Imagine if we were able to recreate the Lighthouse of Alexandria: a perfect replica, block by block.
Would its fire and bronze mirror illuminate the past, giving us a glimpse into a world in which one more of the Seven Wonders had survived? Or would they blind our visions of the future, inhibiting us from creating something new?
While the Lighthouse of Alexandria is gone, this is the question that is posed about the wonders that remain in the world today.
Digital twins are a digital representation or model of assets, processes, people, objects, and places and typically consist of three components: a data model, a set of analytics or algorithms, and knowledge. Digital twin technology, which dates back to the 1970s, enables us, among other things, to preserve physical objects in the digital world. This gives experts a source to turn to should the physical model need repairing and reconstructing.
Digital twins are used for diverse preservation projects
The digital twin of the Hagia Sophia, a nearly 1500-year-old Church-turned-Mosque in Turkey, was created with this aim in mind.
The General Directorate of Foundations completed its digital reconstruction of the UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2024 with the mission of enabling Turkey to “reconstruct it identically” should it be damaged due to disasters such as earthquakes. This effort to preserve the site highlights its historical, cultural, and religious significance—a significance that a replacement with variations may not have.
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By GlobalDataHowever; digital twin technology may provide a more homogenous experience for present and future visitors, further enabling the significance of the structure to transcend through time.
A similar preservation project is being undertaken by the island nation of Tuvalu, which began creating a digital twin of itself in 2022.
This initiative was in response to climate change, particularly the threat of the island being submerged due to rising sea levels. The island’s capital, Funafuti, will be uninhabitable by 2100 as a result of 95% of the land being flooded, according to the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP).
While the island nation may not have aspirations of being recreated, the digital twin (which will incorporate “sentimental items, grandfathers’ stories, and festival dances”) will enable future generations to experience Tuvalu as it once was: a glorious tropical island, rich in culture. A digital twin of Tuvalu will preserve an entire people’s lineage: the literal, in addition to metaphorical, land they come from.
Connecting us through time
So, is there a case for creating digital twins of all ancient sites? What would a world look like today if all the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were still in existence? Would we be able to then marvel at the New Seven Wonders in the way that we do? Or would we choose to visit the Hanging Gardens of Babylon over Machu Picchu? Allow the Colossus of Rhodes to tower over us rather than Christ the Redeemer? Take pictures in front of the Temple of Artemis rather than the Taj Mahal? Perhaps we would impede our ability to give attention to new things by enabling exact replication.
But there is a great temptation and value in the ability to stand underneath the Statue of Zeus and feel connected to the Grecians who lived two and a half millennia before us. To know that the shadows cast by the Pyramids of Giza are the same ones that shielded visitors in years gone by, and the same ones that will shield visitors in years to come.
Preservation brings us closer together, connecting us to our ancestors and our descendants. We are therefore posed with a big question: as the earth shifts and shakes from epoch to epoch, either by our hand or by natural occurrences, do we embalm our structures, sites, and lands, preserving them for future generations to experience in similar ways? Or do we gracefully let go of the past?
