Afrikan combat arts and sciences are the very oldest in the world as Afrikan people are the first human beings in the world. According to Hamblin, “the oldest discovered cemetery in the Nile Valley at Jebel Sahaba in Nubia (northern Sudan)—broadly dated to roughly 12,000– 9000—provides the earliest evidence of tribal warfare, for roughly half of the 59 skeletons at site 117 had flint projectile points among the bones, probably indicating death in battle; some had evidence of multiple healed wounds, perhaps indicating repeated fighting” (2006, p. 32). This site has since been more accurately dated to between 13,140 and 14,340 years ago (Graham, 2016). At another massacre site at Nataruk in contemporary Kenya were found a mixture of people killed with blunt instruments, sharp pointed weapons, projectiles, and so on. According to Lahr , “Ten of the twelve articulated skeletons found at Nataruk show evidence of having died violently at the edge of a lagoon, into which some of the bodies fell. The remains from Nataruk are unique, preserved by the particular conditions of the lagoon with no evidence of deliberate burial” (2016, p. 2). Researchers at Nataruk also found:

Facing the rising sun, Va Temple in Van Gia Village, Trung Hung Ward, Hanoi, is also known as the East Palace, marking its importance as one of the four major veneration sites of the Tan Vien Mountain God, a key figure of Vietnamese spiritual tradition. According to legend the site’s tutelary divinity is the Ancestral Deity of the Southern Heavens and God of the Tan Vien Mountain, one the country’s most ancient deities and one of the principal mountain gods. As such, the Tan Vien Mountain God is venerated throughout the northern plain region of Vietnam by the Viet people and by some of the country’s ethnic minorities as well.

Neolithic tombs prove that humans were living in Mongolian territory around 4000 BCE. A tomb with a man buried in a hole in a sitting position was discovered in Dornod Province and provides such evidence.

If beliefs in fertility associated with aspiration of reproduction remains as a cultural sediment; beliefs in ancestor worship exist in various forms not only in the Việt communities but also in the lives of many ethnic groups; beliefs in village titulary worship make communal houses to become special space for religious activities; then beliefs in the Mother Goddesses has not only spread widely, but also formed large worship centers exceeding a village’s and a commune’s space. In other words, the development of beliefs in the Mother Goddesses is a spatial expansion from the North to the South, from coastal region across the delta to the mountains; from remote areas to urban centers in Viet Nam. Beliefs in the Mother Goddesses is a process of integrating and combining folk beliefs and religious activities of the Việt people and of other ethnic groups such as the Tày, Nùng, Tai, Dao, Cham, Khmer, etc which forms a specific type of Vietnamese folk belief sustainably developed for a long time.

The fundamental purpose of the 2003 Convention is to contribute to peacebuilding, mutual understanding, respect, dialogue among different people and communities and to empower and enrich the cultural diversity of humanity. The concept and nature of ICH are linked with the expression of valuable knowledge and skills transmitted among ethnic communities and groups, in a word, with the spiritual memory of the people and societies, which transcend geographical spaces and political borders. As ICH is often shared by communities on the territories of more than one state, the multinational inscriptions of such a shared heritage on the UNESCO List of ICH constitute an important mechanism for promoting international cooperation. \n\nThe Committee, therefore, decided (7.COM 14) to establish an online platform through which State Parties can announce their intentions to nominate elements and other State Parties may learn new opportunities for cooperation in establishing multinational nominations. Mongolia holds the multinational nomination with China on the ‘Urtiin duu, Mongolian traditional folk long song’ (2008) and with 18 States Parties on the ‘Falconry, a living human heritage’ which are inscribed on the Representative List of the ICH of Humanity

Samoa is an independent nation that is homogeneous in language and ethnicity and is part of a broadly defined group of islands that make up the “many isles” of Polynesia. The vast majority of Samoans identify with some form of Christianity and there are estimated to be at least twice as many Samoans living abroad, in countries like Australia, New Zealand, and the US, as there are in Samoa.\nDespite foreign influences and globalization, the ICH of the people of Samoa remains rich and distinctive. At the foundation of the ICH of Samoa is the spoken word. It has only been in the last two centuries that Samoans have shifted from living in an oral culture to a society in which the written word has gained ascendency. The work of early missionaries to translate the Holy Bible into Samoan not only produced the scriptures in the vernacular but also created the look-to model for written Samoan that endures to this day. If the spoken word lies at the bedrock of ICH, capturing the language in a written format has helped ensure its continued use and transmission from one generation to the next, both in Samoa and throughout the Samoan diaspora.

