This Year’s UNESCO Session Was an Insult to World Heritage

Simon Maghakyan

Moments ago, the global organization for cultural preservation — UNESCO — announced the final list of 29 historical and natural wonders that have now officially joined the ranks of the Pyramids and Grand Canyon as World Heritage Sites. But the celebrated site of Djulfa, which boasted the world’s largest collection of exquisitely-carved medieval cross-stones as remnants of the area’s once-thriving community of Armenian Christians, was not among the 35 candidates vying for World Heritage Site designation. The legendary historical site is disqualified from such an honor, because the host of this year’s UNESCO World Heritage Committee session, the government of Azerbaijan, has erased its existence.

The surprising story of the Basque language

Justin Calderon

  

A few steps from the entrance to the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd, one of San Sebastian’s most visible landmarks with its sky-piercing gothic spire, lies a simple, two-faced earthen slab. In this corner of Spain’s Basque Country, it seems out of place: carved on one side with an Apostolic cross and on the other with a mysterious-looking, non-Latin alphabet.

The letters are certainly not Euskara, also known as Basque, an enigmatic European language famous for the absence of any clear links to living linguistic relatives. Rather, this Armenian khachkar (a cross-bearing memorial stele) was placed in central San Sebastian in 2017 by the city’s modern Armenian community to commemorate the centennial of the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks, which the Basque Country parliament is one of five parliaments in Spain to officially recognise.