Destination: Derinkuyu
An underground city rediscovered by accident.
The way this city was used is pretty amazing and the functions put in place to protect the inhabitants are pretty ingenious. And it may not be the only one of its kind in the area, but only time will tell on that one.
Rediscovery
In the Cappadocia province of Turkey, roughly 4 hours from the capital, Ankara, you can find the underground city of Derinkuyu. But how did they know it was underground? Well, that came about thanks to someone doing some renovation work.
Back in 1963, a Turkish bloke, who has amazingly remained anonymous this whole time, was doing some basic renovations on his house, when he realised his chickens kept disappearing through a crevasse in the wall. After knocking down the wall and doing some extra digging around, he found a tunnel that appeared to be a part of a larger tunnel system.
What would later be unearthed is a labyrinth of caves and tunnels spread out over 8 levels and stretching over 85 metres deep. What had been rediscovered was a hand excavated underground metropolis that has its origins dating back to the 7th century BC.
Naturally everyone was fascinated with this find and excavation work began pretty much immediately, what they found was room for an entire civilisation to safely carry out their lives underground. So far though, only about 40 metres of the underground city has been excavated. So there very well could be some surprises still in store for us.
But ‘Derinkuyu’, the name the city goes by today, is a modern name, meaning ‘deep well’, and it’s not hard to figure out how they came up with that one. But it has gone by other names throughout history. It’s believed that the ancient people who lived in the city knew it as ‘Elengubu’, and then later the Greeks called the place ‘Malakopia’ which means ‘soft’, which is a possible reference to how easy it is to carve into the local stone, but we’ll get more into how the tunnel was made a bit later on.
Through excavations carried out we know that the city was in near-constant use for at least two thousand years so let’s find out what life was like to live underground.
What life was like underground
One of the earliest written accounts of a description of Derinkuyu is believed to be by Xenophon in his writings titled Anabasis, which he wrote in 370 BC, so quite a little while ago. It’s here that he mentions the people living in Anatolia and their underground homes. He describes Derinkuyu a little something like this:
The houses were underground structures with an aperture like the mouth of a well by which to enter, but they were broad and spacious below. The entrance for the beasts of burden was dug out, but the human occupants descended by a ladder. In these dwellings were to be found goats and sheep and cattle, and cocks and hens, with their various progeny. The flocks and herds were all reared under cover upon green food. There were stores within of wheat and barley and vegetables and wine…
So there definitely appears to be dwellings down there large enough for your whole family and then extra room for the animals and storage of food and drink. In fact they actually could live their whole lives down there. They had schools, churches, areas set aside for food, wine and oil preparation. Whether they chose to live above or below ground they were pretty much set.
It is thought though that Derinkuyu’s original use was mainly for storage. Underground the temperature and humidity is pretty stable, it’s pretty dry down there, so makes it a pretty good place to keep things like food and wine from going bad in the long term. But it’s when enemies started to wander into the above ground town that the people would take refuge underground and by the time we get to the Byzantine period, Derinkuyu has pretty much reached its peak and has kept a hell of a lot of people safe with its extensive labyrinth of tunnels and chambers. They even think that it could comfortably house a population as large as 20 000, that’s a lot of people living under the surface.
Each level appears to have a specific purpose and use. We’ve got the livestock living in the levels closest to the surface, which makes sense because animals are smelly, and the closer you are to the surface the more ventilated the space is going to be. The middle levels look to be for living and sleeping, so we’ve got schools, churches, convents, wine presses, meeting spaces. Then the deepest levels appear to have been mainly used for storage, which again makes sense, potatoes don’t really need fresh air to still taste like a potato.
What all this really tells us, is that the inhabitants of this underground city were prepared to spend months down there. They had everything they could possibly need, if conditions on the surface were no good, they had another alternate home just waiting for them down below.
And it also tells us that when the residents did flee to their underground city, life didn’t stop, they just kept going as normal, this is especially prevalent in the existence of commercial spaces like grocers, places for worship and even some good old shopping. Derinkuyu really had everything, they even had temporary graveyards, where they would store the dead, until, quite ironically, it was safe to return to the surface and bury the deceased.
