Category: Historic

Skeletons Found Under a Florida Wine Shop May Be Some of America’s First Colonists

Historians recently announced in Florida that several small children’s bones buried beneath underneath the last place one might think to look: a wine shop.

However, there will be no police inquiry. The Florida wine shop happens to be located in St. Augustine, America’s oldest city. And those bones? They’re just about as old as the city is.

The archaeologists actually believe that these skeletal remains could have been among the first settlers in North America.

In the past few weeks, researchers have found seven people including three children, in the ancient graveyard.

According to the St. Augustine Register, one of them was a young white European woman.

Researchers are still examining the other remains, but a pottery fragment found nearby suggests that these people died sometime between 1572 and 1586.

“What you’re dealing with is people who made St. Augustine what it is,” Carl Halbirt, St. Augustine city archaeologist, tells FirstCoast News. “You’re in total awe. You want to treat everything with respect, and we are.”

Archaeologists were able to dig underneath the building thanks to the effects of last year’s Hurricane Matthew, the flooding from which convinced the building’s owner that it was time to replace the wooden floor.

According to Smithsonian Magazine, the building’s floor was constructed in 1888, and the soil beneath the building has remained untouched since then, thus creating a virtual time capsule.

The building also happens to be built where the ancient Church of Nuestra Señora de la Remedios used to stand.

“The mission churches across Florida buried everybody in the church floor,” Ellsbeth Gordon, an architectural historian, told FirstCoast News. “It was consecrated ground, of course.”

According to Smithsonian, Sir Francis Drake burned the church down in 1586, a hurricane destroyed it again in 1599, and the British once again burned it down in 1702.

That last time may have been for good, but until then the church had been the main meeting point for a colony that had been established 55 years before the Pilgrims ever set foot on Plymouth Rock.

While the archaeologists are planning on moving the bones found outside the wine shop to a nearby cemetery, the skeletons found inside will stay right where they have lain for the past 400 years.

Greek Farmer Stumbles Onto 3,400-Year-Old Tomb Hidden Below His Olive Grove

Unbeknownst to a Greek farmer, a 3,400-year-old tomb containing two coffins and dozens of artefacts dating back to the Late Minoan era had been lying beneath his olive grove in southeast Crete.

Both were buried in large vases – intricately embossed clay coffins that were common in Minoan culture in the Bronze Age – and they were surrounded by colourful funeral vases that indicated their owners’ good rank. The burial site was eventually sealed with stone masonry and forgotten leaving the dead unidentified for nearly 3,400 years.

George Dvorsky revealed to Gizmodo earlier this summer that a local farmer accidentally brought an abrupt end to the pair’s millennia-long rest. The farmer tried to park his vehicle on his property under a shaded olive grove when the ground gave way, forcing him to find a new parking spot.

When he started driving off, the unidentified local noticed a four-foot-wide hole that had formed in the patch of land he had just vacated. Perched on the edge of the gaping space the man realized that “a wonderful thing” had been unintentionally unearthed.

Archaeologists from the local heritage ministry Lassithi Ephorate of Antiquities, have launched excavations under the olive grove of the farmer at Rousses, a small village just northeast of Kentri, Ierapetra, in southeastern Crete, according to a statement.

They identified the Minoan tomb, nearly perfectly preserved despite its advanced age, in a pit measuring roughly four feet across and eight feet deep. Space’s interior was divided into three carved niches accessible by a vertical trench.

In the northernmost niche, archaeologists found a coffin and an array of vessels scattered across the ground. The southernmost niche yielded a second sealed coffin, as well as 14 ritual Greek jars called amphorae and a bowl.

Two Minoan men were buried in the Crete tomb roughly 3,400 years ago (Lassithi Ephorate of Antiquities)

Forbes’ Kristina Kilgrove writes that the high quality of the pottery left in the tomb indicates the individuals buried were relatively affluent. She notes, however, that other burial sites dating to the same Late Minoan period feature more elaborate beehive-style tombs.

