When it came to a choice between printing truth and myth, it’s safe to assume that Herodotus, author of the original list of the seven ancient wonders of the world, had a relationship with the verifiable that was strained far, far, beyond breaking point.
Okay, so it seems that the ancient Greek traveler and historian made it to the Giza pyramids, and he probably traveled to Babylon (though he neglected to mention the hanging gardens in his write-up). But his seven wonders of the world were penned amid a travel writing career that also included supposedly true tales of goat-headed men and gold-digging ants the size of foxes.
Hmmm… So, assuming that Herodotus and painstaking accuracy have as much in common as the novels of James Patterson and James Joyce, perhaps it’s not overtly sacrosanct for us to construct successive modern versions that have a stronger relationship with fact—these are our seven wonders of the world for 2024.
