First published: Sun 09 Mar 2025.
Els Slots
The First List
Comments
8 comments
Jay T
4 months ago (Mar 9, 2025)
Thanks for the deep dive on the first class of World Heritage Sites. They remain a goal of mine, and I'm hoping for some progress on more of them this year. I'm fascinated to see what was proposed so early on; I'd never looked up that history.
Reply
clyde
3 months, 4 weeks ago (Mar 9, 2025)
Interesting! Any idea how come Italy and China had no site at the time? 2 each were probably not enough...
Solivagant
3 months, 4 weeks ago (Mar 9, 2025)
@Clyde "Any idea how come Italy and China had no site at the time?"
The World was very different 47 years ago at the time of the 1978 WHC
a. Italy didn't ratify the WH Convention until 23 Sept 1978 - after the Bureau meeting of that year. It did well to get Valcamonica nominated and inscribed the next year (1979) as its first WHS... an interesting choice, perhaps reflecting that it wanted something reasonably "simple" to start with? Rome waited until 1980.
b. China didn't ratify unti 12 Dec 1985!! I made my first visit to China in Jun 1978..... The Gang of Four had only been toppled in Oct 1976.... and the country was in a period of interregnum with Deng Xiaoping just reasserting himself under Huaguofeng ...but not yet in control.....and the rest is History!
Ian Cade
3 months, 4 weeks ago (Mar 10, 2025)
Thanks very much for this Els, a nice little deep dive.
It also helps explain something that has niggled me for ages, why are there no site numbers 5,6,7 (they must be the 3 Tunisian unsuccessful nominations) or 11 & 14 (which must be the 2 unsuccessful Ethiopian/ Eritrean nominations)
I'm sure the answer to that already existed somewhere on this site, but it eluded me until today.
Astraftis
3 months, 4 weeks ago (Mar 10, 2025)
Very interesting! I love this history of WHS.
With regard to Clyde's question, beyond the bureaucratic reasons explained by Solivagant, I have the impression that at the time there seemed to be a slightly different idea about what needed to be nominated. Probably there was the tendency to favour "special" places beyond the most known ones, which was taken as granted and maybe not considered in need of immediate protection.
Val Camonica was enjoying some popularity in those years. Some years before, in 1975, the coat of arms (later also flag) of Lombardy was inspired by its rock art. This was probably due to the surge in their studies in the '60s. And so they landed on Italy's list as #1. Roman ruins and historical city centers are perhaps too obvious.
On the more futile side of things, I was thinking that we could assign ourselves some kind of number based on the codes of the first non-visited sites on the list... well, since I have never been to Americas, it is an easy 1-2-4, not really exciting.
Els Slots
3 months, 3 weeks ago (Mar 11, 2025)
Good point, Astraftis, regarding "Probably there was the tendency to favour "special" places beyond the most known ones, which was taken as granted and maybe not considered in need of immediate protection." - from what I read about 1978, there also was the appeal of getting a budget allocated (it may explain the actions of Ethiopia). Maybe I will do a follow-up post about the first 5-10 years, zooming in on that aspect.