7 Wonders of Nature and an ancient Wonder of the World attract preservation efforts

January 8, 12:42 PMAstrology ExaminerMaria Barron

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Sunrise on the holy Ganges in Varanasi, India

Campaigns to preserve wonders of nature and of ancient culture are making news this week.  

Millions of people worldwide are expected to cast votes over the Internet in the New 7 Wonders of Nature campaign, which hopes to stimulate appreciation and preservation efforts for more than 200 natural wonders that have advanced through the nomination process.

Meanwhile, the ancient city of Babylon, whose Hanging Gardens were among the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, will benefit from a new international preservation partnership. The World Monuments Fund launched The Future of Babylon project Wednesday with the help of a $700,000 contribution from the U.S. Department of State.

The money will go toward mapping and preservation efforts in the partially restored ruins of the 5,000-year-old city of Babylon in Iraq, the ancient Mesopotamian cradle of civilization. Many Iraqi museum pieces and artifacts were looted or destroyed in the wake of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. In addition, the U.S. military leveled some of the ancient Babylonian ruins and crushed and damaged others while building a helipad and other elements of the Camp Alpha military base.

Babylon is important to the history of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It also was the source of some of the earliest known records in the western astrological tradition, many of them inscribed on clay tablets from as long ago as 700 BCE that described practices hundreds of years older. The tablets included two categories of astrological records: mathematical computations of the planetary movements and diaries of events which were later correlated with the patterns of the stars.

Astrological symbolism is also attached to some of the places nominated in the Wonders of Nature contest. For the foundation behind that effort, this is the second global campaign aiming to stimulate appreciation of the world’s wonders and interest in preserving them.

Founded by Swiss-born Canadian Bernard Weber, the New7Wonders Foundation tallied 100 million votes in its previous contest to choose the New 7 Wonders of the World. Many ancient manmade monuments built for astrological purposes were included among the nominees, finalists and winners in that campaign. Results were announced on 07/07/07, and the winners and a set of permanent finalists are featured on the foundation’s website.

Although the website’s description of the natural wonders in the current contest tends to downplay the cultural significance of the landmarks in favor of their visual grandeur, still the symbolic linkages are there. The sacred Ganges River in India, for instance, is associated with the sign of Capricorn. And the nominee from Cyprus, the Rock of Aphrodite, is known as the site in mythology where the goddess Aphrodite, now commemorated by the planet Venus, was born of the sea foam.