Karate is commonly regarded as a traditional Japanese martial art, which was developed on the island of Okinawa. Okinawa belonged to the Ryūkyū Kingdom (1429–1879)—an independent state that held diplomatic, cultural, and economic relations with Japan, China, Korea, and other Asian countries. The Ryūkyū Kingdom had a highly transactional culture with a history of cultural exchange in East and Southeast Asia. Karate, generally known as / (hand) or / (China-hand), blended the indigenous fighting systems of Okinawa with influences from Chinese and most likely other Asian martial arts, worldviews, and folk spiritualities into a cultural practice that became rooted in Okinawan society. Today, karate is a weaponless martial art in which punches and kicks are utilized. Due to its history and social as well as cultural relevance, the prefectural government of Okinawa has, since the 1990s, been actively seeking to inscribe Okinawa karate on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) of Humanity. However, karate will also make its debut as an exhibition sport at the rescheduled Olympic Games due to be held in Tokyo in 2021. According to the World Karate Federation (WKF), about 100 million people practice karate around the world (WKF, 2014). With a transcendence that goes far beyond its sportive side, karate, as a cultural icon both of modernity and “tradition,” has become a Japanese cultural export incorporated into the global sporting culture.

Questions on Professor Kawakami Shiji’s “Characteristics and Current Status of Japanese Shamanism”\n\nDo Japanese researchers think that shaman is a religious person and that shamanism is a religion? If they think that shaman put shamanism into existence from prehistoric times until the present day, do they think that there are commonalities in the early shaman faith and shamanism shared between Korea and Japan, countries that have shared history from prehistoric times?

The use of medicinal plants for healing diseases has been known to man ever since he was affected by diseases. When illnesses became frequent, ancient man started searching for drugs from the natural environment where he lived. Bark from trees, seeds, leaves, fruits and roots were all utilized for treating illnesses. We continue to use these remedies today, maybe in a more refined form (Petrovska, 2012).This knowledge from the past was transferred mainly through trial and error, and through the exchange of knowledge and experiences among diverse communities and regions mainly by means of oral communication. This exchange of knowledge continues even today, but with an incorporation of modern biomedicine into the traditional practices. This has led to Ayurveda,1Unani2 and Siddha3 emerging as integral parts of modern medicine, or through complementing the modern biomedicine in India.

Chinese martial arts present a unique combination of bare-handed and armed fighting with calisthenics, breathing exercises, meditation techniques, and elements of traditional Chinese medicine. It was in the late imperial period of Chinese history (the Ming and Qing dynasties, 1368–1912) that folk hand combat became a multifaceted system with features that go beyond the narrow framework of mere fighting. The surviving textual sources attest that during the Ming–Qing transition period, martial arts were perceived by many practitioners as a religious practice. Daoists and Buddhists alike often turned to hand- combat training in striving to achieve various religious goals, be it spiritual enlightenment or immortality. However, as recently discovered textual evidence suggests, it was Chinese local religion that disclosed the most intimate relations to martial arts practice.\nAn inseparable part of Chinese culture, the Chinese hand-combat tradition was (and still is) deeply rooted in rural life, and manifested itself in a particularly vivid way in the religious customs and ritualistic activities of the Chinese village. Chinese local religion, a highly intricate system in its own right, contains an evident martial element. For example, it is strongly believed that the employment of direct physical force against malevolent supernatural powers is not only possible but is sometimes as effective as any other ritual protective means, such as (spells) and (talismans). The folk belief that humans can best evil spirits with their bare hands is reflected in literary sources as early as the fourth

Bangladesh has utilized limited opportunities of international networking for safeguarding its distinctive and diverse Intangible Cultural Heritage (hereafter ICH) elements as the networking activities are still limited to only in policy framing and in discussions, files and trainings of the government officials. No effective measure has been taken so far by the government to safeguard the transmission process of the disappearing ICH elements, though United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (hereafter UNESCO) and some other development partners voluntarily have been providing both financial and technical supports to the government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh to formulate a national inventory of ICH and to take effective measures for safeguarding ICH elements since the beginning of the 21st century. But, so far the plans, policies and guidelines could not be translated into reality. Meanwhile, many practitioners have been giving up practicing traditional art forms, music, customs, knowledges and skills, which they inherited from the ancestors, because of poverty, lack of safeguarding measures, unplanned urbanization, disappearance of spaces, impact of foreign culture, and shirking of their jobs for ever growing popularity of satellite TV channels, gadgets and the Internet. This study, developed through primary and secondary data analyses, explores the causes those stand in the way to achieve the expected goals for safeguarding ICH in Bangladesh and also provides some possible solutions to the problems with the aim of capitalization of the maximum benefits from international networking.

There are various phenomena that pose a risk to living heritage, ranging from demographic issues to economic pressures, as identified by UNESCO (see https://ich.unesco.org/dive/threat/). This article will address three ongoing issues commonly believed to present a considerable challenge to the viability and practice of ICH in highly urbanized cities: limited land area, increasing focus on modern technology, and the COVID-19 pandemic.\nAs a metropolis with a population of 5.45 million across 728 square kilometers, Singapore must keep abreast of developments in modern technology and urbanization, along with the social, cultural, and economic changes they bring. Similarly, as a hub of international travel and business, Singapore had to navigate the waves of change brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, and its implications on the city-state’s ICH.