Entanglement of high-dimensional quantum systems has become increasingly important for quantum communication and experimental tests of nonlocality. However, many effects of high-dimensional entanglement can be simulated by using multiple copies of low-dimensional systems. We present a general theory to characterize those high-dimensional quantum states for which the correlations cannot simply be simulated by low-dimensional systems. Our approach leads to general criteria for detecting multilevel entanglement in multiparticle quantum states, which can be used to verify these phenomena experimentally.