The Silk Road becomes first continuous World Heritage Site

The legendary trade route which connected Europe and Asia has finally become a World Heritage Site (WHS), acknowledging its part in ensuring trade and cultural communication between the East and West.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - This is the 46th WHS located in China, and also spills into Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, making it one of the largest sites in terms of geographic distribution.

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The Silk Road stretched more than 7,000 kilometers at its zenith, and was used heavily from the second century BC to the 16th century.

"It turns a new page in terms of World Heritage Sites because our previous items on the list are individual spots rather than a continuous line," said Tong Mingkang, the deputy director of China's State Administration of Cultural Heritage and the head of China's delegation to Doha.

There are 33 historical sites within the project, and 22 of them are in Chinese provinces-Shaanxi, Henan and Gansu, and the autonomous region of Xinjiang Uygur. Eight of these sites are in Kazakhstan, and three are in Kyrgyztan.

"A detailed plan for protection and improvement of surrounding areas was made for each spot, making this application much more complicated than previous ones," said Tong. "The success also gave us important experience in terms of cross-border cooperation in the field."

He also said that China will most likely submit more requests for World Heritage status in the future.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization began encouraging countries located along the Silk Road to cooperate in bids for World Heritage status in the early 1990s, but this work began only in 2006 because of academic disputes over where the path should be outlined.

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