Stonehenge makes list in new seven wonders vote

Reuters via Yahoo ^ | 10/17/2006 | N/A

[WinOne4TheGipper]

LONDON (Reuters) - Only one of the ancient wonders of the world still survives -- now history lovers are being invited to choose a new list of seven.

Among 21 locations shortlisted for the worldwide vote is Stonehenge, the only British landmark selected.

The 5,000-year-old stones on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, will be up against sites including the Acropolis in Athens; the Statue of Liberty in New York; and the last remaining original wonder, the Pyramids of Giza in Cairo.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks TXnMA for the ping, and good point about Baalbek. I think only one is 1000 tons, the other two being a mere 800+ tons each. The largest single piece moved in Egypt was (if memory serves) around 600 tons, and that took place during the New Kingdom; Baalbek's three biggies were placed (apparently) prior to 3500 years ago, and no one knows by whom, so they could (possibly) be prehistoric.

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[Victoria_R]

The 5,000-year-old stones on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, will be up against sites including the Acropolis in Athens; the Statue of Liberty in New York; and the last remaining original wonder, the Pyramids of Giza in Cairo.

Okay, why are they including the Pyramids of Giza in this vote?

Shouldn't they just award them a slot on the basis that it's the only "original wonder" left?

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks for the full list.

I wouldn't mind visiting most of these, not one bit. Not optimistic about my chances though.

However, I don't know that I'd pick any of them if I had to pick the Seven Wonders.

[SunkenCiv]

Repeated, with photos.

1 Acropolis, Athens, Greece
http://faculty.eicc.edu/ckrumbein/images/greece%20acropolis.jpg

2 Alhambra, Granada, Spain
http://faculty.eicc.edu/ckrumbein/images/spain%20valley.jpg

3 Angkor Wat temple, Cambodia
http://www.wanderingstan.com/wanderings2003/fullsize/angkorwat.jpg

4 Chichen Itza Aztec site, Yucatan, Mexico
http://www.inaoep.mx/~sole/turismo/Yucatan/chichen1.jpg

5 Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
http://www.ices.utexas.edu/~markb/brazil/christ_overlooking.jpg

6 Colosseum, Rome
http://faculty.cva.edu/Stout/Roman/Colosseum1.jpg

7 Easter Island Statues, Chile
http://carnegieinstitution.org/legacy/exhibits/ault_exhibition/images/easter/easter_island_head_full.jpg

8 Eiffel Tower, Paris
http://www.sbac.edu/~tpl/clipart/Photos/Eiffel%20Tower.jpg

9 Great Wall, China
http://pire-ecci.ucsb.edu/pictures/great-wall-of-china.jpg

10 Hagia Sophia church, Istanbul, Turkey
["I have surpassed you, o Solomon!" -- attributed to Justinian]
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/gsapp/BT/EEI/MASONRY/09sophia.jpg

11 Kyomizu Temple, Kyoto, Japan
http://mysite.verizon.net/skeptic491/temple.jpg

12 Kremlin/St.Basil's, Moscow
http://www.mccullagh.org/db9/d30-24/st-basil-cathedral-exterior.jpg

13 Machu Picchu, Peru
http://www.perutreks.com/images/large/machu_picchu_03.jpg

14 Neuschwanstein Castle, Fussen, Germany
http://www.ulrikasheim.org/neualtenburg/guide/Neuschwanstein-06.jpg

15 Petra ancient city, Jordan
http://deanoman.com/mideast13.JPG

16 Pyramids of Giza, Egypt
http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/time-zone/africa/egypt/giza-pyramids.jpg

17 Statue of Liberty, New York
[commendation to Eiffel for having two nominees on the list]
http://home.online.no/~tonba/bilder/sons_tur_usa/03-%20Statue%20of%20Liberty.jpg

18 Stonehenge, Amesbury, United Kingdom
http://www.aleksandramir.info/projects/stonehenge2/Stonehenge%20II_sm.jpg

19 Sydney Opera House, Australia
http://www.friendlyplanet.com/images/sydney-opera-house.jpg

20 Taj Mahal, Agra, India
http://www.farhorizon.com/India/images-india/Taj_Mahal_20300.jpg

21 Timbuktu city, Mali
http://www.cerritos.edu/rother/timbuktu.gif

[SunkenCiv]

I was just looking at your site, in particular, searching for reference to the 30,000 ton funeral monument from (I think) medieval China. Just wondering if there are photos of it, could be a candidate for one of the wonders. :')

[Berosus]

I have this one, but it's a standard postcard picture, not as interesting as the one you posted a link to already.

