Turkey: Derinkuyu Underground City

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-10 19:46

In the Turkish region of Cappadocia, there is a city called Derinkuyu; under Derinkuyu is a vast underground city, built in antiquity and preserved to this day. It still remains a mystery who built this city and for what purpose?

Cappadocia is known worldwide for its labyrinth of underground cities. On the surface, it looks just as impressive. Its quaint landscape is covered with ancient volcanic stone pillars known as "fairy chimneys". Over the centuries, here one civilization replaced another; the inhabitants of certain cultures inside these natural formations carved or decorated their surfaces, turning them into unique monuments.

“Despite the fact that this area has been widely used and changed by man over the centuries, the landscape has retained the beauty of the natural relief and looks very harmonious,” says the UNESCO page dedicated to the Goreme National Park and the rocky landscapes of Cappadocia.

Derinkuyu city (translated from Turkish - "Deep well") is not the only underground city in Cappadocia. There are about 50 such cities in total. Some cities may not be open yet. But the most impressive is the underground city of Derinkuyu. It was accidentally opened in 1963, when a local family was doing renovations in the house and discovered a room and a passageway leading to an underground labyrinth outside the wall of their house.

Some of the underground cities have already been fully explored, some have begun to be explored, the next are waiting in line. Derinkuyu is the most famous and most explored of this group of underground cities of antiquity. The city covers an area of about 4 square meters. km, going underground to a depth of about 55 m. Researchers believe that the city may have 20 floors, or so, but so far they have been able to explore only 8 of them. Also, researchers and historians suggest that up to 50 thousand inhabitants could simultaneously live in Derinkuyu! According to historians, the foundation of the underground city was started by the Hittites around 2000 BC.

For what purpose they started this underground construction is still a mystery. In the underground city, everything necessary for life support was perfectly thought out. Residents have equipped 52 ventilation shafts, it is easy to breathe even at the lower levels. The waters, through the same mines, merged to a depth of 85 m, reached groundwater and served as wells, at the same time I cool the temperature, which was kept at the level of + 13 - + 15 C, even in the hottest summer months. The halls, tunnels, rooms, all the premises of the city were well lit.

The upper first and second floors of the city housed churches, places of prayer and baptism, mission schools, barns, storerooms, kitchens, dining rooms and living quarters with sleeping rooms, barns, cattle pens and wine cellars. On the third and fourth floors there are armories, security rooms, churches and temples, workshops, various production facilities. On the eighth floor is the "Conference Room", a general meeting place for selected representatives of families and communities. They gathered here to address vital issues and make global decisions.

Historians disagreed on whether people lived here permanently or periodically. Some scientists believe that the inhabitants of Derinkuyu came to the surface only for agricultural work. Others are sure that they lived on the surface, in small villages nearby and hid underground only in times of danger. In any case, Derinkuyu has many underground secret passages (600 or more), which had access to the surface in various secret hidden and highly classified places.

The inhabitants of Derinkuyu took great care to protect their city from penetration and capture. In case of danger of attack, all the passages were either disguised or filled up with huge boulders, which could only be moved from the inside. It is incredible to imagine, but even if the invaders somehow managed to capture the first floors, the security and protection system was thought out in such a way that all entrances and exits to the lower floors were tightly blocked.

In addition, without knowing the city, the invaders could easily get lost in endless meandering labyrinths, many of which deliberately ended in traps or dead ends. And the locals, without engaging in collisions, could either calmly wait out the cataclysm on the lower floors, or, if they wanted, to get to the surface in other places through the tunnels of the lower floors. Some underground tunnels were incredible in length and reached ten kilometers !!! As, for example, in the same underground city of Kaymakli.

The underground city was accidentally discovered in 1963. Local farmers and peasants, not understanding the true historical value of what was found, used these well-ventilated premises for warehouses and storage areas for vegetables. This happened until scientists and researchers took up the city. After a while, they began to use it for tourism purposes.

Only a small part of the city is accessible for inspection - about 10% of the city. In the underground city of Derinkuyu, numerous rooms, halls, ventilation shafts and wells have been preserved. Small holes are carved into the floor between the levels of the city for communication between adjacent floors. The rooms and halls of the underground city, according to published sources and explanatory plaques, were used as living quarters, kitchens, canteens, wineries, warehouses, barns, cattle stalls, churches, chapels and even schools.

In the underground city of Derinkuyu, everything necessary for life support was perfectly thought out. 52 ventilation shafts saturate the city with air, so it is easy to breathe even at the lower levels. Water was obtained from the same mines, since, going to a depth of 85 m, they reached groundwater, serving as wells. To prevent poisoning during the invasion of enemies, the outlets of some wells were closed. In addition to these carefully guarded water wells, there were also special ventilation shafts, skillfully camouflaged in the rocks.

