Generational Gifts: 35 Tales of Legacies Passed Down Through Time

Mayans have cultivated Central American stingless bees for millennia, treating them as pets and housing their hives both inside and outside their homes. Some of these hives have endured for over 80 years, passed down through successive generations.

27. During the 1980s and 1990s, Japanese banks offered 100-year home loans intended to span multiple generations.

28. The shrine buildings at Ise, the holiest site in Shinto, are ceremoniously dismantled and reconstructed every 20 years, reflecting the belief in the impermanence of all things and serving as a means of transmitting building techniques across generations. Despite this cycle, the buildings have stood for approximately 1300 years, with the 63rd rebuilding slated for 2033.

29. The art of hand-making premium cigars has been handed down through generations within long-established cigar families, with nearly all modern cigar makers being descendants of such lineages.

30. On average, half of all service dogs fail their training. In response to this low success rate, South Korea conducted experiments involving the cloning of service dogs that had already completed their training, resulting in clones with significantly higher success rates.

Since 1840, a New Orleans restaurant has remained under the ownership of the same family. Five generations of the family have run Antoine's, which is well-known for its Oyster Rockefeller and Baked Alaska, with a sixth generation ready to carry on the tradition. It stands as the oldest continuously family-run restaurant in the United States.

32. In Kazakh culture, it holds significant importance for individuals to trace their family lineage back at least seven generations, reflecting a deep-rooted tradition of oral history.

33. Aboriginal Australians possess accurate historical narratives dating back 10,000 years, preserved solely through oral traditions passed down through generations.

34. Homer's epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, originated in an era predating written language, requiring days to recite in full. They were transmitted orally for centuries before being transcribed, totaling 27,000 lines of verse once committed to writing.

35. The House of Lords, the upper house of the British Parliament, still reserves 92 seats based on birthright (hereditary peerage). Since 2008, only one of them is female because most hereditary peerages can be inherited only by men.