While chasing his chickens through a hole in his basement during repairs, a Turkish homeowner discovered an abandoned underground Turkish city that previously held 20,000 people. The anonymous guy, in an attempt to recapture his escaping chickens, broke down the wall in the 1960s to discover a dark tunnel leading to the ancient city of Elengubu, now known as Derinkuyu, according to the New York Post
Derinkuyu, located more than 280 feet beneath the Central Anatolian area of Cappadocia, is the world’s largest excavated underground city and is thought to connect to more than 200 other, distinct underground cities uncovered in recent decades, according to Turkish guides.
Within the subterranean city, which has entrances to around 600 private residences in the modern, surface-level district of Cappadocia — researchers found 18 levels of tunnels containing dwellings, dry food storage, cattle stables, schools, wineries, and even a chapel. The city also included a ventilation system that provided residents with fresh air and water.
“Life underground was probably very difficult,” the guide, identified as Suleman, told the outlet. “The residents relieved themselves in sealed clay jars, lived by torchlight, and disposed of dead bodies in [designated] areas.”
The precise period of construction of the magnificent city is unknown, however, historical documents going back to 370 BC show that Derinkuyu existed. The city was most likely intended to store things before being utilized as a bunker to avoid foreign invasion – the dimly lit corridors were purposefully made narrow and low so intruders would have to squat and approach in single file.
The doors linking each level were barred by half-ton rocks that could only be moved from the inside and contained a small hole through which residents could spear the trapped trespassers.
Derinkuyu was abandoned in 1923, by the Cappadocian Greeks
Though the architects’ identities are unknown, researchers believe the Hittites — a Bronze Age Anatolian people — “may have excavated the first few levels in the rock when they came under attack from the Phrygians around 1200 BCE,” according to A. Bertini, an expert in Mediterranean cave dwellings, in his 2010 essay on regional cave architecture.
The Phrygian conquerors, an Indo-European-speaking kingdom that governed Anatolia for 600 years, are credited with constructing the majority of Derinkuyu in the decades before it changed hands multiple times, notably between Persians, Christians, and Cappadocian Greeks. According to the BBC, the city’s population peaked at 20,000 during the 7th-century Islamic attacks on the Christian Byzantine Empire.
Derinkuyu was ultimately abandoned in 1923, by the Cappadocian Greeks, after 2,000 years of use who faced defeat in the Greco-Turkish war and escaped to Greece.
