Back in the year 1963, a person in the Nevsehir Province of Turkey was busy doing his cosy home remodelling. He decided to bring down a wall of his home to facilitate expansion. He found a secret room on the back of the wall with a narrow hallway made out of the stone underneath his home.
This hallway had a path connected to a cave-like room which further lead to additional hallways and cave-like rooms. Before he knew about it, he had cake across from a complete underground city that was connected to his home. The city was deserted and empty, it possessed every facility required to sustain a society. There may be a case where he had come across on by accident Derinkuyu and the underground city of Cappadocia. This is unbelievable.
These tunnels are said to be construed by the way of hand dug back in the 12th and 15th century BC. They provided a home to their people, and also food, from the extreme climates above. They also acted as a safety measure from an enemy attack.
Below is a small drawing giving us a brief idea of what these underground cities appeared like. The ground is mainly made of ash and volcanic material turning it easy to excavate, and at the same time extremely durable. Although there are uncertainties as to who initially lived in the underground city, it is sure that many groups have lived past it over the centuries.
Having about 11 floors at places which facilitate access to the public, the city goes through depths of over 280 feet underneath the surface. There are about 11 floors that were excavated and assumed safe for tourism, but it is rumoured that there are about 18 floors that are still undiscovered.
Miles upon miles of tunnels turns out to appear blackened from centuries of torches going past them. The city joins other cities in the area, covering miles which would be able to retain tens of thousands of people at a go.
The below-situated tunnels present a path to giant rooms that housed schools, wine cellars, oil press rooms, churches, gathering halls, shops, tombs, arsenals, livestock corrals, escape routes, and water wells extracted from the surface water. There are about 100 entrances to these secret underground cities, although all of them are secreted behind bushes or for that matter walls. Even courtyards had entrances that were secreted but quite massive to move livestock in and out of these tunnels.
These entrances and other significant rooms were protected with massive stone doors. They were hand constructed and carried a weight of up to 1,000 pounds, while few are over 5 feet in diameter. Underground river systems were applied as drinking sources to keep away from being infected by surface water accessible to enemies above the ground.
Below is one such well shaft. They constructed it in order so that the vent shaft did not lead to the surface. This in turn would keep away any poison by enemies on the surface.
The below image is an example of how a vertical staircase leads to a floor underneath. These can in turn show how dangerous can these be.
The quantum of precision and time that was witnessed in each room is no doubt praiseworthy. To think that there could have been a possibility where all these could be still undiscovered if that man hadn’t decided to remodel his home. He brought down one wall and opened a door to another society hidden underground. A society secreted for thousands of years only to be revealed in 1963.
