only 15, Iran and Greece each have one more and one less respectively, Japan has 18 not 17, Russia and USA each have one more, India has two more, Germany and France each have another, China actually has 47, while Italy has 50. So it needs an update, BADLY.
Don't know, if you mean 39 or 40 for Germany, as you wrote on 2nd of July and it was updated on 3rd of July, but... this weekend, Germany got his 40th world heritage with the City of Hamburg:
I guess they updated it in the last 5 days. Probably not going to update the quiz again for a little bit since I don't want to have to reset the stats.
this is probably a really dumb thing to admit but I got 21 just by guessing countries without knowing what a UNESCO World Heritage Country is. The good news is that now I will look it up. This is why I love JetPUNK, I'm always learning new things.
There is a 700 year old race in Ponteland, Northumberland, UK. where people push loaded wheelbarrows. Jetpunk often reminds me of that race. People pushing their own wheelbarrows (agendas) and giving no leeway to other people's opinions or ideas. Stop 'nitpicking' and enjoy the quizzes.
That race has been running for more than 700 years. You should get your facts before posting. (Just kidding, couldn't resist nitpicking the nitpicking complaint.) :)
I'm in Thailand right now and this much hasn't changed: when asked where I'm from (by any of the many Asian or African people here) and I answer "the US," "the USA," "the United States": blank stares. If I answer "America": instant recognition and "ahhh! America!"
You're being difficult as well. Saying you're from the US, USA, United States does not get blank stare and America is not used by everyone generally. American for people, yes (except spanish speakers and a few other exceptions), but America no.
Even here in Canada we tend to refer the US not as America but as the States , the US, or l'Etats Unis if you're french.
Milanthro you are simply wrong. Am I lying? Dreaming? Hallucinating? Tell me what I've been doing when I thought I was traversing the world the past 20 years to create all these false experiences. Honestly anyone who makes a big deal out of this, on your side of the argument (my side is simply reacting to your side) is something I can't say if I don't want the comment to be deleted. One of the dumbest arguments I've ever had on this site.
I at one point lived closer to a unesco site in another county then any in my own, now I live near a unesco site that's basically a bunch of mud that's high in bio diversity
It is actually less Eurocentric than it should be. The organization has a mandate to include all cultures, so monument-rich countries like France are arguably less well-represented than countries with fewer surviving ancient buildings.
Again, they're in the top 5. With 4 European countries and China ranked above them. I'm quite sure that there are plenty of valid sites in China and they weren't getting pity votes at the UN. You're not making a lot of sense.
My hair was literally flying back in the speed in which I was typing. Realised that we could just rename the quiz to most famous or most guessed countries.. :) Missed Czech Republic.. didn’t at all regret.
These guys really don't like traveling to Africa, Asia, or South America, do they? Canada and not Colombia? Switzerland??? For the historic banking and watchmaking sites, I guess. LOL
Wow, the homes of the three oldest civilizations missing from the list: Iraq (Sumer) Pakistan (Indus Valley) and Egypt (Egypt). Also none of the countries where those civilizations spread are on the list, except Turkey. But I guess maybe old civilizations didn't spread out as much as newer ones. Still seems kind of bad to see the way this list so heavily weights European countries.
There won't be much left over from civilizations 5000 years ago, whereas Europe has had its turn as dominant civilization most recently, thus it will have the most left over. Makes sense to me.
Except that's not actually true. The World Heritage Sites project has been criticized by pretty much every critic out there due to the under-representation of non-European countries.
ponnuki: that actually makes sense. Though there are dozens if not thousands of places outside of the Old City in Jerusalem, and then outside Jerusalem you've got Bethlehem, Nazareth, Tiberias and the Sea of Galilee, Jericho, Samaria, the Dead Sea, Ceasarea, Jaffa, Acre... everywhere you go there is something.
For the purposes of this quiz, that's pretty relevant, as hunter-gatherer tribes do not build monuments or leave behind great ruined cities for people in later generations to come visit. What exactly are you going to designate as a UNESCO site in the Australian outback that relates to the aboriginal people who lived there 50,000 years ago? "well... this patch of dirt here may have once been home to some people, though there's no evidence that it was and we can't know for certain, and that patch of dirt over there may have similarly been home to some people for a few months or so. Who knows. Please visit our gift shop."
They are able to claim native title in Australia which requires demonstrating an ongoing link to a place (i.e. not just a bit of dirt from a gift shop).
You may also want to further your knowledge by reading “Dark Emu” by Bruce Pascoe which sets out that the Indigenous Australians actually were engaging in agriculture etc but that it suited the “Terra Nullius” position of the colonial settlers to downplay that.
It's widely acclaimed that Indigenous Australians formed the oldest civilisations. Full stop.
You people arguing against Kal seem to be confusing culture with civilization. The term comes form the latin for "city", and denotes a complex human society with a central goverment, the State.
As for the eurocentrism accusation, none of the widely accepted first civilizations are european; they were located in the Near East, India, South America and China. Archaeology started as a colonialist tool, but it isn't anymore and hasn't been for a long time.
It is *not* a bigoted opinion to say the australian aboriginal culture wasn't civilization, but a factual statement according to the scientific definition of the term. Unless you wanna argue that the archaeological community as a whole is racist.
Also, saying that a certain culture wasn't "civilized" does not mean they were "savages", which seems to be the underlying notion people critizising here have. The dualism "civilization-barbarism" is a very outdated concept.
Just google "are indigenous Australians civilised?' for evidence.
Whether or not they are the oldest is a moot point. But it does confirm that it was and is a civilisation, does it not?
The claim that Australian indigenous culture is the oldest on the planet is a bit spurious too; assuming all people evolved from the same prehistoric ancestors, aren't all cultures the same age? They just developed in different directions depending on circumstances
Easy way to settle this, though. Please direct me to where on Google Earth I can spy the Kufu's Pyramid, Ur Ziggurat, Great Wall, or Machu Picchu of the Outback, dating to at least 3,000 years ago (necessary to render my own comment incorrect), and everyone responding to my comment above won't seem like total goobers.
For some reason the posted link in my previous comment was not the whole link, so I have posted it above!
http://www.unesco.de/kultur/welterbe/welterbe-deutschland/hamburger-speicherstadt.html
the States (as in the United States), the next comment is: "Oh, you mean New York".
Even here in Canada we tend to refer the US not as America but as the States , the US, or l'Etats Unis if you're french.