“These [men] could be wealthy,” Kilgrove states, “but not the wealthiest.”

Unlike many ancient tombs, the Kentri grave was never discovered by thieves, Argyris Pantazis, deputy mayor of Local Communities, Agrarian and Tourism of Ierapetra, tells local news outlet Cretapost.

In fact, the site likely would have remained sealed in perpetuity if not for the chance intervention of a broken irrigation pipe, which watered down the soil surrounding the farmer’s olive grove and led to his unexpected parking debacle.

“We are particularly pleased with this great archaeological discovery as it is expected to further enhance our culture and history,” Pantazis added in his interview with Cretapost. “Indeed, this is also a response to all those who doubt that there were Minoans in Ierapetra.”

According to Archaeology News Network, most Minoan settlements found on Crete are located in the lowlands and plains rather than the mountainous regions of Ierapetra.

Still, a 2012 excavation in Anatoli, Ierapetra, revealed a Minoan mansion dating to between 1600 and 1400 B.C., roughly the same time period as the Kentri tomb.

This latest find offers further proof of the ancient civilization’s presence—as Mark Cartwright notes for Ancient History Encyclopedia, the Minoans are most renowned for their labyrinthine palace complexes, which likely inspired the classic Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. According to legend, Queen Pasiphae of Crete gave birth to the Minotaur, a fierce half-man, half-bull hybrid, after falling for a bull sent to Earth by the Greek god Zeus.

The Minotaur, doomed to an eternity spent wandering the halls of an underground labyrinth and killing anyone it encountered, was eventually defeated by the demigod Theseus, who relied on an enchanted ball of thread provided by the king’s daughter, Ariadne, to escape the maze.

Much of the Minoans’ history remains unclear, but Forbes’ Kilgrove reports that natural disasters, including the eruption of the Thera volcano, an earthquake and a tsunami, contributed to the group’s downfall, enabling enemies such as the Mycenaeans to easily invade. Analysis of the excavated Kentri tomb may offer further insights on the Minoan-Mycenaean rivalry, as well as the Cretan civilization’s eventual demise.

Drought Reveals “Spanish Stonehenge” Older Than the Pyramids

After 50 years of immersion on the bottom of a basin, in Spain, a 5,000-year-old monument emerged.

There are 144 granite blocks on the megalithic site, which are over 6 feet high, known as ‘ Spanish Stonehenge. ‘ Its similarity to the UNESCO World Heritage site in Wiltshire is striking, but the Iberian version is made of smaller rocks.

The Spanish General ordered the construction of a hydroelectric dam at Peraleda de la Mata, near Cáceres in Extremadura, which was supposed to be condemned to the history books of the 1960s.

However, a severe and prolonged drought has seen the structure emerge as the last drops of water vanished from the barren basin. Western Spain is being ravaged by a year-long drought and the Bronze Age structure, thought to be an ancient temple, can now be seen.

Hugo Obermaier, a German priest and amateur archaeologist, first found the site in 1925.

Due to the unfortunate decision-making of General Franco who opted to consign the site to obscurity when he commissioned a valley bordering the Tagus river to be flooded.

But before its rediscovery and subsequent demise, it is thought the stones would have centered around a central chamber for sun worship.

It is believed the Celts living in Iberia 4,000 years ago may have built the structure.

‘The stones have been brought from about five kilometers away to form this temple, which we think was used to worship the sun,’ Ángel Castaño, president of the Peraleda Cultural Association, told the Times.

‘In that way, it has similarities to Stonehenge but is obviously smaller.

‘People here had heard about them but had never seen them. We want the authorities to move these stones to the banks of the reservoir and to use them as a tourist attraction, as few people come to this area.’

Stonehenge’s enormous rocks are up to 30 feet in length, dwarfing the six-foot-tall single monoliths uncovered in Spain. There are more stones at the Spanish site, 1144 compared to 93 in Wiltshire.

However, Stonehenge’s monument covers 10,800 square feet (10,000 square meters), a far bigger area than the Spanish site.