Because of all this time they were spending underground, the people had to make sure that they had enough water and fresh air to keep them alive. And we know they did, through their frankly impressive ventilation system, as well as their ingenious fresh water well system.
The primary well that was used was apart of a large 55 metre deep shaft that provided water not only for those residents living underground but also for those living on the surface. But in order to prevent their water from being poisoned by those on the surface, they were able to control the supply of water from the lower floors and move it upward, enabling them to cut-off surface access to this precious resource when needed, while still being able to keep everyone sheltering underground well watered.
Now the ventilation shafts are where they really got to work. So that they weren’t relying on the one shaft for fresh air, the city is believed to have more than 15 000 shafts, most of them just 10cm wide, each reaching to a different depth to ensure everyone had access to breathable air.
Why did they make it
It seems like life in an underground city was pretty lush, but why would they need to build an underground city in the first place. There are a couple theories that really stand out and to be honest, a natural and gradual blend of the two seem to be the most logical in my mind.
We know that caves and underground tunnels seem to have a pretty stable and constant temperature and weather in general, and it makes sense that people would store things underground. We still do today, if you’ve ever been to a potato cellar or wine cellar. That’s all stored underground, mainly due to the unchanging constant ambient temperature. And if you’ve ever been on a cave tour when it’s really cold or hot outside, you’ll see just how lovely the temperature in the cave really is, and what’s crazy is that the temperature is the same all year round. Now Cappadocia, like much of the region, experiences extremes both in winter and summer. In summer it can get unbearably hot and in winter it can become dangerously cold.
So there is the theory, that the residents of Derinkuyu moved down there when the surface temperature was just too hot to function, and they were able to be nice and cool and comfortable, living their lives the way they needed to down in the cool caves they had made for themselves. And if it meant being close to the stores of their food, and being able to ensure they were safe from the enemy, mould and thieves, then all the better.
But the main theory that seems to attract all the attention and get the better traction is that Derinkuyu was used as a safe haven for those being attacked on the surface.
It’s believed that several different groups of people throughout the ages sought refuge from wars and religious persecution in the underground city of Derinkuyu. We’ve got the Phrygians, Persians and even the Christians of the Byzantine Era all seeking refuge in Derinkuyu at one time or another. There’s even Muslim-Arabs hiding out down there during the Arab-Byzantine Wars that raged from 780 to 1180. While the Greek-speaking Christians were fleeing from Roman persecutors throughout the 14thcentury. It’s these Christians that may actually be responsible for expanding the caverns and tunnels, and they stuck around as well, even throughout the 20th century, seeking refuge in the city from persecution at the hands of the Ottoman Empire.
Here’s Andrea De Giorgi, an associate professor of classical studies out of Florida State University, giving us an idea as to the contemporary climate.
The succession of empires and their impact on the landscapes of Anatolia explain the recourse to underground shelters like Derinkuyu
Normally living above ground, when danger appeared the residents would retreat underground through hundreds of hidden entrances that these days are fun to seek out. They’re hidden by bushes, behind walls, anywhere one wouldn’t think to look for a door to an underground city.
In order to prevent the enemy from following them in, they would block access to the tunnels with massive round stones that they could roll into place, keeping those unwanted out. And these aren’t your regular stone doors, they can be up to 1.5 metres across and weigh about 500 kilos, so not something you’re likely to move with any amount of ease. And what’s really fascinating is they were engineered so they could only be opened from the inside.
And if some of the enemy did manage to make it inside, then the inhabitants of Derinkuyu were ready. The network of tunnels had been created very ingeniously, with the tunnels purposely being quite narrow, which would force any invaders into single-file and in some areas made to crouch or even crawl. This made it very easy to protect the city. It’s a lot easier to fight off one attacker at a time, than it is a group of them.
How was it made
Because Derinkuyu’s walls are made of rock, it stands to reason that rock would have had to have been removed in order to create tunnels and caverns. And we all know rocks, they’re not exactly soft or easy to carve, so how do you make an underground city made of rock? The answer to that question is you use volcanic rock.
