Human Towers, Wine Horses, and 12 Other Bits of 'Intangible Cultural Heritage' Worth Celebrating

This year, the baguette—yes, the long, thin loaf of French bread—gained recognition from UNESCO as an artifact of “intangible cultural heritage.” The news item briefly went viral on social media, likely alerting many people to the first time that UNESCO keeps a list of such things (if not of the awesomeness of the baguette itself). The organization is a branch of the United Nations that deals with culture, science, and education, and intangibles that make the list become eligible for funding to preserve them.

So what else is on there, besides bread-baking traditions? A lot of cool stuff, it turns out. There are dances, sports, works of art, ancient technologies, and more. Let’s take a world tour.

Before we get into the rest, we have to talk about the baguette. What made the list was not the loaf of bread itself, but the traditions surrounding how you make it and how you eat it. NPR reports that the loaf’s shape comes from a 1920s law restricting working hours. Bakers began making thinner loaves so that the first batch would be ready in time for early-morning customers.

Today, baguettes are so popular that the average French person eats half a baguette a day—but not all of them are made with to the artisanal standards that inclusion on the UNESCO list is supposed to help preserve.

Alheda’a is a custom practiced by camel herders in Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. It sounds like beautiful singing, and is based in poetry; musical instruments can also be involved. As UNESCO describes: “Herders train their camels to recognize the difference between right and left, to open their mouths when asked, and to kneel down to be ridden. The practice creates a strong bond between the camels and their herders, as well as among the herders themselves.”

The seafaring traditions of the Carolinian islands in the Pacific ocean are also on the list, and are noted as being “in need of urgent safeguarding.” Entire communities may come together to make these canoes, which are capable of long-distance traveling; expert wayfinders know how to navigate such journeys without maps or instruments. (If you’ve seen Moana, you probably have an idea of what this looks like.) Only a few master canoe carvers and navigators are still working today.

Castells are human towers built at festivals in Spain. If you’ve ever seen cheerleaders making a human pyramid, that’s the basic idea—but these towers are made of people standing up straight, on each other’s shoulders, and supported by the crowd below. They can be up to 10 levels tall, as at this competition from earlier this year, where 40 groups competed to build the tallest tower for a cash prize. The bottom level is made up of the largest and strongest people in the group, with lighter people above, and small children (often wearing helmets, thankfully) climbing to the tippy top.

The 4,000-year-old practice of falconry, or training birds of prey to hunt, is a “living human heritage” credited to 24 countries across Europe, Asia, and northern Africa, from Ireland to Mongolia. UNESCO recognizes the falconry community as including “falcon hospitals, breeding centres, conservation agencies, and traditional equipment makers.”

Predicting and avoiding avalanches may sound like a high-tech modern activity, but people who live in places like Switzerland and Austria have been doing it for centuries (at least). “Assessing avalanche risks requires a sound knowledge of nature, especially the terrain, snow, weather conditions and past avalanches,” UNESCO writes. Today, that’s done with a combination of modern tech and traditional knowledge.

Not all beekeeping is done with domestic bees in hive boxes. Tree beekeepers in places like Poland and Belarus take care of bees that build their nests in trees and logs. They harvest honey (very carefully!) but they don’t necessarily do anything to make the bees produce more honey than they otherwise would. This style of beekeeping has its own knowledge, tools, and culinary and medical traditions.

The whistled language of Türkiye (formerly known as Turkey) is a way of communicating over long distances. It sounds like birdsong, but can encode complex sentences. This video translates sentences like, “There is a wolf across the hill” and “My sister, what have you cooked today?” The practice is in danger of dying out as more people use cell phones for the same purpose.

Capoeira, as practiced in Brazil, has been described as a “martial art disguised as a dance.” People in the circle sing, clap, and play music, while those in the center perform flowing movements that include cartwheel-like high kicks. Participants are expected to know how to play the music, do the movements, and respect the customs and rules of the particular group they belong to.

The Mongolian “long song” is a type of music played on a flute called a limbe. One of its defining features is that it’s played continuously, without the musician pausing to take a breath. This is possible through something called circular breathing. The performer fills their cheeks with air, and continues to push that air out of their mouth while they take their next breath through their nose. Mongolian flute players aren’t the only musicians who do this; it’s known throughout the world and was famously practiced by saxophonist Kenny G.

In the U.S., a sauna is a usually just place to relax at a spa or swimming pool (or maybe a technique to use for athletic recovery), but in Finland it’s more of a way of life. People may have saunas in their homes, or use ones in public places. They are traditionally wood-fired, but electric ones exist now, too. Often the bather jumps into a freezing cold lake afterward to complete the experience.

Koogere was a woman who ruled 1,500 years ago in what is now Uganda, and stories about her are still told to this day—although this storytelling tradition is in danger of disappearing. A full performance may take hours, like an epic movie, and is often sung rather than just spoken. UNESCO writes that the story “encompasses sayings and narrations focusing on images of plenty and abundance as blessings for hard work, highlighting the importance of wisdom and evoking female magic and heroism.”

The northern Croatian craft of gingerbread making is more complex than what you might know from Christmas cookie tables. The gingerbread is baked in a mold, and then elaborately decorated, often in the shape of a heart. Sometimes the decorations will include poems, flowers, or even little embedded mirrors.

The wine horses of Spain are part of a ritual in Caravaca. According to legend, the castle in the town was under siege and the people inside had no clean water. A group of knights templar could not find water to bring them, but they had wine, so they tied wine skins to their horses and rushed the horses into the castle before the surrounding Moorish army realized what was going on. (They then bathed a cross in the wine, healing the sick, etc.)

The traditional reenactment involves parading horses through the town festooned in richly embroidered blankets, and finally racing them up the hill into the castle. Prizes are awarded for the fastest horses and the best embroidery. Undoubtedly, everyone raises a glass or two to the horses as well.