Archaeologists Struggle to Explain Sarayini
Covering at least 20,000 square meters, the newly discovered underground city of Sarayini, is one of the largest of its kind yet found in Central Anatolia. Included are large domestic areas with adjoining galleries, room-like living spaces, water wells, furnaces, workshops, chimneys, oil lamps for lighting, cellars, warehouses, ventilation, and many—as yet un-investigated—areas.
According to Konya News service, archaeologist Hasan Uguz, head of excavations of the Konya Museums Directorate, scientists have determined that “the local Christian people used the underground city in the 8th century to protect themselves from the raids that lasted for 150 years.” Yet while conventional archaeology may assign the city to the middle ages, the possibility that the structure may have been occupied during the Roman era, does little to explain just when the giant complex was actually designed and engineered. The builders were far more capable than Christian refugees of the Roman era are believed to be, and clearly had much greater resources at their disposal.
Elderly people who had lived in the area all their lives, says Uguz, played in the tunnels as children, and knew a very large underground city was nearby, but no one suspected just how enormous it was, and scientists did not believe the underground tunnels, corridors, and rooms could spread over such an extensive area. The human capacity and exact size of the complex is expected to become clear as the work progresses, but, for now, how people of Sarayini actually lived remains a mystery.
Since 2012, many astonishing subterranean sites in Turkey have drawn the attention of archaeologists from around the world. So far, over two hundred such cities have been reported, but most have not yet been adequately explored, and it seems certain that many more await discovery. Much of the recent digging has been guided by Semih Istanbulluoglu, an archaeologist from Ankara University. In December, 2015, Istanbulluoglu told Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News, that scientists believe, pending further laboratory work, at least some of the underground cities will date back to even before the Hittites in the second millennium BC.
To this day nobody really knows the true extent of the area’s underground cities, but they are certainly substantial. Celebrated Boston University geologist Robert Schoch, in a report for Atlantis Rising Magazine, (AR #95) described two of the cities, “Kaymakli consists of at least eight floors or underground stories (only four of which are currently accessible), each extending in a labyrinthine manner over a vast area. The city may have supported a population of 3,000 to 4,000 people plus farm animals and supplies, all housed underground. Derinkuyu, with an estimated twenty floors and extending an estimated 85 meters (280 feet) below the surface may have supported anywhere from a few thousand to 10,000 people plus their livestock and goods. And the underground cities may not have been entirely isolated from one another. Kaymakli and Derinkuyu are less than a dozen kilometers (seven and a half miles) from each other and there are reports of a tunnel that may connect them.”
Cappadocia’s astonishing underground cities, Schoch believes, though, in all probability, occupied many times since, were originally built around the end of the last ice age, twelve to thirteen thousand years ago.
AR #95
“The Ancient Subterranean Shelters of Cappadocia,”
by Robert M. Schoch, Ph.D.
