According to the Washington Post, a recently discovered underground city buried deep inside a hilltop may put it to shame. And this one was discovered completely by accident.
“This new discovery will be added as a new pearl, a new diamond, a new gold” to the wonders of the region, the mayor of nearby Nevsehir, Hasan Unver, told National Geographic. “When the underground city beneath Nevsehir Castle is completely revealed, it is almost certain to change the destination of Cappadocia dramatically.”
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The complex dates back about 5,000 years, and is all the more incredible for being found by mere happenstance. Years ago, the government issued an edict to demolish about 1,500 buildings in the area as part of an urban renewal project, according to the Hurriyet Daily News. Then, while workers were shifting around piles of earth in 2012 to start building, they stumbled across a vast labyrinthine network that early estimates say could be one-third larger than Derinkuyu.
“It is not a known underground city,” the head of Turkey’s Housing Development Administration told the Daily News. “Tunnel passages of seven kilometers are being discussed. We stopped the construction we were planning to do on these areas when an underground city was discovered.”
MAPS
Inside the Mysterious Underground City That’s 5,000 Years Old
A view of the underground city newly discovered in Turkey’s Central Anatolian province of Nevsehir is seen in this Dec. 28, 2014 file photo.
Right away, Mayor Unver was salivating over what this underground city could mean. He told the Daily News those other underground cities wouldn’t even be a “kitchen” in this underground city. He said the whole thing came in at more than 100 acres, which was more than half the area plotted for the “transformation project.”
Inside, they found an underground ecosystem that could have sustained thousands of people, replete with air shafts and water channels. Locals likely retreated to its depths, experts suspect, whenever armies or invaders approached during those turbulent times, and waited out the danger like a turtle in its shell.
Turkey’s Cappadocia region is famous for its subterranean safe houses carved from tuff—a light, porous rock composed of volcanic ash.
PHOTOGRAPH BY MURAT KAYA, ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY
Source:
Underground city discovered Turkey
http://www.newser.com/story/204596/found-in-turkey-huge-underground-city.html
1994 I was stationed in Turkey, rumors about a farmer finding large stone in his field turned out to be Gobeckli Teppe: Dated 12,000 years old and now a great mystery. Been to Anatolia and can believe much more than meets the eye but very populated area. (Good catch:Darrell; click on “Turkey” first paragraph ) Photos of find can be viewed and you can see trash shows this is no news for the locals. I do hope though this site will be as interesting as Derinkuyu (Cappadocya area) 13 Stories of dwellings below ground (Zoroastrian era) can handle over 20,000 people with unique security doors, air vents found in 1968 I think. We will see, but 5,000 years for this area is just another notch in their long historical belt. To this day (check your news) Asia Minor has played a big role in history of ManKind! Then and now.
I remember back in 1985 when I was 9 years old, I went to visit my grandparents in Mexico. They had a huge ranch adjacent to some rugged forest area in Michuaca n . One day a horse broke out of the coral. So my grandpa and I took a horse back ride through the forest to try and find the horse. We searched for about an hour and a half through some rugged mountains following the trail of broken vegetation the runway horse left. As we were going up a mountain in the middle of nowhere, I suddenly noticed some steps built of some stone or brick like material leading straight up the side of the mountain. I didn’t think much of it til one day in middle school, we were studying Aztec and Mayan culture and it finally dawned on me. We were probably walking on an ancient Aztec pyramid buried under dirt and vegetation with just some steps exposed. Long story short, we found the horse and probably an ancient city no one has discovered yet.