Ancient structures: Catacomb-type underground shelters

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In many regions of the world there are ancient structures, it is not known by whom and for what purpose they were created. Given the limited technical capabilities of our ancestors, it is simply impossible to believe that they were built by people of the Stone or Bronze Age.

In Turkey (Cappadocia), a huge complex of underground cities was discovered, located on several tiers and connected by tunnels. Underground shelters were built by an unknown people in time immemorial. Erik von Daniken describes these havens in his book On the Footsteps of the Almighty:

… giant underground cities were discovered, designed for many thousands of inhabitants. The most famous of them are located under the modern village of Derinkuyu. The entrances to the underworld are hidden under houses. Here and there on the ground there are vents leading far inland. The dungeon is cut by tunnels that connect the rooms. The first floor from the village of Derinkuyu covers an area of four square kilometers, and the premises of the fifth floor can accommodate 10 thousand people. It is estimated that this underground complex can simultaneously accommodate 300,000 people.

Derinkuyu underground structures alone have 52 ventilation shafts and 15 thousand entrances. The largest mine reaches a depth of 85 meters. The lower part of the city served as a reservoir for water.

To date, 36 underground cities have been discovered in this area. Not all of them are on the scale of Kaymakli or Derinkuyu, but their plans have been carefully crafted. People who know this area well believe that there are many more underground structures. All the cities known today are connected by tunnels.

These underground vaults with huge stone valves, warehouses, kitchens and ventilation shafts are featured in Eric von Daniken's documentary, In the Footsteps of the Almighty. The author of the film suggested that the ancient people were hiding in them from a certain threat emanating from heaven.

In many regions of our planet, there are numerous mysterious underground structures of unknown purpose to us. In the Sahara Desert (Ghat Oasis) near the Algerian border (10 ° West longitude and 25 ° North latitude), there is a whole system of tunnels and underground communications carved into the rock. The main adits are 3 meters high and 4 meters wide. In some places, the distance between tunnels is less than 6 meters. The average length of the tunnels is 4.8 kilometers, and their total length (together with auxiliary adits) is 1600 kilometers. The modern tunnel under the English Channel looks like child's play compared to these structures. There is speculation that these underground corridors were intended to supply water to the desert regions of the Sahara. But it would be much easier to dig irrigation canals on the surface of the earth. In addition, in those distant times, the climate in this region was humid, there was heavy rainfall - and there was no particular need for irrigation of the land.

To dig these passages underground, it was necessary to extract 20 million cubic meters of rock - many times the volume of all the Egyptian pyramids built. Truly titanic work. It is almost impossible to carry out the construction of underground communications in such a volume using even modern technical means. Scientists, however, attribute these underground communications to the 5th millennium BC. e., that is, by the time our ancestors just learned to build primitive huts and use stone tools. Who then built these grandiose tunnels and for what purpose?

In the first half of the 16th century, Francisco Pizarro discovered in the Peruvian Andes a cave entrance, closed by rock blocks. It was located at an altitude of 6770 meters above sea level on Mount Huascaran. A speleological expedition organized in 1971, examining a system of tunnels consisting of several levels, discovered sealed doors, which, despite their massiveness, could easily be turned to open the entrance. The floor of the underground passages is paved with blocks, treated in such a way as to prevent slipping (the tunnels leading to the ocean have an inclination of about 14 °). According to various estimates, the total length of communications ranges from 88 to 105 kilometers. It is assumed that earlier the tunnels led to the island of Guanapé, but it is rather difficult to test this hypothesis, because the tunnels end in a lake of salt sea water.

In 1965, in Ecuador (province of Morona Santiago), between the cities of Galaquiza, San Antonio and Yopi, the Argentinean Juan Moric discovered a system of tunnels and ventilation shafts with a total length of several hundred kilometers. The entrance to this system looks like a neat cut in the rock the size of a barn gate. The tunnels have a rectangular cross-section with varying width and sometimes turn at right angles. The walls of underground utilities are covered with a kind of glaze, as if they were treated with some kind of solvent or exposed to high temperatures. Interestingly, no rock dumps from the tunnels were found at the exit.

