Why Is Cultural Heritage Important?
Cultural heritage is important because it helps people connect with others who have similar backgrounds and provides a sense of unity and belonging. Cultural heritage also provides people with a link to traditions that might otherwise be lost.
Two types of cultural heritage can be found throughout the world: tangible and intangible. Tangible heritage is things like artifacts, buildings and landscapes. Intangible heritage includes those things that cannot be touched like oral history, values and traditions.
In order to understand cultural heritage, a person must see value in it. By valuing it, people begin to care about it and begin to enjoy their heritage. Once they enjoy it, the heritage becomes much easier to understand. This cycle is called the heritage cycle and the heritage cycle can help people understand cultures that are hundreds or even thousands of years old.
People living in large cities often find comfort in seeking out their cultural heritage. In areas where it is easy to feel alone, seeking out others who have the same heritage provides friendship based on common ground. Traditions thought to be outdated or archaic will have more meaning when shared with others, and by learning where a person comes from and what is important to their culture, they will help to ensure that culture lasts for years to come as they teach it to younger generations.