Long-term plans for the preservation of the site are yet to be laid out, but Mr. Castaño met officials from the regional government yesterday to discuss the matter. If action is not taken now, he said, it could be many years before they are seen again.

A prolonged submersion could also be catastrophic for the stones, which are made of granite, a porous material prone to erosion, The monoliths are already showing significant signs of wear, he said, and if they are not saved now, it may be too late.

Radiocarbon dating of the rocks found they range in age from around 4,000 to 5,000 years old and this ties them curiously to the history of Stonehenge.  Neolithic people, often prone to building monolithic structures, emerged throughout time across Europe.

It is widely accepted Stonehenge’s bluestones were quarried from Priesli Hills in Wales and moved to the current location, but how the idea for Stonehenge arrived on British shores remains a mystery.

Various pieces of recent research have looked at what likely led to this, and a scientific paper published in February put forward the idea that the knowledge and expertise to create such monuments was spread around Europe by sailors.

The authors from the University of Gothenburg said the practice of erecting enormous stone structures began in France 6,500 years ago and then made its way around Europe as people migrated.

Further research into the Spanish Stonehenge could allow for a more detailed picture to emerge of the practice’s popularity in different areas at different times. Currently, inhabitants of Anatolia, what is now Turkey, are thought to have moved to Iberia and settled before eventually heading north and entering the British Isles.

39000 Years Old Frozen Woolly Mammoth found in Siberia, goes on display in Tokyo

After 39,000 years, a baby wooly mammoth is making her public debut. The prehistoric creature, nicknamed Yuka, is being put on public display in Japan, after being shipped from her home in Siberia, Russia.

Yuka was found trapped in ice on the New Siberian Islands. Though parts of her body were exposed to the elements and predators, the young animal is thought to be the most well-preserved mammoth specimen known to science.

She has been carefully shipped in a large crate packed with dry ice to an exhibition hall in Yokohama, south of Tokyo.

Visitors can stroll past the creature and see its orange-brown tufted hair and soft tissue, and imagine it wandering the icy planes thousands of years ago.

Yuka was first believed to be 10,000 years old, but subsequent tests showed the two-year-old mammoth was much older, dating to about 39,000 years, according to the Siberian Times.

Scientists were able to extract blood for testing, the first time the extinct creature’s blood has been harvested by scientists.

According to a May report by the Times, Russian and South Korean scientists are working on extracting the mammoth’s DNA to bring the species back to life.

Visitors to the Japanese museum can see Yuka on display with her trunk fully extended and her legs sprawled.

She is also covered in a layer of permafrost.

The majority of woolly mammoths died out some 10,000 years ago, though a small group of mammoths lived on Wrangel Island in the Arctic until around 1700 B.C.

Mammoth expert Norihisa Inuzuka ssays aid that Yuka allows scientists to “dig deeper into the reasons why species became extinct and apply the lessons learned to the human race, which might be facing its own dangers of extinction.”

8,500 Years Older Than the Pyramids; This is the Oldest Temple Ever Built on Earth

Göbekli Tepe is a center of faith and pilgrimage during the Neolithic Age and is situated 15 km from the Turkish town of Sanlıurfa and added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2018.

It was not the grandeur of the archeological wonder that dominated my mind, when I stood beneath a 4,000-square-foot steel roof erected to protect the oldest temple in the world in Upper Mesopotamia.

It was how humans of the pre-pottery age when simple hand tools were yet to be discovered, erected the cathedral on the highest point of a mountain range.

Known as “zero points” in the history of human civilization, southeast Turkey’s Göbekli Tepe pre-dates the pyramids by 8,000 years, and the Stonehenge by six millennia. Its discovery revolutionized the way archaeologists think about the origins of human civilization.

“The men, who built the temple 11,200 years ago, belonged to the Neolithic period,” Sehzat Kaya, a professional tourist guide, tells me, “They were hunter-gatherers, surviving on plants and wild animals. It was a world without pottery, writing, the wheel, and even the most primitive tools. In such a scenario, it’s incredible how the builders were able to transport stones weighing tonnes from a quarry kilometers away, and how they managed to cut, carve and shape these stones into round-oval and rectangular megalithic structures.”