In case of danger, the passages to the dungeons were filled up with huge boulders, which could be moved from the inside by 2 people. Even if the invaders could get to the first floors of the city, his plan was thought out in such a way that the passages to the underground galleries were tightly blocked from the inside by huge stone wheels-doors. And even if the enemies could overcome them, then, not knowing the secret passages and the plan of the labyrinths, it would be very difficult for them to get back to the surface. There is a point of view that the underground passages were specially built in such a way as to confuse uninvited guests.

Modern science has not yet fully discovered all the secrets of creating this miracle of architecture, and we often have to guess about the methods used by ancient architects for centuries or millennia. The upper - more ancient floors - were roughly carved using primitive techniques, the lower ones are more perfect in terms of decoration.

And what do the historical chronicles say about the time of the construction of underground structures in Cappadocia?

The oldest known written source about underground cities dates back to the end of the 4th century BC - this is the "Anabasis" of the ancient Greek writer and historian Xenophon (c. 427 - c. 355 BC). This book tells about the location of the Hellenes for the night in underground cities. In particular, it says:

“In populated areas, houses are built underground. The entrance to the houses was as narrow as the throat of a well. However, the interior was quite spacious. The animals were also kept in carved underground shelters; special roads were built for them. Houses are invisible if you do not know the entrance, but people entered these shelters by stairs. Sheep, kids, lambs, cows, birds were kept inside. Local residents made beer from barley in earthen vessels … and residents made wine in wells …”.

"We discovered Anabasis by accident and were surprised at its size. The tunnels leading down are such that an elephant can be dragged through them. Many large and small staircases. Huge wells. Underground public dancing squares. These cities are made so that no one will notice them from surface. People were the enemies of their inhabitants."

Another ancient Greek geographer and historian Strabo (c. 64 BC - c. 24 AD) reported: “This country, from Lycaonia to Kaeserea including Megegob, wells.

Archeology professor from Nevsehir Suleiman Komoglu explained: “Officially, the underground cities of Cappadocia are considered the refuge of the first Christians. Christians have been hiding underground since the time of Emperor Nero, when the Romans began to persecute them. The "underworld" existed as far back as the 6th century BC, during the reign of the king of Phrygia, Midas, who, according to legend, turned things into gold., but also connected them to each other with tunnels. Each tunnel is so wide that a cart with a horse could pass through it."

According to Los Angeles-based archeologist Raul Saldivar, who lives and works in Nevsehir: “Both Christians and Phrygians have already found these premises empty. In 2008, a radiocarbon analysis was carried out. thousand years ago. Individual cells were used as banks - tons of gold were stored there. Excavations raised hundreds of bones of domestic animals to the surface, but … not a single skeleton of a local resident."

These statements of ancient Greek authors and modern scientists confirm the previously stated assumption that the underground cities of Cappadocia existed in the 1st millennium BC. (VI-IV centuries BC). Taking into account the finds of obsidian tools, Hittite writings, objects of the Hittite and Pre-Hittite eras and the results of radiocarbon analysis, the time of their construction can be attributed to both the II-III and (according to the results of the study of the Neolithic of Central Turkey) to the VII-VIII millennia BC., and even to earlier, Paleolithic, times. But, as far as earlier, neither historical nor archaeological data allow to judge this.

"Who were the builders of these mysterious underground structures?" Indeed, according to research by British archaeologists who worked in 2002-2005. in Nevsehir, in the underground cities of Cappadocia, "quite specific" people could live. According to scientists, their height did not exceed one and a half meters, which made it possible to squeeze into narrow manholes between underground halls and rooms. The rooms in which they lived were also small - somehow it is hard to believe that people of ordinary height could live in cramped quarters for decades.

And the fact that "quite specific people" lived underground for a long time is proved by the ramified structure of underground cities that go deep down and are interconnected by numerous tunnels. With depth, the number of rooms, food depots, wine cellars, meeting rooms and ceremonies only increases. We ourselves have witnessed this more than once. The dungeons in no way can be called temporary shelters in which people lived for several weeks or months (although they were periodically used as such in later times) - in them, as the director of the department of foreign interviews and investigations of AiF, quite rightly noted, they settled down thoroughly, whole underground streets: having fun on holidays, getting married, giving birth to children.

Raul Saldivar wrote:

“No one can clearly explain why it was necessary to build such huge cities underground and why their population preferred to live in darkness, not knowing the sunlight? Who were they hiding from and why? It turns out that another, separate world existed under the ground at that time. And is it only in Turkey? Perhaps there were such cities all over the world … "" Think about it after that, "continued Raul Saldivar. “Or maybe the medieval legends about the gnomes are not a fairy tale at all, but reality?”

In the works of other researchers, the idea of a special underground race of dwarfs (and here) - the inhabitants of underground cities sometimes also slips. As it was written at the beginning of the work, as a result of researching the underground structures of Mareshi, Bet Gavrin, Khurvat Midras, Lusit and others in Israel, I also came to the conclusion that they were built by the disappeared dwarf people, resembling fairy gnomes. Moreover, it was a very long time ago - hundreds of thousands or several million years ago.