Ancient underground city in Cappadocia will 'rewrite history'

a reply to: Spider879

Yes it's difficult to say, tobacco pipes of clay can be found at Turkish sites from the late 17th century, given the extent to which the entrances into the tunnels were inter-connected to the residences on the hill it may just have been a secret tobacco smoking fraternity from that period, anything older would raise questions.

Given that they're talking in terms of a city that could have provided permanent residence for up to thousands, that supposedly is supposedly of far greater extent than all previously found you'd expect a lot of artifacts and accumulated waste down there, you'd also expect a lot of lamps, maybe that's what the supposed linseed oil production related to, so i'd expect clay lamps more than clay pipes, but who knows...


a reply to: mysterioustranger

Yes there are several already known Derinkuyu being the most impressive, but none of them are considered to have been permanent underground dwelling cities, to talk in those terms is something else entirely, in their words they said that Derinkuyu would be comparable to a kitchen compared to the scale of this site, so it could be expected that this was the central loci of those who built the underground complexes, the centre of their culture, of which nothing is known.

January 2015 video

a reply to: peter vlar

I looked at the early Dynastic period seals with regards to the cultivation of Opium in Sumeria, it's cultic associations and preparation as related to a sacred drink here

a reply to: Kantzveldt

I can't remember where the hell I read this but it concerned the huge temple in Baalbeck. I read that the locals use to shelter under its stones with their cattle when fire balls reigned down on the earth.

Going underground had to be for a good reason its not a choice humans would make naturally and it must have been done over a period of time construction-wise - caves one can understand but not cities and especially so early on I would have thought. I seem to recall a lot about unexplained under ground tunnels existing in Europe also. Perhaps there is a time in history we have not quite understood or found recorded yet?

a reply to: Shiloh7

I think what is already known exceeds any requirement for temporary shelters or hiding places or escape routes, if they are talking about an actual underground city the people lived there because it was preferable to living on the surface.

That cannot be down to extreme climate or they would have had no long term source of sustenance anyway, it could have been the case that there were groups down there for whom the natural conditions of life on the surface were challenging, that even the sunlight was hostile to them.



Regarding the pipes found at Neveshir there is mention of Ottoman artifacts here, i think all this stuff is near the entrances.

The excavations works conducted in the area have unearthed equipment belonging to various civilizations.


The findings include sepulcher ruins from the late Roman era, along with two “Bezirhanes” (a seed oil process unit) dating back to early periods of Anatolian civilization.

Additionally, fragments from pots and pans used in houses and kitchens, dating back to periods from the late Roman era to the early Byzantine period have been found during the archaeological dig. Pipes and oil-lamps have also been unearthed from the Ottoman and early Republican era.

this is really cool.. a permanent underground dwelling with alot of people is insane and it hasnt been opened in thousands of years?! thanks for the update i have seen the one on AA but that was open for a long time to the public and looted empty. hopefully tptb wont wipe off the ufo glyphs before we get some pics of down there lol

a reply to: Kantzveldt

Thanks for the additional info. Looks like I was wrong about Kramer's involvement as he deciphered the script in question! I thought I rememberedyou doing a thread on this last year so thanks for the link and the refresher.

a reply to: Kantzveldt

The location is certainly not a suprise but the scale certainly is. In terms of geology, Cappadocia is full of very soft volcanic tuffa so digging an underground city is easier here than in most other locations. In parts, you could literally start with a sturdy branch, rather than specialised digging implements.

But i suppose the real question is why build underground here. Volcanic activity was large scale in the region from around 65 million to 2million years ago. Possibly a slight uptick in volcanism after a small rest? Or perhaps localised climate change? (as in transition from fertile region to more inhospitable region).

Given the ages, i suppose it also not inconceivable that they were fleeing a migration from the steppes' tribes.

Calling the pipes they found "Tobacco pipes' seems to bring up an issue for me:

Tobacco is from the so-called "New World" (the Americas...); so, if these pipes were really used for tobacco, that would infer trade in ancient times with the Americas, would it not?

