From the legendary city of Troy, to Gobekli Tepe, Turkey is home to a number of fascinating archeological sites that com from our ancient past. One such place is the mysterious underground city discovered in the Cappadocia region of central Turkey.
In 1963 a local man was renovating his home in the town of Derinkuyu. After taking down a wall, an opening to a passageway was revealed, leading into a network of underground complex of manmade chambers that was carved down to 280 feet below the surface.
This project must have been a mammoth undertaking, and still baffles archaeologists today as to how is was constructed and it is the largest of several underground complexes in this part of the world. Just how did these engine engineers accomplish this feat? For example, this ancient underground complex has 15K ventilation shafts. It is believed 20K-30K people once lived in this underground city. Living space, kitchens, a bathhouse, food stores, fresh water, stable temperatures, areas for livestock can be found there. It even had half ton rolling doors on each level to keep people out.
The curious thing is that the stone this system is carved from is rather soft, and special care was put into place so that support pillars had enough strength to hold the whole place up. To this day, no evidence of any collapse as been found.
Historians believe that this city was built by the Hittites to protect the people of this region from invading Phrygian armies between 1,500 – 1,200 BCE. However, there are other theories that speculate that Derinkuyu is is far older than this. These theories offer the idea that perhaps this city was constructed during the last ice age, to protect people from climate change, perhaps during the Younger Dryas event. Others have suggested this place was constructed to protect from aerial attacks from some kind of advanced ancient technological culture, or less likely, ancient aliens.
Despite all of the speculation and theories, in the end we’re still left with the question of why exactly and when was this built?