An underground passage leads in succession to underground platforms and huge halls located at a depth of 240 meters, with vents 70 centimeters wide. In the center of one of the halls measuring 110 x 130 meters, there is a table and seven thrones made of an unknown material similar to plastic. There is also a whole gallery of large golden figures depicting animals: elephants, crocodiles, lions, camels, bison, bears, monkeys, wolves, jaguars, crabs, snails and even dinosaurs. The researchers also found a "library" consisting of several thousand embossed metal plates measuring 45 x 90 centimeters, covered with incomprehensible characters. The priest Father Carlo Crespi, who conducted archaeological research there with the permission of the Vatican, states:

All finds taken out of the tunnels belong to the pre-Christian era, and most of the symbols and prehistoric images are older than the time of the Flood.

In 1972, Erik von Daniken met with Juan Moric and persuaded him to show the ancient tunnels. The researcher agreed, but on one condition - not to photograph the underground labyrinths. In his book, Daniken writes:

To better understand what was happening, the guides forced us to walk the last 40 kilometers on foot. We are very tired; the tropics have worn us down. Finally we came to a hill that has many entrances to the depths of the Earth.

The entrance we chose was almost invisible due to the vegetation covering it. It was wider than the railway station. We walked through a tunnel about 40 meters wide; its flat ceiling showed no sign of connecting devices.

The entrance to it was located at the foot of the Los Tayos hill, and at least the first 200 meters went just down in the direction of the center of the massif. The tunnel was approximately 230 centimeters high and had a floor partially covered with bird droppings, a layer of approximately 80 centimeters. Among the garbage and droppings all the time came across metal and stone figures. The floor was made of cut stone.

We lit our road with carbide lamps. There were no traces of soot in these caves. According to legend, their inhabitants illuminated the road with golden mirrors that reflected sunlight, or a system of collecting light using emeralds. This last solution reminded us of the principle of a laser. The walls are also covered with very well-worked stones. The admiration for the construction of Machu Picchu diminishes when you see this work. The stone is smoothly polished and has straight edges. The ribs are not rounded. The joints of the stones are barely noticeable. Judging by some of the finished blocks lying on the floor, there was no subsidence as the surrounding walls were finished and fully finished. What is it - the carelessness of the creators who, having finished the work, left behind pieces, or they thought to continue their work?

The walls are almost entirely covered with animal reliefs, both modern and extinct. Dinosaurs, elephants, jaguars, crocodiles, monkeys, crayfish - all headed towards the center. We found a carved inscription - a square with rounded corners, about 12 centimeters on a side. The groups of geometric shapes varied between two and four units of varying lengths, appearing to be placed in a vertical and horizontal shape. This order did not repeat itself from one to the next. Is it a number system or a computer program? Just in case, the expedition was equipped with an oxygen supply system, but it was not needed. Even today, the ventilation ducts, which are vertically cut into the hill, are well preserved and fulfilled their function. When coming to the surface, some of them are covered with lids. It is difficult to find them from the outside, only sometimes a bottomless well is shown among the groups of stones.

The ceiling in the tunnel is low, without relief. Outwardly, it looks like it was made of rough cut stone. However, it is soft to the touch. The heat and dampness disappeared, making the journey easier. We reached a wall of cut stone that divided our path. On either side of the wide tunnel along which we descended, the path opened to a narrower passage. We went over to one of those who walked to the left. We later discovered that another passage led in the same direction. By these passages we walked about 1200 meters, and only in order to find a stone wall that blocked our way. Our guide stretched out his hand to some point, and at the same time two stone doors, 35 centimeters wide, opened.

We stopped, breathless, at the mouth of a huge cave with dimensions that cannot be determined with the naked eye. One side was about 5 meters high. The dimensions of the cave were approximately 110 x 130 meters, although its shape is not rectangular.

