In 1963, archaeologists discovered two cave cities 300 kilometers southeast of Ankara. One of them was named after the nearby village of Kaymakli, the other - Derinkuyu
The landscape of this area resembles the moon. It is located in Turkey, or rather, in the Goreme Valley in Cappadocia. There were formed very unusual towers of solidified volcanic ash, which the rain and wind gave the most varied forms.
Here in Cappadocia (Turkey) there are underground cities
Already in the 8th and 9th centuries of our era, the people who lived here began to hollow out the towers from the inside and used them as dwellings. They even housed magnificent churches with colorful icons on the walls. But the real sensation was hidden in the bowels of Cappadocia: giant underground cities were discovered there, 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 through by tunnels that connect the rooms. The first floor from Derinkuyu village covers an area of four square kilometers, and the premises of the fifth floor can accommodate ten thousand people. It is estimated that three hundred thousand people can simultaneously fit in this underground complex.
Derinkuyu underground structures alone have fifty-two ventilation shafts and fifteen thousand entrances. The largest mine reaches a depth of eighty-five meters. The lower part of the city served as a water reservoir. The discoverer of the underground labyrinth is Mr. Demir. In this case, chance played an important role. All houses in Derinkuyu, of course, have basements used as refrigerators. Once Mr. Demir stumbled over the edge of a hole and, prompted by curiosity, began to deepen it …
Derinkuyu underground structures
The entrances to the underworld are closed with stone circles.
To date, thirty-six underground cities have been discovered in this area. Not all of them are on the scale of Kaymakli or Derinkuyu, but their plans were 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. The connecting adits between Kaymakli and Derinkuyu are ten kilometers long.
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This is what the city of Kaymakli looks like
But who created these underground cities? When were they dug? What were they used for? On this score, there are various ideas, hypotheses, but also facts. One of these facts is that at the dawn of Christianity, adherents of a new religion sought and found refuge here: their first wave came in the second or third century. Then Christians hid in underground cities, when Arab troops pushed the Byzantines to their powerful capital Constantinople, modern Istanbul. However, the Christians were not the builders of these structures. In the first centuries of our era, they already existed. So who built them and when? This is where all kinds of speculation starts.
The subsoil of the area consists of volcanic rock, as there is a volcano nearby. It is not very difficult to gouge a volcanic stone if you have obsidian, or "fire stone" at your disposal, which is available here. Thus, the creation of underground cities is a very real task, even if it was carried out over the course of several generations. And yet we are talking about thirteen-story buildings! Objects dating back to the Hittite era were found in the lower layers.
The ancient Hittite people lived in modern Turkey from 1800 to 1300 BC. Their capital, Hattusa, was located approximately three hundred kilometers from Derinkuyu. Once the Hittites even captured Babylon. Already the first Hittite kings were considered godlike, like the Egyptian pharaohs. Only later did they begin to adopt human names. Kings wore tall, hood-like headdresses similar to those found in ancient cultures around the world. I believe that in doing so they imitated their heavenly teachers, who had very large heads, which were considered the standard of beauty. The elongated skull, immortalized in images and sculptures, can be seen in various places, such as Egypt.
Little remains of the Hittite capital, Hattusa
What interests me first of all is the following question: why did people create underground cities? Obviously, to hide in them from the enemy. What kind of enemy was it?
An enemy on the ground could easily force people to leave the underground shelter, forcing them to starve or even depriving them of air. Therefore, I assume that the builders of underground cities feared not only ground, but also air opponents. Does this make any sense?
Of course there is! For example, in their holy book "Kebra Negest" the ancient Ethiopians report that King Solomon terrified people with his flying chariot. Not only he, but also his son moved through the air, and those who obeyed him flew with him in a flying chariot. The Arab historian Al-Masudi also describes the flights of King Solomon and his, as he puts it, clan. I can imagine how people were afraid of these flying creatures. Perhaps they were oppressed and exploited, and so when the “They are flying!” Alarm sounded, everyone hid in an underground city, much like soldiers and civilians hid in underground bunkers during World War II during enemy air raids.
This is only a hypothesis, but the hypothesis is very, very plausible. After all, we know for certain that from time to time the entire population of the Goreme Valley in Cappadocia, in the amount of three hundred thousand people, hid in underground cities, while many ancient legends tell about flying chariots on which mythical characters traveled through the air with their household members.
Here are just one example from Indian mythology:
“So the king sat down with his wives, servants of the harem, dignitaries and honorary representatives of the cities in the heavenly chariot. They took off and flew, following the direction of the wind. The celestial chariot circled the Earth over the oceans, and then headed towards the city of Avantis, where the holiday was celebrated. After a short stay there, the king and his retinue rose above the ground again, accompanied by the astonished gazes of the people."
The Hittite divine kings also wore headdresses that resembled tiaras
During the construction of underground cities in Cappadocia, the rock under the topsoil was hollowed out with obsidian axes. It was quite a difficult but doable task. But there are places where this tool would be useless.
In Egypt, there is a place called Abuzir, located fifteen kilometers from the great pyramids of Giza. Here, too, once stood three pyramids, built in the era of the fifth dynasty, immediately after the pyramid of Cheops, about four thousand three hundred years ago. In Abuzir, blocks of diorite, a deep hard rock, even harder than granite, were worked. Round holes were drilled in these blocks. How?
People have drilled at all times. At the beginning of the Stone Age, holes were made in granite stones using obsidian needles. Drilled holes of ancient origin are often found in bones and rock walls. However, the depressions in the diorite stones in Abuzir were drilled not in the usual way, but in a circular way. This method consists in the fact that during drilling, the core enters the hollow drill, taking a cylindrical shape, after which it can be removed from it.
Examples of core drilling in Abuzir
Neither you nor I can drill a diorite stone by hand with a hole drill. Both the stone and the tool must be firmly fixed. To make holes like those in Abuzir, a special device is required to give the drill sufficient pressure. A simple manual rotation will not achieve anything here, since the channels must be perfectly flat to the nearest millimeter. It is quite obvious that the channels were drilled and not drilled with a chisel and then polished.
What conclusions can be drawn from such a discovery? Someone would argue that the holes for the core drilling from Abuzir may belong to our era: some archaeologists drilled them to test the stone for hardness.
I do not know whether such a test was carried out, but even if it was carried out, there would be one hole, while in Abuzir there are many holes for hole drilling, and in very different places. In addition, any geologist probably knows the hardness indicators of various types of stone, so there is no need to conduct tests. And finally, over a hundred years ago, Mr. Flinders Petrie already described the strange holes "from the fourth dynasty." Thus, they cannot in any way belong to our era.
Broken rock shard. Traces of broken drill rotation are clearly visible
The Egyptian builders clearly had technical means about which we do not know anything yet. Yet technologies like core drilling are not invented overnight. Technological progress is evolutionary, and just inventing the drill is not enough. The production of core drilling requires special materials - diamonds, adhesives with which diamonds are glued to the tip of the drill - and devices for precise movement of the drill.
I find a certain charm in the fact that today not all questions have been answered yet, that we are often forced to think about seemingly forgotten things. In the case of core drilling, we should ask ourselves: why are the channels of the drilled holes in granite stones, and different in diorite ones? Different types of stone require different drilling techniques and therefore different drill materials and different pressure forces.
In order to master these technologies, long theoretical training and considerable practical experience are required - and this is over four thousand years ago?
Erich von Daniken
In the footsteps of the Almighty