Africa has new UN heritage sites in Angola, Eritrea, SAfrica

JOHANNESBURG – Africa has several new sites on the United Nations world heritage list, including an old royal capital in Angola, the Eritrean capital of Asmara and a desert area in South Africa that was inhabited during the Stone Age.

UNESCO said this weekend at a meeting in Poland that Mbanza Kongo in northwest Angola was the capital of the Kongo kingdom, a largely independent state between the 14th and 19th centuries.

The U.N. cultural agency says Asmara, which experienced large-scale construction under Italian rule in the 1930s, showcases “early modernist urbanism” in an African context.

And it says the Khomani cultural landscape at South Africa’s border with Botswana and Namibia testifies to the way of life of the once-nomadic San people that influenced the area over thousands of years.