The conductor whistled, and various shadows crossed the "living room." Birds and butterflies were flying, no one knew where. Various tunnels opened. Our guide said that this Large Room is always clean. Animals and squares are drawn all over the walls. Moreover, they all connect with each other. In the middle of the Living Room was a table and several chairs. The men sit, leaning back; but these chairs are for taller people. They are designed for statues approximately 2 meters high. At first glance, the table and chairs are made of simple stone. However, if touched, they will turn out to be of a plastic material, almost worn out and completely smooth. The table measures approximately 3 x 6 meters, supported only by a cylindrical base with a diameter of 77 centimeters. The top is about 30 centimeters thick. There are five chairs on one side, six or seven on the other. When you touch the inside of the tabletop, you can feel the texture and coldness of the stone, making you think it is covered in an unknown material. First, the guide led us to another hidden door. Once again, the two sections of stone opened effortlessly, giving entrance to yet another smaller living space. It contained a mass of shelves with volumes, and in the middle between them there was an aisle, like in a modern book warehouse. They were also made of some kind of cold material, soft, but with edges that almost cut the skin. Stone, petrified wood, or metal? Hard to understand.

Each such volume was 90 centimeters high and 45 centimeters thick and contained about 400 processed gold pages. These books have metal covers 4 millimeters thick and are darker in color than the pages themselves. They are not sewn, but fastened in some other way. The carelessness of one of the visitors drew our attention to another detail. He grabbed one of the metal pages, which, despite being a fraction of a millimeter thick, was firm and flat. The uncovered notebook fell to the floor and wrinkled like paper when trying to pick it up. Each page was engraved, so jewelry that it seemed as if it had been written in ink. Maybe this is the underground storage of some kind of space library?

The pages of these volumes are divided into various rounded squares. Here, perhaps, it is much easier to understand these hieroglyphs, abstract symbols, as well as stylized human figures - heads with rays, hands with three, four and five fingers. Among these symbols, one resembles a large carved inscription found in the museum of the Church of Our Lady of Cuenca. It probably belongs to the gold objects supposedly taken from Los Tayos. It is 52 centimeters long, 14 centimeters wide and 4 centimeters deep, with 56 different characters that could well be the alphabet … A visit to Cuenca turned out to be very important for us, because one could see the objects exhibited by Father Crespi in the Church of Our Lady, and also listen to the legends about the local white gods, fair-haired and blue-eyed, from time to time in this country … Their place of residence is unknown, although it is assumed that they lived in an unknown city near Cuenca. Although the black indigenous population believes that they bring happiness, they are afraid of their mental power, since they practice telepathy and are said to be able to levitate objects without contact. Their average height is 185 centimeters for women and 190 for men. The chairs of the Large Living Room in Los Tayos will definitely suit them.

Numerous illustrations of amazing underground finds can be seen in von Daniken's book "The Gold of the Gods". When Juan Moric reported his find, a joint Anglo-Ecuadorian expedition was organized to explore the tunnels. Her honorary advisor, Neil Armstrong, said of the findings:

Signs of human life have been found underground, and this is arguably the world's premier archaeological discovery of the century.

After this interview, information about the mysterious dungeons was no longer reported, and the area where they are located is now closed to foreigners.

Shelters for protection from the cataclysms that struck the Earth during its approach to the neutron star, as well as from all kinds of disasters that accompanied the wars of the gods, were built all over the globe. Dolmens, which are a kind of stone dugouts, covered with a massive slab and with a small round opening for the entrance, were intended for the same purposes as underground structures, that is, they served as a refuge. These stone buildings are found in different parts of the world - India, Jordan, Syria, Palestine, Sicily, England, France, Belgium, Spain, Korea, Siberia, Georgia, Azerbaijan. At the same time, dolmens located in different parts of our planet are surprisingly similar to each other, as if they were made according to a standard design. According to the legends and myths of various peoples, they were built by dwarfs, as well as people, but the latter's buildings turned out to be more primitive, since they used roughly cut stones.

