New Inscribed Properties
Cultural properties
Melka Kunture and Balchit: Archaeological and Palaeontological Sites in the Highland Area of Ethiopia
Located in the Upper Awash Valley in Ethiopia, the serial property is a cluster of prehistoric sites that preserve archaeological and palaeontological records – including footprints – that testify to the area’s occupation by the hominin groups from two million years ago. The sites, situated about 2,000 to 2,200 metres above sea level, yielded Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis and archaic Homo sapiens fossils, documented in well-dated strata in association with various tools made from volcanic rocks. The cultural sequence includes four consecutive phases of the Oldowan, Acheulean, Middle Stone Age and Late Stone Age techno-complexes. Fragments of palaeo-landscapes, preserved buried under volcanic and sedimentary deposits with fossil fauna and flora, allow reconstruction of the high-mountain ecosystem of the Ethiopian Highlands during the Pleistocene. Conclusions can thus be drawn on the adaptation of hominin groups to the challenges and climatic conditions of high altitudes.
Moidams – the Mound-Burial System of the Ahom Dynasty
Set in the foothills of the Patkai Ranges in eastern Assam, the property contains the royal necropolis of the Tai-Ahom. For 600 years, the Tai-Ahom created moidams (burial mounds) accentuating the natural topography of hills, forests and water, thus forming a sacred geography. Banyan trees and the trees used for coffins and bark manuscripts were planted and water bodies created. Ninety moidams – hollow vaults built of brick, stone or earth – of different sizes are found within the site. They contain the remains of kings and other royals together with grave goods such as food, horses and elephants, and sometimes queens and servants. The Tai-Ahom rituals of “Me-Dam-Me-Phi” and “Tarpan” are practiced at the Charaideo necropolis. While moidams are found in other areas within the Brahmaputra Valley, those found at the property are regarded as exceptional.
Royal Court of Tiébélé
The property is an earthen architectural complex established since the 16th century that bears testimony to the social organization and cultural values of the Kasena people. Enclosed by a protective compound wall, the Royal Court consists of a set of buildings arranged in distinct concessions separated by walls and passageways leading to ceremonial and gathering places outside the compound. Built by the men of the Royal Court, the huts are then adorned with decorations of symbolic significance by the women, who are the sole guardians of this knowledge and ensure this tradition is kept alive.
Saint Hilarion Monastery/ Tell Umm Amer
Situated on the coastal dunes in Nuseirat Municipality, the ruins of Saint Hilarion Monastery/ Tell Umm Amer represent one of the earliest monastic sites in the Middle East, dating back to the 4th century. Founded by Saint Hilarion, the monastery began with solitary hermits and evolved into a coenobitic community. It was the first monastic community in the Holy Land, laying the groundwork for the spread of monastic practices in the region. The monastery occupied a strategic position at the crossroads of major trade and communication routes between Asia and Africa. This prime location facilitated its role as a hub of religious, cultural, and economic interchange, exemplifying the flourishing of monastic desert centres during the Byzantine period.
The Emergence of Modern Human Behaviour: The Pleistocene Occupation Sites of South Africa
This serial property contributes to the understanding of the origin of behaviourally modern humans, their cognitive abilities and cultures, and the climatic transitions that they survived. It is composed of three dispersed archaeological sites, Diepkloof Rock Shelter, Pinnacle Point Site Complex, and Sibhudu Cave, located in the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces of South Africa. These sites provide the most varied and best-preserved record known of the development of modern human behaviour, reaching back as far as 162,000 years. Symbolic thought and advanced technologies are exemplified by evidence of ochre processing, engraved patterns, decorative beads, decorated eggshells, advanced projectile weapons and techniques for toolmaking, and microliths.
Umm Al-Jimāl
The property is a rural settlement in northern Jordan that developed organically on the site of an earlier Roman settlement around the 5th century CE and functioned until the end of the 8th century CE. It preserves basaltic structures from the Byzantine and Early Islamic periods that represent the local architecture style of the Hauran region, with some earlier Roman military buildings re-purposed by later inhabitants. The settlement formed part of a broader agricultural landscape that included a complex water catchment system, which sustained agriculture and animal herding. The earliest structures uncovered at Umm Al-Jimāl date back to the 1st century CE, when the area formed part of the Nabataean Kingdom. A rich epigraphic corpus in Greek, Nabataean, Safaitic, Latin and Arabic uncovered on the site and spanning many centuries provides insights into its history, and sheds light on the changes in its inhabitants’ religious beliefs.