Was there significant trade back then, or was there some tobacco growing in Eurasia?

It is a conundrum.

So ... probably they were not really used for tobacco. There are plenty of other things on this planet to smoke, however *cough*

a reply to: Flavian

If it dates back to before the time of the Hittites that excludes any steppe tribes, the only people from antiquity this sounds like are the Cimmerians, by the Late classical period they were more associated with Campania, but perhaps such tales originated from Cappadocia.

Again, Ephorus, [reference to earlier historian, Ephorus of Cyme, 400-330 BC] in the passage where he claims the locality in question for the Cimmerians, says: They live in underground houses, which they call "argillae," and it is through tunnels that they visit one another, back and forth, and also admit strangers to the oracle, which is situated far beneath the earth; and they live on what they get from mining, and from those who consult the oracle, and from the king of the country, who has appointed them fixed allowances; and those who live about the oracle have an ancestral custom, that no one should see the sun, but should go outside the caverns only during the night; and it is for this reason that the poet speaks of them as follows: "And never does the shining sun look upon them"; but later on the Cimmerians were destroyed by a certain king, because the response of the oracle did not turn out in his favour; the seat of the oracle, however, still endures...

...where people dwell Whom a perpetual cloud obscures outright,to whom the cheerful sun lends never light...But night holds fix'd wings, feather'd all with banes, above those most unblest Cimmerians..where Cimmerian people have their homes—their realm and city shrouded in mist and cloud. The eye of the sun can never flash his rays through the dark and bring them light/....

Cimmerian Darkness

In fact there is good evidence from Assyria to associate the Cimmerians with Cappadocia.

Cimmerians in Transcaucasia and the Near East. According to intelligence reports sent to the Assyrian king Sargon II between 720 and 714 b.c.e., King Rusā I of Urarṭu marched his troops to KUR Gamir(ra) “land of the Cimmerians” but was defeated

ccording to another Assyrian intelligence report (Lanfranchi and Parpola, no. 145; Deller, no. 2.1), Cimmerians did invade Urarṭu from the territory of Mannea (the country south of Lake Urmia); the document is datable to the same years (720-14 b.c.e.), but, as the context differs from that of Rusā’s campaign against the “country of Cimmerians,” it is probable that it deals with a different phase of the conflict.

Transcaucasia was in fact the base from which Cimmerian troops marched, probably until the beginning of the reign of Aššurbanipal (668-ca. 625 b.c.e.). In 679 the Cimmerian king Teušpa was defeated by the Assyrians near the city Ḫubušsnu (perhaps in Cappadocia

Cimmerians

a reply to: Kantzveldt

Nice video. A bit off topic but reading stuff like this or seeing video of places like that always remind me of the cave system in the US that connects like, a third the width and maybe half of the width of the continent. I am astounded each day that passes and still no updated news about this cave system of 5 or 6000 miles all connected, oxygen filled, uncollapsed and where you could travel underground from like...Missouri thru Kentucky ending in West Virginia...full of incredible unique wildlife...with stories over a thousand yrs old of the hominid non-homosapien who inhabits the deep parts and inner earth which is also connected within yet day after day and still just 19 miles, no more, have been explored. You'd think adventure seekers would be swarming places like that and archaeologists places like the Turkish underground but instead were blown away by the mere existence then left in silence until the point just being REMINDED of them may as well be news. I wish I were brave enough to explore earths underground but knowing that's where native Americans put sasquatch and seeing movies like The Descent and eeeek!

a reply to: peter vlar

See here Peter, all this back and fourth discussion about a
friggen tobacco pipe is digusting to me. When certain players
obviously unwittingly, make secure pronouncements that artifacts
there will rewrite history. And what do we all together get? G-D
tobacco pipes? Why are none of you even addressing the real issue
here? What are they hiding from the world? This is what makes me
so hostile? Obviously, the people in charge aren't giving even you
poor souls the full skinny. This allows you then to spout off in lieu
of the lack of evidence for a previous world. What are they hiding
that seeks to enable everything I call BS on. You can't possibly deny
the dishonesty my friend. And I don't mind saying, a lot is hinged
on your next reply.