Rich in volcanic history the Cappadocia region of Anatolia sits on a plateau of the stuff. Its thought that millions of years ago a volcano erupted showering the entire area in ash. As time went on and the ash hardened and then erosion started doing its thing, we end up with the landscape of Anatolia we see today.
But what’s important here is that the rock created from volcanic ash is softer than other rocks, which means you can carve things like rooms and tunnels out of it.
The layering of the compacted and hardened volcanic ash is called ‘tuff’. T U F F. Now despite its name, it’s not actually that tough, it quite porous making it fairly fragile, which allowed the ancient people to do what they did with basic tools. And those ancient people didn’t stop and start with Derinkuyu, the whole region is known to be made of this soft volcanic rock, which means that the whole region is believed to have many underground cities, but we’ll touch on that a bit further on.
It’s old mate, Andrea de Giorgi who can tell us that its mainly due to the lack of water in the surrounding soil which keeps this ‘tuff’ rock soft and malleable.
The geomorphology of the region is conducive to the digging of underground spaces.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
But danger also loomed for those early tunnellers. Thanks to the rock being soft it means it’s easy to carve, but it also means it’s prone to cave-ins, and these can be deadly. So a lot of support is needed along the walls and ceilings, and those who dug out Derinkuyu must have been experts at this because there doesn’t appear to be a whole lot of evidence of collapses in our favourite underground city.
Now that we know how the city was dug out, who was it who first thought, ‘I’ve got a great idea for a tunnel’? There are a couple theories out there, but the two most likely are either the Phrygians or the Hittites. So let’s take a little look at the likelihood of each.
Now the early historical record has little to nothing to say about Derinkuyu’s origins so we, and historians and archaeologists, are left to speculate. And some of those speculations see the Hittites digging out the oldest part of the city, possibly around 2000 BC. Other’s speculate that it was actually the Phrygians who got started digging a bit later around 700 BC. Then there are some who claim it was the local Christians who came up with the idea of Derinkuyu, very late in the first couple centuries AD, but evidence doesn’t really lean this way too often. Although we do know that it was the Christians who were the last ones to call the city home.
Figuring out who it was who started Derinkuyu’s tunnels are made all the more difficult by the natural rock it’s carved from. So the way archaeologists typically date things found underground is they use the surrounding layers of dirt and rock to figure out a rough approximate time that the layer would have been created, and then they can compare the contents of those layers to events they know were happening at the time, it’s all a big thing, but what you need to know in this case, is that archaeologists aren’t able to date the tunnels that way because rock doesn’t have any clear layering, making any attempt at dating inconclusive.
So our first suspected culprits are the Hittites who dominated the area at the time it’s speculated they started digging the city, so around the 15th century BC. Even, expert in Mediterranean cave dwellings, A Bertini thinks it could be the Hittites in his essay on regional cave architecture.
[The Hittites] may have excavated the first few levels in the rock when they came under attack from the Phrygians around 1200 BC.
Helping the Hittites cause is some artefacts dating to the Hittites being found within Derinkuyu. But unfortunately that evidence isn’t conclusive.
Now if it’s a matter of sophistication, were the Hittites sophisticated enough to think up an idea like an underground cave and tunnel system, as the Hittite Empire reached its height around the 1300s BC and spread right across Asia Minor and even into Upper Mesopotamia? But as we know by now, nothing lasts forever, and for the Hittites they’re time soon came to an end, with the Phrygians being the next dominant players.
While the strongest theory for the Hittites being the architects for Derinkuyu is they sought refuge possibly from the Phrygian’s themselves. It was the Phrygians who were highly skilled in construction at the time, and creating underground facilities were not out of their wheelhouse.
So if it really was the Phrygian’s who first built Derinkuyu, as some do claim, then they would have been setting to work around the 8th and 7th centuries BC. And you know it’s not completely out of the scope of reason to think that the Phrygians could have done this. Like I mentioned before they were great architects and extremely accomplished builders. They already had several large building projects under their belts, and are seen from our modern day as one of the greatest building civilisations in the Iron Age, so it’s well within their skillset to create a subterranean city.
