MYSTERIOUS ANCIENT UNDERGROUND TOWNS
What you see in the picture is the mysterious “underground town” of Derinkuyu, Turkey. According to archaeologists, the core of this city already existed at least 8 centuries before Jesus Christ (at least 2,800 years ago). We’re talking about an entire city that can house 20,000 people built 85 feet underground (!! ).
The city may have been expanded and reused in the Middle Ages (you can see religious structures that couldn’t belong in the “original version”). But after this brief hiatus, Derinkuyu is lost in the folds of history until 1963, when a man accidentally discovers a tunnel behind one of the walls of his home. The underground city is actually 18 stories deep, with wells, chapels, stables, schools and more, and is said to have housed up to 20,000 people.
As time goes by, as modern technology allows us to explore the underground, we realize that the city of Derinkuyu is by no means an “isolated case”. Vast underground networks and even entire cities have been discovered around the world. In Egypt, the Giza Plateau has a huge underground system that is a combination of man-made caves and tunnels, as well as underground rivers and passages. In Guatemala, 800 kilometers of tunnels have been mapped beneath the Tikal Mayan pyramids complex. In 1992, 24 man-made caves were discovered in China, showing incredible dexterity that would have required excavation of 36,000 cubic meters of stone. Archaeologists have discovered thousands of underground Stone Age tunnels stretching across Europe, leaving researchers puzzled about their original location.
What, or from whom, were the ancient peoples protecting themselves? Is it possible that ancient peoples, who theoretically knew neither iron nor wheel, were able to search these cities, for which we, in the 21st century, would spend decades at best? What is our past hiding from us?
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