Located fifteen kilometers away from the Turkish city of Sanlıurfa, Göbekli Tepe, which was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2018, is believed to be a center of faith and pilgrimage during the Neolithic Age. Since the site is older than human transition to settled life, it upends conventional views, proving the existence of religious beliefs prior to the establishment of the first cities. It altered human history with archaeologists believing that the site was a temple used to perform funerary rituals.

Klaus Schmidt, a German archaeologist and pre-historian, who led the excavations at the site from 1996, noted in a 2011 paper that no residential buildings were discovered at the site, even as at least two phases of religious architecture were uncovered. Schmidt discarded the possibility that the site was a mundane settlement of the period, and insisted that it belonged to “a religious sphere, a sacred area.”

“Göbekli Tepe seems to have been a regional center where communities met to engage in complex rites,” Schmidt, who led the excavations until he passed away in 2014, wrote, “The people must have had a highly complicated mythology, including a capacity for abstraction.”

In speaking of abstraction, Schmidt was referring to the highly-stylized T-shaped pillars at Göbekli Tepe, which means “belly hill” in Turkish. The distinctive limestone pillars are carved with stylized arms, hands, and items of clothing like belts and loincloths.

The largest pillars weigh more than 16 tons, and some are as tall as 5.5 meters. Schmidt believed that there was an overwhelming probability that the T-shape is the first-known monumental depiction of gods. Some researchers have also revealed that the site might be home to a “skull cult”.

The unique semi-subterranean pillars carry three-dimensional depictions – elaborate carvings of abstract symbols as well as animals: Scorpions, foxes, gazelles, snakes, wild boars, and wild ducks. The monumental structures, which stand as testaments to the artistic abilities of our ancestors, also offer insights into the life and beliefs of people living in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period (10th-9th millennia BC).

“Göbekli Tepe is an outstanding example of a monumental ensemble of megalithic structures, illustrating a significant period of human history,” UNESCO noted in 2018, “It is one of the first manifestations of human-made monumental architecture.

The monolithic T-shaped pillars were carved from the adjacent limestone plateau, and attest to new levels of architectural and engineering technology. They are believed to bear witness to the presence of specialized craftsmen, and possibly the emergence of more hierarchical forms of human society.”

Perched at 1000 feet above the ground, Göbekli Tepe offers a view of the horizon in nearly every direction. The site was first examined in the 1960s by anthropologists from the University of Chicago and Istanbul University. Dismissed as an abandoned medieval cemetery in 1963, the first excavation started in 1996 when Schmidt read a brief mention of the broken limestone slabs on the hilltop in the previous researchers’ report. His findings changed long-standing assumptions.

“It (Göbekli Tepe) is the complex story of the earliest large, settled communities, their extensive networking, and their communal understanding of their world, perhaps even the first organized religions and their symbolic representations of the cosmos,” Schmidt wrote.

Schmidt’s discoveries received wide international coverage. The German weekly, Der Spiegel, went a step ahead, suggesting that Adam and Eve settled at Göbekli Tepe after being banished from the Garden of Eden.

The journal based its suggestion on the coincidence that the land surrounding Göbekli Tepe is proven to be the place where wheat was cultivated for the first time, and the Bible says that Adam was the first to cultivate the wheat after he was banished. Another noteworthy aspect of the discovery is that Göbekli Tepe has also questioned the conventional belief that agriculture led to civilization.

Until the discovery, it was widely believed that complex societies came into being after hunter-gatherers settled down, and started growing crops. But the early dates of the temple’s construction proved the opposite was true – the vast labour force required to build the temple pushed humans to develop agriculture to offer food to the workers.