Why does this dishonesty exist? Because they don't want to
rewrite the text? That's just more BS.

Why don't you ask yourself these questions? To painful to admit
you're being openly lied to and not being given all the info?

It really makes me wanna rip someones esophagus out.
Not yours but someones.

a reply to: randyvs

I trust in my own dream which i had before i ever heard of caves in Turkey more than the Turkish authorities;

As we left the town and began to enter into the countryside i began to get the sense that we were travelling back in time, the grassland shone like gold in the sun and became ever more primordial in feel.

Eventually as we followed the road we began to arrive at an imposing forest, the deeper we entered in the more dark and gloomily ominous the atmosphere was, and it became increasingly apparent that there had been extensive flooding as pools of water began to be seen everywhere.

To the side i saw a huge and mighty tree that had fallen and was lying within a lake of remaining flood water, we began to emerge from the forest following this sight and arrived at a small stone bridge were on the other side the road began to make steep ascent up a hill.


At first the car seemed unable to make headway up the hill such was its steepness, but then my friend seemed to engage a different mode, and we began to ascend increasingly rapidly, all the dials on the dashboard were spinning around and around, and even though a torrent of water began to surge down the road we forced our way through it.

At the top of the hill all was calm, i got out of the car and left my friend, and before me was a wooden mountain hut, i went up to the door and knocked, and it was opened by myself as a child, peeping round from the door with a bashful smile.

I entered into the gloomy interior and saw there were women that either looked Romany or Jewish, that were wearing head scarves, they were silent and seemed pensive and somehow ashamed, sitting scattered in corners of the dark interior by the windows with curtains drawn.

Within the room also were small and formal sunken pools of bright crystal clear water in which young toddlers were playing, which had the appearance of cherubs, with overly rounded bodies and large heads without hair, these happily splashed about in the pools as if water was their preferred habitat, this contrasted with the attitude of their Mothers.

Also within the pool was a horizontal ladder type climbing frame for the children, i got in the pool and crawled along it from one side to the next and then emerged.

There was a curtained entranceway to the rear of the room, i drew back the curtain and entered into a cavernous series of labyrinth passageways carved into the rock. As i made my way through these passages i began to come come across the blackened, seemingly burnt, bodies of women with large dead babies lying alongside them, the wombs of the women appeared to have been torn open and the unborn babies removed.

These were laid in or close to cubicles cut into the rock off the passageways, with low retaining walls such that they had the appearance of pens, i began to see more and more of these bodies until i saw a great number and then i awoke.

a reply to: AlexandrosTheGreat

There are correlations to traditions such as the Ant people and those who lived beneath ground and then emerged from it, the Inca had similar traditions of emerging from caves.

a reply to: Kantzveldt

Man you picked one to soften me up there Kantz.
I do love the genius of Bowie.

originally posted by: peter vlar
I've got a couple of books I'll look through in the morning and I'll see if I can find a more definitive answer to issues with addiction and personal use but I think most of my Mesopotamia literature is from Kramer and while the quality of his work, particularly his translations, was exemplary, I don't recall hi, touching on this subject. Somebody has to have a more definitive answer and I'll be damned if I don't find it now haha

Kramer is credited with translating the oldest medical text, excavated from Nippur and dated as being about 4000 years old. He doesn't make any translation for "opium" though, or even mention it one way or another I don't think. The notion that opium was known to the Sumerians appears to be a purely American invention and all who mention it refer back to the same dubious claim. It's a funny little conspiracy really, round and round it takes you.

Thompson painstakingly sought to identify each plant mentioned in the tablets, both from the general context in which it’s name appeared and by reference to other cuneiform texts. He then adduced philological evidence from other languages before comparing his conclusions with the findings of other scholars, taking fully into account the ancient, mediaeval and modern usage of drugs in the Middle East. His work remains important, despite valid criticism that there were many errors in his identification of the 115 or so drugs. A number of his findings were revised in a posthumous publication, but his mistaken belief that the wild poppy, papaver rhoeas L, produced narcotic substances persisted and has continued to mislead...This has resulted in the widespread belief that opium was used 5000 years ago in Sumer. This situation has been further confounded by the suggestion that a third millennium BC ideogram on a clay tablet from the holy city of Nippur depicted HUL GIL, the plant of joy, this allegedly being the opium poppy. That opinion was originally expressed in a personal communication from a professor at Yale. There is no evidence to support it.

