The territory of Turkey (its area is 780 thousand square kilometers), occupying the peninsula of Asia Minor, was the arena where events unfolded, which were later told in the Old Testament by unknown authors. But many centuries before the arrival of people here, nature created here an amazing and incomparable relief, the likes of which is not found anywhere else in the world!
Creators and destroyers
The forces of nature - creating and destroying - this is the "perpetuum mobile" (perpetual motion machine), which does not stop its action from the first day of creation. The land of Turkey is dominated by mountains, including volcanoes. More recently, the earth trembled here, and Ararat, Erdzhiyas and other peaks spewed lava, ash and volcanic bombs. To this day, this area is seismically active. Earthquakes, including strong ones, are common in the country. Lava cover
(up to several hundred meters thick) in Turkey is a normal phenomenon, and of the rocks, black basalt, lighter tones of andesite and tuff, the color range of which cannot but admire, are considered common. Thousands of years later, the harder rocks survived, while the soft ones collapsed completely or partially under the influence of the sun, water and wind. The difference between day and night temperatures can be from plus 30 to plus 5 degrees Celsius. As a result, on the Anatolian highlands in the center of the country, a landscape emerged that could rightfully be called both lunar and Martian.
Fairy Chimneys
As if by someone's whim, there are amazing stones-idols on the Anatolian plateau. Some of them look like sugar loaves, others like multifaceted prisms. There are bizarre towers, walls, gates here. but more often than others come across resembling chimneys, covered from above with conical tops, like mushroom caps. Their height can reach many tens of meters, and if you consider that they are painted in black and light colors, a downright fantastic picture is created. Perhaps that is why the Turks call these strange stones "fairy chimneys". The fact is that when there are sharp changes in temperature, streams of clouds curl over them like smoke. An illusion arises that someone invisible is drowning the stove while being underground. Depending on the position of the sun on the horizon and at different times of the year, stones can change their color. For instance,at sunset, "stone mushrooms" appear ocher-red, pink and even purple.
Promotional video:
Bizarre relief on the Anatolian plateau
Cave cities
Some of the local stone "cities", located in an area called Cappadocia, were once inhabited by people. This is reminded by the numerous windows, which sometimes, like a sieve, penetrate individual rock massifs near the town of Yuchhisara in the Goreme valley. A man's hand pierced small rooms in the hardest stones, which are connected to each other by corridors, tunnels, manholes. In the Kaymakli region, there is a real cave city of Derinkuy, which occupies an area of more than 4 square kilometers and has 1200 rooms on 7 tiers. But why did people need it? The answer to this question has long been received. In the IV-VIII millennia to the present day, the inhabitants of Cappadocia lived in the so-called "chamen sacks", and also sought salvation in them from the oppressors - foreigners, including the Turks.
The inhabitants of other cave cities had a Christian faith that arose at least six centuries earlier, and the Ottoman Turks hated Christians. For example, in Bulgaria for 700 years of occupation, they destroyed almost all Orthodox churches! The same thing happened in Cappadocia, but the Turks came here much later than the Christians. And here the question arises: who were those first inhabitants of the peninsula of Asia Minor? Nobody knows for sure. But it has been proven that this part of the present Turkish territory was inhabited by the Hutt tribes six thousand years ago, and possibly even earlier. At the turn of the third millennium BC, they were attacked by Indo-European tribes, who, having occupied Cappadocia, disappeared among the Hutts. As a result, a new nationality was formed - the Hittites.
Hittite kingdom
This most ancient state in Asia Minor existed from the 18th to the beginning of the 12th century BC. Much can be learned from the Old Testament about its culture, customs, kings, inhabitants, relationships with other peoples (especially with the Jews). First, we learn that the Hittite kingdom was vast and extended as far as the present territories of Israel and Palestine. Secondly, it becomes clear that the “promised land” for the Jews is precisely the former Hittite territory, for the ancestor of the Jews, Abraham, bought the land from the Hittite king Ephron in order to bury his wife Sarah, who died at 127 years old, in it. At the same time, Abraham said: "I am a stranger and a settler with you: give me a place for a tomb … so that I may bury my dead from my eyes."
Other biblical characters also lived on the Hittite land: David, Solomon, Bathsheba. The latter was famous for her beauty, and she was married to Uriah. King David, in order to take possession of the beauty, had to send Uriah off to the war, where he died. The legendary king Solomon was born from David's marriage to Bathsheba. At the beginning of the last century, near the Turkish village of Bokazgei, archaeologists excavated the capital of the Hittite kingdom, the city of Hattusas, which occupied an area of 170 hectares.
Biblical Bathsheba (painting by artist Karl Bryullov)
Source: Secrets of the XX century (Ukraine), No. 18, September 2008, Yuriy TUISK