“The communities that built the monumental megalithic structures of Göbekli Tepe lived during one of the most momentous transitions in human history, one which took the civilization from hunter-gatherer lifeways to the first farming communities,” the UNESCO notes, “The monumental buildings at Göbekli Tepe demonstrate the creative human genius of these early (Pre-Pottery Neolithic) societies.”

Aydin Aslan, Culture and Tourism Director, Sanliurfa tells me that the site hosts over 20,000 visitors every week. The megalithic structures have largely retained their original form, offering unforeseen insights into the life of early humans. “The current site is only one-tenth of the marvels that lie hidden under the hill,” says Aslan.

There’s a Valley of Whales in the Middle of Egypt’s Desert and its Millions of Years old

This is one of the driest areas in the world, with only a few centimeters of rain a year, but the bodies of whales are emerging from the shifting sands of the Egyptian Sahara Desert. The fossilized remains are helping to reveal how much of Egypt was once covered by a vast ancient ocean around 50 million years ago.

It is known as Wadi al-Hitan, or Valley of the whales. This area contains the fossilized bones of an ancestor of modern whales that have fascinated tourists and paleontologists alike since they were first discovered in 1902.

It is now being set up like an open-air museum to show off the beasts that once swam over the area, 93 miles (150 km) southwest of Cairo. The Valley of the Whales in Egypt is home to some of the most remarkable paleontological sites on Earth due to its unusual history.

Around 50 million years ago the area was at the bottom of an ocean called the Tethys Sea, which occupied the space in between Africa and Asia before India joined with the continent, pushing up the Himalayas

The whale skeletons in the region offer a glimpse into the past, as the species of whale that once called this desert valley home is now extinct. The Archaeoceti – which means ‘ancient wales’ – found in Wadi al-Hitan are some of the earliest forms of whales to emerge.

Cetaceans evolved from a land-based creature with legs, which is why many species of whale and dolphin have a phantom hip bone where the legs once attached to the body.

Over millions of years of evolution, legs became redundant for the seafaring creatures, but some of the Archaeoceti skeletons found in Wadi al-Hitan still have their legs, complete with toes, intact.

This offers a glimpse into the evolutionary past of the whale to a time when it was still adapting to its ocean environment.

Despite whale fossils being discovered in the area over one hundred years ago, it was only made into a conservation area in the 80s, and it now acts as an open-air museum, such as the rich variety of its fossils.

Fossilized sharks, whales, and plants have allowed paleontologists to build a picture of the ancient ecology of the lost Tethys sea.

The geology of the area combines sandstone and limestone deposited by the ancient ocean with a desert landscape of sand dunes.

Over the years erosion from wind and sand has slowly revealed the fossilised skeletons trapped and preserved in the sandstone formations.

Two types of whale have been uncovered in Wadi al-Hitan, the basilosaurus, measuring up to 20 meters, and the smaller dorudon.

The Valley of the Whales is a UNESCO world heritage site.

30 Million-Year-Old Praying Mantis Is Preserved in Pristine Piece of Amber

Inside a clear piece of amber, there is a small prayer mantis, frozen forever in time. The piece, which measures just slightly over one inch tall, was sold via Heritage Auctions for $6,000 in 2016.

The pristine piece of amber, which comes from the Dominican Republic, gives a rare view of this incredible mantis. The amber itself derives from the extinct Hymenaea protera, a prehistoric leguminous tree.

Most amber found in Central and South America comes from its resin. Amber from the Dominican Republic is known as Dominican resin, which is noted for its clarity and a high number of inclusions.

This tiny fossil could date as far back as the Oligocene period some 23 million to 34 million years ago.

This praying mantis is essentially frozen in time and is one of 2,400 species of its kind. They typically live in tropical climates and is a true relic of evolutionary history.

Heritage Auctions dates the piece in question to the Oligocene period, placing it anywhere from about 23 million to 33.9 million years old.

It’s an important period of time where the archaic Eocene transitions into more modern ecosystems of the Miocene period, which lasted until 5 million years ago. Incredibly, the mantis itself doesn’t appear so different from what we see today.