New Inscribed Properties
Natural properties
Badain Jaran Desert - Towers of Sand and Lakes
Located in the Alashan Plateau in the hyper-arid and temperate desert region of northwestern China, the Badain Jaran Desert is a meeting point for three sandy regions of China and is the country’s third largest desert and second largest drifting desert. The property stands out with its high density of mega-dunes, intersected with inter-dunal lakes. It displays spectacular ongoing geological and geomorphic features of desert landscapes and landforms which may well be unparalleled. Noteworthy features, among others, include the world’s tallest, stabilized sand mega-dune (relative relief of 460 m); the highest concentration of inter-dunal lakes; and the largest expanse of so-called singing sands (describing the resonance caused for example by wind moving dry and loose sand) and wind-eroded landforms. The varied landscape also results in a high level of habitat diversity, and hence of biodiversity.
Lençóis Maranhenses National Park
The property is located in northeastern Brazil, on the east coast of Maranhão, in a transition zone between three Brazilian biomes: Cerrado, Caatinga and Amazon. More than half of its area consists of a white coastal dune field with temporary and permanent lagoons. Beyond its important role in biodiversity conservation, the park boasts globally significant aesthetic and geological/geomorphological values. Along an 80 km coastline, with beaches followed by plains, the prevailing winds shape the dunes into long chains of barchans, filled in the rainy season to create lagoons of various colours, shapes, sizes and depths. The property reveals its best scenery when the lagoons reach their maximum volume, creating rare beauty. The vast expanse of both stable and shifting dunes, the largest in South America, presents remarkable evidence of the evolutionary progression of coastal dunes throughout the Quaternary period.
The Flow Country
The serial property, located in the Highland Region of Scotland, is considered the most outstanding example of an actively accumulating blanket bog landscape. This peatland ecosystem, which has been accumulating for the past 9,000 years, provides a diversity of habitats home to a distinct combination of bird species and displays a remarkable diversity of features not found anywhere else on Earth. Peatlands play an important role in storing carbon and the property’s ongoing peat-forming ecological processes continue to sequester carbon on a very large scale, representing a significant research and educational resource.
Vjetrenica Cave, Ravno
Located in the Dinaric mountain range, the property stands out with its remarkable cave biodiversity and endemicity. Known since antiquity, the well-conserved representation of karst topography is one of the world’s most important biodiversity hotspots for cave-dwelling fauna, notably subterranean aquatic fauna. It is home to a number of globally threatened vertebrate species, and the only subterranean tubeworm in the world, as well as a diversity of plant species endemic to the Balkans. Additionally, several of the species found in Vjetrenica Cave are tertiary and pre-tertiary relict species, meaning that many of them can be considered living fossils whose closest relatives went extinct a long time ago.
New Inscribed Properties
Mixed properties
Te Henua Enata – The Marquesas Islands
Located in the South Pacific Ocean, this mixed serial property bears an exceptional testimony to the territorial occupation of the Marquesas archipelago by a human civilisation that arrived by sea around the year 1000 CE and developed on these isolated islands between the 10th and the 19th centuries. It is also a hotspot of biodiversity that combines irreplaceable and exceptionally well conserved marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Marked by sharp ridges, impressive peaks and cliffs rising abruptly above the ocean, the landscapes of the archipelago are unparalleled in these tropical latitudes. The archipelago is a major centre of endemism, home to rare and diverse flora, a diversity of emblematic marine species, and one of the most diverse seabird assemblages in the South Pacific. Virtually free from human exploitation, Marquesan waters are among the world’s last marine wilderness areas. The property also includes archaeological sites ranging from monumental dry-stone structures to lithic sculptures and engravings.
Significant modifications to the boundaries
Cultural properties
Moravian Church Settlements
The Moravian Church Settlements is a transnational serial extension of Christiansfeld, a Moravian Church Settlement (Denmark), already inscribed on the World Heritage List. The extension includes three municipalities founded in the 18th century: Herrnhut (Germany), Bethlehem (United States of America), and Gracehill (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland). Each settlement has its own architectural character based on ideals of the Moravian Church but adapted to local conditions. Together, they represent the transnational scope and consistency of the international Moravian community as a global network. There is an active congregation present in each component part, where traditions are continued and constitute a living Moravian heritage.
Significant modifications to the boundaries
Natural properties
Migratory Bird Sanctuaries along the Coast of Yellow Sea-Bohai Gulf of China (Phase II)
The Migratory Bird Sanctuaries along the Coast of Yellow Sea-Bohai Gulf of China is a serial extension of the property of the same name already inscribed on the World Heritage List. As part of the world’s largest intertidal wetland system, this area within the Yellow Sea Ecoregion supports crucial habitats for birds migrating on the East Asian-Australasian Flyway which spans some 25 countries from the Arctic to South-East Asia and Australasia. The wetlands serve a unique ecological function as indispensable stopover sites for many millions of waterbirds and represent a significant example of the shared natural heritage embodied in migratory birds.
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