During the construction of these structures, sometimes special vibration damping layers were made under the foundation, which protected the dolmens from earthquakes. For example, an ancient structure located in Azerbaijan near the village of Gorikidi has two damping tiers. In the Egyptian pyramids, chambers filled with sand were also found, which served for the same purpose.

The precision of the fit of the massive stone slabs of the dolmens is also striking. It is very difficult to assemble a dolmen from ready-made blocks even with the help of modern technical means. Here is how A. Formozov describes an attempt to transport one of the dolmens in the book "Monuments of Primitive Art":

In 1960, it was decided to transport some dolmen from Esheri to Sukhumi - to the courtyard of the Abkhaz museum. We chose the smallest one and brought a crane to it. No matter how the loops of the steel cable were fixed to the cover plate, it did not move. A second tap was called. Two cranes removed the multi-ton monolith, but they were unable to lift it onto a truck. Exactly a year the roof lay in Esheri, waiting for a more powerful mechanism to arrive in Sukhumi. In 1961, with the help of a new mechanism, all the stones were loaded onto cars. But the main thing was ahead: to rebuild the house. The reconstruction was carried out only partially. The roof was lowered onto four walls, but it was not possible to unfold it so that their edges entered the grooves on the inner surface of the roof. In ancient times, the slabs were driven so close to each other that the knife blade did not fit between them. Now there is a large gap.

At present, in various regions of the planet, numerous ancient catacombs have been discovered, it is not known when and by whom were dug. There is an assumption that these underground multi-tiered galleries were formed during the extraction of stone for the construction of buildings. But why was it necessary to spend titanic labor, hollowing out blocks of the strongest rocks in narrow underground galleries, when there are similar rocks nearby, and located directly on the earth's surface?

Ancient catacombs were found near Paris, in Italy (Rome, Naples), Spain, on the islands of Sicily and Malta, in Syracuse, Germany, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Crimea. The Russian Society for Speleological Research (ROSI) has carried out a huge amount of work to compile an inventory of artificial caves and underground architectural structures on the territory of the former Soviet Union. Currently, information has already been collected on 2500 objects of the catacomb type, dating back to different eras. The oldest dungeons date back to the 14th millennium BC. e. (tract Stone grave in the Zaporozhye region).

The Parisian Catacombs are a network of winding artificial underground galleries. Their total length is from 187 to 300 kilometers. The most ancient tunnels existed even before the birth of Christ. In the Middle Ages (XII century) limestone and gypsum began to be mined in the catacombs, as a result of which the network of underground galleries was significantly expanded. Later, the dungeons were used to bury the dead. Currently, the remains of about 6 million people lie near Paris.

The dungeons of Rome are possibly very ancient. More than 40 catacombs were found under the city and its environs, carved out of porous volcanic tuff. The length of the galleries, according to the most conservative estimates, ranges from 100 to 150 kilometers, and possibly more than 500 kilometers. During the Roman Empire, the dungeons were used for the burial of the dead: in the galleries of the catacombs and numerous individual burial chambers, there are from 600 thousand to 800 thousand burials. At the beginning of our era, the catacombs housed churches and chapels of early Christian communities.

In the vicinity of Naples, about 700 catacombs have been discovered, consisting of tunnels, galleries, caves and secret passages. The oldest dungeons date back to 4500 BC. e. Cavers discovered underground water pipes, aqueducts and water tanks, premises where food supplies were previously stored. During the Second World War, the catacombs were used as bomb shelters.

One of the attractions of the ancient Maltese culture is the Hypogeum - an underground catacomb-type shelter that goes several floors deep. For centuries (between 3200 and 2900 BC), it was hollowed out in hard granite rock using stone tools. Already in our time, on the lower tier of this underground city, researchers have discovered the remains of 6 thousand people buried with various ritual objects.

Perhaps the mysterious underground structures were used by people as shelters from various cataclysms that have occurred on Earth more than once. The descriptions of grandiose battles between aliens that took place in the distant past on our planet, preserved in various sources, suggest that the dungeons could serve as bomb shelters or bunkers.