If you were to be asked about the wonders of the world, you would probably recite by heart the list with the 7 wonders the entire planet knows about and is proud of, as mystery still surrounds a lot of these famous places and science has still a lot of explaining to do related to their origins and apparition on the face of the Earth. Large structures, imposing ones, building which spawned hundreds of theories, hypothesis and research projects. But this world has also a lot of other amazing places, some man – built, some resulting from nature’s imagination, places of true wonder and no less mystery. There are new wonders of the world you should know about and today we will travel to some of them and try to capture their essence.
1. Mahendraparvata, Siem Reap, Cambodia
The lost city of Mahendraparvata was not completely unknown to archeologists or scientists, but it was only in 2013 when they managed to explore it better and come up with some ideas about it. It is so close to Angkor Wat there has to be a connection between them and the real Indiana Joneses who discovered the lost underground city used cutting edge technology to laser scan it and put it on the map. While Angkor Wat is a UNESCO World Heritage wonder of the ancient worlds, the underground lost city of Mahendraparvata still has some secrets in its sleeves and raises a lot of questions that beg for an answer.
2. Son Doong, din Phong Nha, Vietnam
This place is open to the public for a few years now and if you ask some extreme sports aficionados about it, they will tell you it is the perfect place to base jump or at least visit by foot. This is the largest cave in the world to this date and by large we mean it hosts its own jungle, with its own new animals species and fossils dating back approximately 300 million years. It is among the new wonders of the world you should know about not only because it attracts tourists from all over the world, but because its secrets are yet to be revealed.
3. The Temple of the Night Sun, El Zotz, Guatemala
Like the Mayan mysteries, theories, conspiracies and famous history weren’t mind blowing enough, around 2010, teams of archeologists and scientists discovered the Diablo Pyramid, a complex structure revealing more and more secrets of this ancient civilization. But when they dug deeper, they found something even more amazing: the Temple of the Night Sun, an edifice adorned with face sculptures and portrayals carved in stone representing the sun god. It seems that the Mayan civilization is still planning to keep us busy with discovering mysteries and dealing with more questions than answers.
4. The Kamil Crater in Sahara Desert, Egypt
If it weren’t for Google Earth software and the vigilant eyes of Vincenzo de Michele, a former curator of the Civico Museo di Storia Naturale in Milan, Italy, this meteorite impact crater would have been left undiscovered for who knows how long. But taking a good look at satellite photos provided by Google Earth back in 2010, scientists realized they are looking at a perfectly preserved bowl – shaped impact point between a meteorite and the desert’s surface. The crater is rather small – 16 meters deep and 45 meters wide – but it is a true wonder of the world and a great place to start further research on meteorites impact to the Earth’s surface, a phenomenon that occurred quite frequently in our planet’s history.
There are of course many other new wonders of the world you should know about, places of infinite and indefinite mystery, with the scientific potential of revealing some answers we were looking for a very long time. Adding them to the old list of wonders, however, makes things just more interesting for those passionate about such secrets.
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