Here’s De Giorgi to tell us what he reckons:
The Phrygians were one of Anatolia’s most prominent early empires. They developed across western Anatolia around the end of the first millennium BC and had a bent for monumentalising rock formations and creating remarkable rock-cut facades.
Okay so we know they knew their way around some good rock carvings. And we also know that their kingdom spread throughout Anatolia, so it seems they were in the right place at the right time with the right skills to make it all happen.
Now while the date of construction does seem to be contested a fair bit, we do have Xenophon’s reference to the city around 370 BC, so we know for certain that Derinkuyu had to have been already in the works and liveable by then. Although that doesn’t really narrow it down, does it. Especially when you realise that Xenophon doesn’t explicitly name Derinkuyu as the underground city he’s talking about. More and more questions and theories abound it would seem.
Exploring Derinkuyu
What’s pretty crazy to think about is that since it’s inception, either by the Hittites or the Phrygians, Derinkuyu has been in constant use right up until the 1920s, when it was finally abandoned. Isn’t that just ridiculous to think about?
It was the Cappadocian Greeks who were the last inhabitants of this great underground city. They were hiding out down there fleeing their own persecution, when they were defeated in the Greco-Turkish War and they seem to have collectively fled to Greece. And Turkey kind of helped them along when they expelled their Christian population to Greece in 1923, effectively abandoning the cave.
This means that depending on who you think the original architects were, Derinkuyu was probably in full use for well over 2000 years. Imagine the stories those stone walls could tell.
And then of course, we know that this amazing city’s existence was all but forgotten by those of us populating the modern world. Right up until a couple of chickens decided to go an adventure.
These days though, you can head on down and wader through the underground city of Derinkuyu for about 60 Turkish lira. But do keep in mind that back in 2015, reports say that a visit was worth just 15 Turkish lira, so inflation really does hit those hip pockets everywhere.
It was actually only a couple of years after the rediscovery of Derinkuyu, in 1965, that it was opened up to the public. Soon there were hundreds and thousands of non-claustrophobic tourists wandering over for a look for themselves, and in 1985, the whole area was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List. Now that’s something to proud of.
You yourself can head on over to Anatolia in Turkey, and discover Derinkuyu for yourself, although only a small portion of the city is available for you to explore. You can still experience what life would have been like down there. You can wander down without a guided tour, but one is recommended because there isn’t a whole lot of information once you’re down there, so a tour guide is probably ideal if you want to learn as much as you can about this awesome place.
Now what I find absolutely fascinating, and something I very briefly touched on earlier, is that Derinkuyu isn’t the only underground city in the Cappadocian region. We already know that the whole area is made from the same soft ‘tuff’ rock, so it makes sense that other tunnel systems would have been dug out.
And what’s absolutely mind blowing is there’s even evidence that the underground cities were connected by long tunnels. There’s another city close to Derinkuyu, named Kaymakli, and through a 5km long tunnel the cities are joined. Unfortunately exploring the joining tunnel is out of the question at the moment as sections of it has collapsed, but this idea of a completely massive network of not just underground tunnels but whole underground cities being connected just like cities are above ground with your average road, is just mesmerising.
At the moment, Derinkuyu is the biggest tourist attraction out of all the underground cities in the area, but that’s just because it’s the best preserved of the ones we know about. Archaeologists believe that there could be hundreds of these cities right below their feet, but so far they’ve been able to find just six. And with Derinkuyu being the deepest it does make sense that the most resources are dedicated to understanding it that little bit more.
Now as a tourist you can go and visit both the underground cities of Derinkuyu and Kaymakli, and who knows maybe one day they’ll dig out that adjoining tunnel and you could visit the both of them without ever coming back up to the surface.
But some real exciting news came in 2013, when archaeologists discovered what they believe to be a new underground city in Nevsehir, also within the Cappadocian region. And it’s this newly discovered city that is believed to be bigger and deeper than Derinkuyu.
So keep half an eye out for more underground city news, because clearly all the secrets in this region aren’t even close to being discovered.
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Originally published at https://destinationhistorypod.com on March 26, 2023.
