Why consider certain places or knowledge, Heritage of Humanity?
Terracotta Warriors by Qin Shi Huang
Unfortunately, it is common for modern engineering works to end up taking away some piece of heritage that our ancestors left on the face of the earth. Nor is it exceptional that in order to erect something - a building, the infrastructure of the subway, or change the plumbing system of a city - something totally extraordinary is discovered. It happened in 1974, near the Chinese city of Xi’an. Some simple works that were going to help with the water supply of that city, unearthed an entire army of warriors made of reddish earth. More than 8000 pieces, no more, no less, barely a kilometer and a half away from the tomb of the first Qin emperor, Qin Shi Huang. This discovery, although totally accidental, gave visibility to a part of history that was not known, and the works, out of respect for the discovery, were totally paralyzed. Today, the Terracotta Warriors - that's what they called them - can be seen in the well-known Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum.
But unfortunately, there is heritage that does not suffer the same fate, and there are parts of history that are deliberately destroyed, with the simple pretext, for example, of expanding a population urbanistically. In Spain, we have many examples that would make any culture lover sad. From a similar tyranny, the germ of what is known as the Cultural Heritage of Humanity award arose and that later would expand its borders of protection to include the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. But what happened to begin to give recognition to so many centuries of history?
Egypt, in the 1950s, began with the planning of what would be the mega-construction of the Aswan dam, across the Nile River. This dam would have a very important role in agricultural and industrial development in a country as arid as it is. Egypt. The only problem with the construction of this great dam in the country of the pharaohs, were the pharaohs themselves. These large-scale engineering works would sacrifice temples such as Abu Simbel or File, being totally submerged under water, as if it were Atlantis. At that time, the International Community, put its hands to the head and up to 50 countries started a collection of money to be able to take the heritage to the mainland. In total, they raised a total of 80 million dollars and over time, Egypt thanked all the countries that participated in this collection with a little piece of their history. Spain, for example, was presented with the Temple of Debod, which can be visited in Madrid to this day.
The great organizational capacity that countries had had, then put on the table the idea of being able to create something that would serve as protection of all historical and natural heritage to prevent all the extraordinary pieces that had managed to survive to this day, from being destroyed. . After a lot of diplomatic work and years of conversations, UNESCO, through the Convention on the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, specified the conditions to which the participating countries would be welcomed and five years later 34 countries from all over the world were annexed. world.