Drug Discovery, Walter Sneader. 2005, P12



In terms of Turkey though, opium and cannabis seeds have been found in association with LBK sites around the Black Sea and elsewhere. They are both high nutrient food sources, the seeds oil rich. Poppies are particularly useful as they grow with the cereals but mature at different rates, two crops with little effort. I've also read that the seeds of cannabis were used similarly to sweat lodges, heated on hot stones for the "vapours" by nomads and the like...I think that was Food of the Gods by McKenna. I think smoking anything in a pipe from that time would be unusual...how do they know they are smoking pipes and not noise making pipes? Or is that obvious?

originally posted by: Shiloh7
a reply to: Kantzveldt

I can't remember where the hell I read this but it concerned the huge temple in Baalbeck. I read that the locals use to shelter under its stones with their cattle when fire balls reigned down on the earth.

Going underground had to be for a good reason its not a choice humans would make naturally and it must have been done over a period of time construction-wise - caves one can understand but not cities and especially so early on I would have thought. I seem to recall a lot about unexplained under ground tunnels existing in Europe also. Perhaps there is a time in history we have not quite understood or found recorded yet?

We lived in and around caves, some parts of us at least, for much longer than we have lived in houses above ground. I think we were scared out of them rather than into them, and then back again possibly, different times calling for the same measure? Same place, different #? To begin with though, when some groups stopped moving around, they stayed in caves for as long as that environment could sustain them, and expand to accommodate them. Must have been quite a bit of competition for the best sites, and those would have been the best defensive positions. Caves with water goes without saying too. Goats and sheep, you're sorted, and safe as houses.

Cappadoccia definately seemed accommodating. Again and again. Came and went with the fashions perhaps.

originally posted by: Kantzveldt

That's really a bit interesting in a weird out of kilter kind of way, where and when is it from? It looks like it might be a reconstruction of a mural or something...???

Please tell me more

I don't think that an Underground city is something so unusual. There are actually hundreds if not thousands of underground cities.

I mean just look at the underground cities we built in modern times and are used on an every day basis - subways, shopping centers, etc.

en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...

I mean if you remove all the nice paneling, the signs, the lights, our modern underground cities don't look so different that this ancient underground city.

Think also how cities were built on top of cities like Mexico City and those "old" city parts become suddenly part of the "underground city".

I don't think that above ground living was the "standard" until we actually figured out how to protect ourselves from the elements which is probably much more difficult than carving some tunnels in soft stone and enjoy immediate protection on several levels.

So I don't see anything unusual here.

I think it is funny to see them say:
"unlike other cities which were mostly carved into rocks for temporary protection."
I would imagine that the time spent to carve out your house IN ROCK is something you take pride in or at least is something that you would use longer that "temporary protection".

a reply to: peter vlar

So far, by your vacant to vanished response you seem
vanquished, void of voice and verbage. I didn't mean to be a
thread stopper.

Apologies Kantsveldt

a reply to: randyvs

The archaeologist said that the site could rewrite the history of the city. Not all history, if that is what you thought. The editor or writer of the article that the OP used as a source just chose to cut it for, I suppose, sensational purposes. Is that what you were referring to?

originally posted by: Anaana
a reply to: randyvs

The archaeologist said that the site could rewrite the history of the city. Not all history, if that is what you thought. The editor or writer of the article that the OP used as a source just chose to cut it for, I suppose, sensational purposes. Is that what you were referring to?

Yeah - except they find some Tok-Ra crystals to growth tunnels or an ancient power source that could produce electricity - I don't know how this would "rewrite" history.

Who actually knows if that was really an underground city. I mean they could have started building that above and than slowly build up the hill to cover it.