During their journey, the film crew crosses the equator and arrives at an unreal place, a desert town in Chile called Humberstone. A ghost town abandoned for over four decades, Humberstone is unique because there is nothing special about it. Archaeologists won’t discover ancient foundations; art historians won’t find Romanesque vaults, Gothic cathedrals, or Renaissance castles. Yet, the place has a peculiar charm, turning every visitor into an archaeologist and seeker of cultural history. Half a century ago, 3,700 people lived in Humberstone.

They had moved here to the pampa, not for the beautiful landscape sung by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda: “Come with me on a journey through the desert, to the air-high night of the pampa” – but because it was a place to make money as a Pampino, a worker at the Saltpeter mines of Santiago Humberstone. They lived, largely isolated from the outside world, in this settlement of single-story, white-limed row houses, almost like in a ghetto that mimicked a normal town. In sight of Humberstone, it appears like a prehistoric monster next to the Pan-American Highway: the oficina Santa Laura.

An abandoned nitrate factory. Since the mid-19th century, Chile had experienced an economic boom. The salt, lying directly beneath the desert crust, was mined, and the extracted nitrate was marketed as fertilizer. Nitrate – sodium nitrate – white gold. Chile became the world’s leading exporter of fertilizers, covering 65 percent of the global demand in the early 20th century. The boom collapsed with World War I and later ended with the development of synthetic fertilizers. In 1960, the Santa Laura facility was shut down, and the buildings were left to decay.

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UNESCO has been protecting the world's most valuable natural and cultural monuments as the "Heritage of Humanity" since 1972. The television series “Treasures of the World” tells of these places in impressive images.

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