There are over 2,400 species of mantises today, mainly living in tropical climates. But the earliest mantis fossils, which date back 135 million years, come from a place that is, today, much colder—Siberia.

Some early fossils even show mantises with spines on their front legs, just like modern mantises. Whoever bought this piece of amber took home an interesting piece of evolutionary history, one that can be gazed at each day.

Archaeologists discover 4,800-year-old fossil of a mother cradling a baby

The ancient remains of a young mother and a child locked in a 4,800-year-old embrace were discovered by archeologists.

Of 48 sets of remains discovered from tombs in Taiwan, including five children’s fossils, this makes a remarkable discovery.

The scientists were shocked to find the maternal moment, which they claim are the first evidence of human activity in central Taiwan.

Preserved for nearly 5,000 years, the skeleton found in the Taichung area shows a young mother gazing down at the baby cradled in her arms.

Researchers turned to carbon dating to determine the ages of the fossils, which they traced back to the Neolithic Age, a period within the Stone Age.

Excavation began and took a year for archaeologists to complete. But of all the remains found in the ancient graves, one pair set stood out from the rest.

‘When it was unearthed, all of the archaeologists and staff members were shocked.

‘Why? Because the mother was looking down at the baby in her hands,’ said Chu Whei-lee, a curator in the Anthropology Department at Taiwan’s National Museum of Natural Science.

According to the researchers’ measurements, the mother was just 160 cm tall, or 5 foot 2 inches. The infant in her arms is 50 cm tall – just over a foot-and-a-half.

This breathtaking discovery came as a surprise to the researchers on sight, but it isn’t the first of its kind. In the past, archaeologists have dug up remains of similar moments that have been preserved for thousands of years.

Notably, Chinese archaeologists unearthed the interlocked skeletons of a mother and child last year from an Early Bronze Age archaeological site branded the ‘Pompeii of the East’, the People’s Daily Online reported.

The mother is thought to have been trying to protect her child during a powerful earthquake that hit Qinghai province, central China, in about 2,000 BC.

Experts speculated that the site was hit by an earthquake and flooding of the Yellow River.

Photographs of the skeletal remains show the mother looking up above as she kneels on the floor, with her arms around her young child. Archaeologists say they believe her child was a boy.

The Largest Insect Ever Existed Was A Giant ‘dragonfly’  Fossil Of A Meganeuridae

Meganeura the largest Flying Insect Ever Existed, Had a Wingspan of Up to 65 Cm, from the Carboniferous period.

Its name is Meganeuropsis, and it ruled the skies before pterosaurs, birds, and bats had even evolved.

The largest known insect of all time was a predator resembling a dragonfly but was only distantly related to them. Its name is Meganeuropsis, and it ruled the skies before pterosaurs, birds, and bats had even evolved.

Most popular textbooks make mention of “giant dragonflies” that lived during the days before the dinosaurs. This is only partly true, for real dragonflies had still not evolved back then. Rather than being true dragonflies, they were the more primitive ‘griffin flies’ or Meganisopterans. Their fossil record is quite short.

They lasted from the Late Carboniferous to the Late Permian, roughly 317 to 247 million years ago.

The fossils of Meganeura were first discovered in France in the year 1880. Then, in 1885, the fossil was described and assigned its name by Charles Brongniart who was a French Paleontologist. Later in 1979, another fine fossil specimen was discovered at Bolsover in Derbyshire.

Meganisoptera is an extinct family of insects, all large and predatory and superficially like today’s odonatans, the dragonflies and damselflies. And the very largest of these was Meganeuropsis.

It is known from two species, with the type species being the immense M.permiana. Meganeuropsis permiana, as its name suggests is from the Early Permian.

There has been some controversy as to how insects of the Carboniferous period were able to grow so large.

•Oxygen levels and atmospheric density.

The way oxygen is diffused through the insect’s body via its tracheal breathing system puts an upper limit on body size, which prehistoric insects seem to have well exceeded. It was originally proposed hat Meganeura was able to fly only because the atmosphere at that time contained more oxygen than the present 20%.

