At a ceremony held on July 7 in Lisbon, Portugal, the poll organizers named the Collosseum in Rome, the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal in India, Petra in Jordan, Brazil's Statue of Christ the Redeemer, Machu Picchu in Peru and the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza as the modern-day seven wonders of the world.
The ancient seven wonders of the world were selected by Greek scholars more than 2,000 years ago and included the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Lighthouse of Alexandria and the Great Pyramid at Giza that has survived to this day.
The New 7 Wonders campaign was initiated by Swiss millionaire Bernard Weber in 2001 and in late 2005 a global voting began. Any resident of the world had the right to cast a vote by phone or over the Internet to pick modern-day seven wonders of the world from the list of 21 monuments.
However, the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) criticized the campaign, saying it did not meet the UNESCO's scientific and educative goals of identifying, protecting and conserving monuments that belonged to human heritage.
The New 7 Wonders organizers said part of the proceeds from the campaign's TV shows would be used to finance efforts to recreate the Bamiyan Buddha statue in Afghanistan destroyed by the Taliban militants in 2001.
