New 7 Wonders of the World, Revealed

Well, in case you all missed it, this past Saturday was July 7, 2007, an auspicious day for gamblers and people getting married. It was also the day that the New 7 Wonders committee announced the results of the worldwide vote: what are the 7 wonders of the world?

As you may recall, there used to be 7 wonders of the world: the great pyramids of Giza, the hanging gardens of Babylon, the temple of Artemis in Ephesus, the Colossus at Rhodes, the lighthouse at Alexandria, the statue of Zeus in Olympia, and the mausoleum of Maussollos at Halicarnassus. Very cool. Only one is still standing--the pyramids. If you remember, I blogged about this back in February.

At any rate, they've announced the winners. Are you ready? Here they are.....

In no particular order, the new 7 wonders of the world are:

1. The Great Wall of China
2. Petra in Jordan
3. Christ the Redeemer in Brazil
4. Machu Picchu in Peru
5. Chichén Itzá in Mexico
6. The Colosseum in Rome
7. The Taj Mahal in India

I'm happy with 4 of the 7--If you remember my original standards for what wonders are (they are an impressive architectural achievement and they stood the test of time), the Great Wall, Petra, Machu Picchu, and Chichén Itzá easily qualify. Petra has the added bonus of showing up in an Indiana Jones movie. However, the other 3 aren't really wonders. The Colosseum is ok; even though it might not be the most impressive achievement, it has stood the test of time, and is an interesting slice from history almost 2 millennia ago. But Christ the Redeemer and the Taj Mahal are just ridiculous. Neither of them is really old enough to be considered--the Taj Mahal was built in the mid-1600s and the Christ the Redeemer statue was completed in 1931. 1931!!

I'm really pretty mad, though, that Stonehenge didn't make the final 7, and I'm kinda pissed that the Easter Island statues didn't make it. I also find it extremely stupid that the Great Pyramids didn't make the list. Of course, the press releases on July 7 said something about how these 7 join the Great Pyramids as wonders, but that seems completely ridiculous. If I were Egypt, I would be really, really angry about this. It seems like some lame consolation prize for something that shouldn't have really had to be voted on in the first place.

The posters on Slashdot also have some interesting complaints about the list, namely that it's just a publicity stunt. Of course, they also make a lot of comments about Civilization, which are amusing.

The one thing that I think is really good about the list is that it is fairly global in its scope. There are 3 representatives from Asia (and they span the range of the continent), 2 from South America, 1 from North America, and 1 from Europe. Africa is left off, unless you count the pyramids, but then again, Egypt and the pyramids are culturally quite different from the rest of Africa. But considering that most of the original list was confined to the Middle East and the Mediterranean region, this is a vast improvement. I think for a list that wants to capture what the 21st century world thinks are wonders, this is a good, if not perfect, start.

New 7 Wonders has now taken it upon itself to find the 7 natural wonders of the world by a similar process. I think they should have stopped with this. Continuing to find other lists just makes the revision of the "wonders of the world" list less of a big deal, and gives the skeptics on Slashdot more credibility. Maybe this is just a publicity stunt.