What interests me about the Great Wall is that a few years ago I learned that the wall in this and other postcard pictures is not the original wall. The wall built by China's first emperor, in the third century B.C., was largely made of earth held together by mats, a simple but very strong building material. The watchtowers were behind the main structure, rather than part of it. 1,600 years later, it had crumbled to a sandy ridge, prompting the Ming dynasty emperors to rebuild the wall; they covered the earthern structure with stone, and made it nearly twice as high as it had been before. That's the Great Wall we're familiar with.

However, most tourists only see the part of wall near Beijing. The rest is a threatened monument, endangered by time, wind erosion from the Gobi desert, and plundering local peasants who sometimes don't even know what they're taking bricks from. A 2003 study discovered that less than 20 percent of the Ming dynasty wall is intact, and a third of it has vanished completely.

[ReignOfError]

I'd throw in the Chaco Canyon cliff dwellings, but I guess listing anything in the US would give the euroweenies hives. Yeah, they listed the Statue of Liberty, but she's French.

[presidio9]

[Freedom4US]

Nearby, there's also a quarried stone that was never moved?
I think the "bricks" in that wall are the largest ever moved.

[TXnMA]

Curiously, much of the online info re Baalbek on the WWW is a single article, copied (without attribution) on many different sites. It lists the "Trilithon" stones at 1,000 tons weight, and the larger stone remaining in the quarry as 1,200 tons.

(The WWW is truly a strange place: there is even a site listing "the top 50 cut stones"...)

glorgau, I'll see if I can find that "can move anything" guy's site again; he is quite amazing in what he does and how he does it. OTOH, you will note that he always creates a perfectly flat, smooth, and level slab upon which he rests his dual fulcrums under the stones. At Baalbek, OTOH,

" The route to the site of Baalbek, however, is up hill, over rough and winding terrain, and there is no evidence whatsoever of a flat hauling surface having been created in ancient times.

Next there is the problem of how the mammoth blocks, once they were brought to the site, were lifted and precisely placed in position. It has been theorized that the stones were raised using a complex array of scaffolding, ramps and pulleys which was powered by large numbers of humans and animals working in unison. An historical example of this method has been suggested as the solution for the Baalbek enigma. The Renaissance architect Domenico Fontana, when erecting a 327-ton Egyptian obelisk in front of St Peter's Basilica in Rome, used 40 huge pulleys, which necessitated a combined force of 800 men and 140 horses. The area where this obelisk was erected, however, was a great open space that could easily accommodate all the lifting apparatus and the men and horses pulling on the ropes. No such space is available in the spatial context of how the Baalbek stones were placed. Hills slope away from where lifting apparatus would need to have been placed and no evidence has been found of a flat and structurally firm surface having been constructed (and then mysteriously removed after the lifting was done). Furthermore, not just one obelisk was erected but rather a series of giant stones were precisely put in place side-by-side. Due to the positioning of these stones, there is simply no conceivable place where a huge pulley apparatus could have been stationed."

Structures like the Sydney Opera House and the Statue of Liberty hold no wondrous mystery for me. The megaliths at Baalbek, OTOH, definitely do...

[TXnMA]

Since I'm on a s-l-o-w dialup connection, I don't "do" YouTube... I am assuming the "mover" is Wallace Wallington, whose "Forgotten Technology" website is at http://www.theforgottentechnology.com.

I have downloaded most of Wallington's shorter videos, and they are quite impressive. In fact, I can hardly keep from laughing out loud at the sheer pleasure of watching him use his sinusoidal "round road" to effortlessly roll his (square-section) counterweight from one end of the big block to the other. (I'm laughing at myself -- as in, "You dummy! Why didn't you think of that?")

'-}

But, his "two-fulcrum teeter-totter 'walking' " technique does require a smooth, flat, hard surface. There is no evidence that such a platform ever existed at Baalbek...

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks.

[elc]

You know, I've lived in Virginia most of my life, driven by the exit dozens of times on road trips, but never stopped.

I will put that on my list of things to do soon.

[SunkenCiv]

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