•Lack of predators.

Other explanations for the large size of meganeurids compared to living relatives are warranted. Bechly suggested that the lack of aerial vertebrate predators allowed pterygote insects to evolve to maximum sizes during the Carboniferous and Permian periods, perhaps accelerated by an evolutionary “arms race” for an increase in body size between plant-feeding Palaeodictyoptera and Meganisoptera as their predators.

•Aquatic larvae stadium.

Another theory suggests that insects that developed in water before becoming terrestrial as adults grew bigger as a way to protect themselves against the high levels of oxygen.

A Man Renovating His Home Discovered A Tunnel… To A Massive Underground City

In 1963, a man in the Nevşehir Province of Turkey knocked down a wall of his home. Behind it, he discovered a mysterious room and soon discovered an intricate tunnel system with additional cave-like rooms. What he had discovered was the ancient Derinkuyu underground city in Turkey.

The elaborate subterranean network included discrete entrances, ventilation shafts, wells, and connecting passageways. It was one of the dozens of underground cities carved from the rock in Cappadocia thousands of years ago. It remained hidden for centuries.

Located almost exactly in the center of Turkey in the region best known as “Cappadocia,” this particular complex is located in the modern town of Derinkuyu.

That the man found this complex while digging out his house was surprising, as was its size, but Cappadocia was already famous for its underground dwellings. There are over two hundred known underground “cities” of various sizes in the region (most of them would more properly be called “villages” or “hamlets”).

At least forty of them have three or more levels, with Kaymakli and Derinkuyu having eight and eighteen (!), respectively. Most archaeologists believe that the caves were begun by the Phrygian people (one of the many “sea peoples” that invaded the Aegean and Turkish area from the west, and who are mentioned in ancient texts) in about the 7th or 8th centuries B.C.

Some believe the caves are older, and date from the Hittite period some five hundred years before that. Regardless of who dug it, the cave system at Derinkuyu especially was not built by “stupid troglodytes”–these were exceedingly smart troglodytes.

As one can imagine, there are many good reasons for building a city underground. First and foremost was likely defense, but of course, shelter from the weather was an important factor too. No wind, no rain or snow, protection from the blazing Mediterranean sun.

Another factor was access to water. Rivers and lakes run dry and enemies might control water sources in an effort to subdue your people, but if you are sitting directly on top of an aquifer, you’ve got all the water you’ll ever need.

The cleverness of the people at Derinkuyu is illustrated by the fact that one of the wells there (over two hundred feet down) was controlled by those on the deepest levels. Access to the wells could be closed tight with wood and stone so those above could not attempt to poison the water below.

The stone in Cappadocia is soft volcanic rock left eons ago. One might call it sandstone, from its looks, but it is not. Though relatively easy to dig through (compared to granite, for example), it was still no small undertaking for the people of Cappadocia to dig out.

This also means that the stone can be carved easily. Later troglodytic complexes include elaborate early Christian churches, with arches embedded in the ceiling.

Security was built in. Entrances were in high or in very well-hidden places. The tunnels and stairways are just wide enough for one adult to make their way through – enemy warriors could only fight one on one in the corridors.

Oil lamps lit the halls, stairways, and dwellings, and could be extinguished by retreating warriors and families to confuse invaders. Dead-ends known only to those living in the complex would also add to any confusion.

Large circular stones could be rolled into tunnels, blocking further advance. During the original Turkish invasions in the 10th century, and into the Ottoman era, these caves were used as refuge and defense.

Some of the smaller troglodyte dwellings (and that’s what they’re called) are still inhabited. Many of the others were lived in until early in the 20th century.

The large complex at Kaymakli was last used as a refuge by Anatolian Greeks fearing the massacres that were taking place in the war between Turkey and Greece in the early 1920s.

Today, many of these underground cities and towns are open to the public and are Turkish national treasures.

The large complexes at Kaymakli and Derinkuyu offer guided tours through the approximately ten percent of the cave systems that are open to the public.