Low-Lying, Salt-Heavy Wonder of the World
In the fifth-century BCE, scholars Herodotus and Callimachus created a list of the Seven Wonders of the World. Since then, lists of the seven wonders of the medieval, industrial and even underwater world have popped up, luring tourists around the globe.
Hoping to draw attention to the natural world, the New7Wonders Foundation, based in Zurich, is sponsoring the New7Wonders of Nature competition. “If we want to save anything, we first need to truly appreciate it,” the foundation states on its Web site.
Among those tapped for appreciation of beauty, historical legacy and ecological significance is the Dead Sea.
The sea, along with the Great Barrier Reef and the Grand Canyon, made the Top 77 list, which the foundation announced in early July. By July 21, the nominees will be narrowed to 28 finalists by a panel of experts. The final seven wonders of the natural world will be decided by an online popular vote on the foundation’s Web site, www.new7wonders.com, and the results will be announced in 2011.
The Dead Sea submission was initially sponsored by a group of West Bank settlers but was signed off on by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the Jordanian government, both of which share the sea and now form the Official Supporting Committee for the nomination.
Of the original seven wonders, only the Great Pyramid of Giza remains, while the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia and others have long since been destroyed. Hopefully, with eco-attention and preservation efforts, the Dead Sea, which receded 82 feet in the 20th century, will have better luck.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO