r/BeAmazed • u/whereiseuvii • Aug 11 '26
History In 1963 , a Turkish man knocked down a basement wall during renovations and accidentally discovered Derinkuyu , an ancient underground city extending 18 stories deep , It was equipped with schools , chapels , and air shafts , designed to hide up to 20,000 people from invaders
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u/LoweJ Aug 11 '26
Does it all count as his basement now
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u/Buzz_Mcfly Aug 11 '26
“Hey come check out my man cave”
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u/OiledUpThug Aug 11 '26
men cave at this point
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u/AutumnMama Aug 11 '26
Perhaps even a humanity cave
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u/Intelligent_Being172 Aug 11 '26
Flooded with water it could even be home for a huge manatee
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u/AutumnMama Aug 11 '26
OK I have to stop you there. I live in Florida so I can say with some expertise that this cave is way too narrow for a huge manatee. It could be home for a medium sized manatee at most
Still, perhaps we could paint some small manatees all different colors so the cave could be home to some Hue Manatees?
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u/exmirt Aug 11 '26
manoritees
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u/AutumnMama Aug 11 '26
Omg that's the dream isn't it?? A place where manorities of all colors can live together in peace? LET'S DO IT.
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u/Raneynickelfire Aug 11 '26
"Turkish Men Cave" can be a dangerous thing unless that's what you're into.
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u/refinedeuropa Aug 11 '26
Why do you think so?
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u/SummertimeThrowaway2 Aug 12 '26
“Yeah don’t go too far that way, the last person who did was never seen again. R.I.P. Geoffrey.”
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u/Environmental_Leg264 Aug 11 '26
Houseparties about to go crazy.
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u/ishquigg Aug 11 '26
How many squared feet can he put on Zillow?
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u/mcmanninc Aug 11 '26
I remember seeing a house listing once that seemed high. Turns out the house contains the only entrance to a cave system. Thus the high value. So…maybe?
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u/FarewellAndroid Aug 11 '26
The only known entrance…you move in and three months later tweakers start pouring into your living room
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u/qiwi Aug 11 '26
It was built 2700 years ago; he has quite a large property tax bill coming, not to mention penalties for not having declared ownership of an 18 stories extension on his tax forms.
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u/Long_Campaign_1186 Aug 11 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
No. The government will seize it for historic preservation and research purposes, or perhaps for tourism. And if he lives within a mile of other people, it probably goes under at least one other person’s property, thus making it a disputable zone.
Other than his lawyer, no one has any motive to fight for some random guy to have a massive seventeen story ancient artifact. People are regularly allowed to keep extremely expensive jewelry or coins and things they found in their attic and whatnot, but this is an important cultural landmark for his locality and it contains an entire culture of people who will all be at risk of being erased from history if left for him to keep.
Plus; it might also have human remains, protected species of organisms in a very limited amount which the region relies on heavily in order to not sustain massive ecological damage, and artifacts that might rightfully belong to another country (if there were immigrants amongst the 20,000).
So basically, the government letting this guy keep it could result in widespread ecological damage to the region, human rights violations (selling or destroying human remains and/or leaving them unnamed and unacknowledged despite being aware of their existence), or geopolitical strife (if some of the artifacts were produced by a foreign culture and brought over there via immigration).
In order for it to count as his basement, the government would literally have to go up in front of a horde of journalists and concerned citizens and political/economic benefactors and global news outlets and tell them TO THEIR FACE that they don’t gaf about any of those problems if Hank doesn’t give them permission to.
Unless Hank is a multi-billionaire who provides widescale economic benefit to the region and to the world as a whole and is so valuable to the economy that the above issues are less of a concern to everyone than him getting pissed or not giving the world whatever huge gift he offers in return for letting him keep the cave, the government letting this guy keep the cave means they will experience a withdrawal of support from both locals and important allies alike as well as bad PR which will impact them economically and politically.
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u/redditatemybabies Aug 11 '26
So if this happens to me, I will not tell anyone. It’s mine now.
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u/elightened-n-lost Aug 11 '26
It's a cave, not a mine...
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u/bianceziwo Aug 12 '26
The government does control it and you can actually tour the place, up to 4 stories at least. its a popular tourist attraction in cappadocia
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u/Buckeye_Randy Aug 11 '26
I'd sublet the whole thing and make a mint!
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u/Glittering-Walrus228 Aug 11 '26
19,832... no 19,833 Bed Rooms, 6,923 Bathroo... no 6,923.5 bathrooms, pets- allowed, serious inquiries only, rent $10 million dollars per month, no utilities
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u/AnchoviePopcorn Aug 11 '26
One of my favorite memories is when my wife and I explored derinkuyu with headlamps and no supervision. Crawling through tunnels. Getting kind of lost. We paid to enter and then that was the last time we saw any staff.
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u/Cultural_Material_98 Aug 11 '26
Count yourself lucky! My mum and I paid for a guide to show us the underground tombs at Saqqara in Egypt, no-one else was there. Once we were underground the only light came from the guides torch.
He then turned off his torch and demanded money to lead us back to the entrance!
When we told our taxi driver what happened, he hit the guide and got our money back.
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u/Top-Currency Aug 11 '26
Typical Egypt tourist experience.
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u/Overall_Occasion_175 Aug 11 '26
About 15 years ago, I went on a cruise to Egypt with my aunt and cousins. When we got back to the ship, we were about the only people we talked to that managed to get a camel ride without being scammed. You pay them, they let you on the camel, and then won't let you down until you pay them even more.
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u/TopShoulder7 Aug 11 '26
I feel like that only works on cruisers who need to get back on time because I would just stay on the camel like yeah ok I live here now, free housing.
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u/MaximumSubtlety Aug 11 '26
Also, I'm not young and spry anymore but I feel like I could hop off a camel and not break my ankles.
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u/haveanairforceday Aug 12 '26
"Thanks for the camel, bro. Ill be over this way when you want it back
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u/pencilpushin Aug 11 '26
If going to travel to Egypt. Contact guide, Yusef Awyan. His dad was Hakim Awyan, a rather famous local guide and egyptologist, also an indigenous Egyptian wisdom keeper. Yusef grew up in Cairo and lives by the Giza Plateau. He leads independent guides. He also does large group tours. And an independent researcher. Hes featured on a lot of youtube videos.
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u/WollemiaShagger Aug 11 '26
>Typical Egypt tourist experience.
"baksheesh baksheesh"
"fuck off, kid"
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u/MisterDonkey Aug 11 '26
I'm so stubborn, I'd either feel my way out of that tomb or take up permanent residency there.
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u/StormyBlueLotus Aug 11 '26
I was thinking I'd pay the guy and then beat the shit out of him myself upon exiting the tomb. Why make the taxi driver do it?
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u/beroemd Aug 11 '26
Because as a woman it’s smarter she keeps herself safe, she has to protect her daughter
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u/LowerEntropy Aug 11 '26
I must be paranoid. I would have wanted my own light, backup batteries and a backup light.
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u/RiriaaeleL Aug 11 '26
If only we had the technology that allows us to just make light.
Like if that technology was small enough you could hold it in your hand or like even put it in your pocket
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u/PinkPuffballofDOOM Aug 11 '26
Egypt is such a disgusting place solely due to the people. I’ve seen a good amount of expats from Egypt say that they love their country but they wouldn’t recommend people visit due to how moral bankrupt it is over there
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u/ShepRat Aug 11 '26
I would love to go for the history, but everyone I've talked to has horror stories. One of my friends literally had a security guard point his rifle at him and make pretend shooting motions, not even as a scam, just to scare him or something.
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u/BMW_wulfi Aug 11 '26
In Egypt you just tell them you’re gay and into wrestling bondage and that you’re undefeated. Then compliment their glutes..
You are now radioactive.
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u/AztecGodofFire Aug 11 '26
My archaeology professor said a friend of his drove to a site in his Mercedes and had a old local guide take him down into some ancient tunnel. The man asked if the guy was German because of his car. He said no. Turned out the guide didn't like Germans because of WWII and had likely been planning on staging some kind of "accident" down in the tunnel and killing the guy.
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u/Trebord_ Aug 11 '26
I've heard a lot of horror stories about touring Egypt, but I must admit, this is the funniest one
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u/Wooden-Evidence-374 Aug 11 '26
Was that before cell phones or something? I wouldve just turned my phone light on and laughed at him
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u/Cultural_Material_98 Aug 11 '26
Yes this was over 35 years ago - long before cell phones - but I did call my Mummy!
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u/hk_gary Aug 11 '26
everyone got a smartphone nowaday they cant do that anymore so you may go there again and see what else do they come up with
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u/Haunting-Worker-2301 Aug 11 '26
I mean now that you’re safe that’s a pretty cool experience being lost in the saqqara tomb like from an old time adventure
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u/MadMartigans80 Aug 11 '26
Are you replying from derinkuyu now or did you make it out?
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u/AnchoviePopcorn Aug 11 '26
We made it out. One girl that was in there had a panic attack and had to be carried out.
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u/Masketto Aug 11 '26
I'd have had a panic attack too. I got lost in Pompeii, which is outdoors but I was nonetheless genuinely freaking out thinking we'd never find a way out. I felt overwhelmingly anxious and irritated until we got out, hours after being lost... So even though it was outdoors and full of people, being stuck in that maze was terrifying so I imagine it's be way worse being underground with no one else
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u/One_time_Dynamite Aug 11 '26
Yea I couldn't do it. I will never understand why people like going underground or in confined spaces. I would freak the fuck out. It's giving me anxiety just thinking about getting lost in a maze.
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u/PrionProofPork Aug 11 '26
these days, it's just a line of tourists you follow through the tunnels until you find yourself at the exit
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u/sneakyburt Aug 11 '26
We did the same thing! It was amazing. Just completely left to explore on our own. Absolutely got lost 😅 but then just tried to navigate “upwards” and eventually found our way out.
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u/mathsposer Aug 12 '26
went to kaymakli a few months ago, and even though the sections open to the public are easy to explore, i felt quite uneasy during my first lap in there. according to wikipedia, kaymakli and derinkuyu were connected through tunnels, that's wild.
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u/OGLikeablefellow Aug 11 '26
How did you know how to get back out?
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u/TeeOffOnMe Aug 11 '26
How did people back then see so far underground? Was it really just torches lit throughout the cave system?
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u/Seek_Adventure Aug 11 '26
Videogames taught me there are torches conveniently placed and lit at every 100 ft. of this uninhabited and abandoned cave and they never run out of fuel.
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u/MadMartigans80 Aug 11 '26
Also they had magic that could create light back then. That’s also what video games taught me
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u/Mercadi Aug 11 '26
Among them there were priests and paladins. The latter could choose to manifest an aura of radiance around them. Pretty convenient.
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u/D3ltaN1ne Aug 11 '26
Not only that, it's also conveniently stocked with modern ammo and first aid kits.
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u/Teripid Aug 11 '26
Ugh, realistically lighting would be terrifying in video games. A few use it + flashlight or whatnot but it'd be too much long-term.
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u/araed Aug 11 '26
Metro 2033 nailed this. You can knock out almost all of the light sources in most areas, then run around in the dark quietly killing everyone.
Hell, I once wrote a soft-horror scifi story based on the concept
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u/LordsOfJoop Aug 11 '26
Depending on the location, it could be candles, torches, or oil lamps. In a few places, they could have skylights, although it wasn't a common feature.
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u/Flugeldan Aug 11 '26
This poses the question of ventilation without detection.
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u/LordsOfJoop Aug 11 '26
Text from the Wikipedia article about it:
The complex possesses a large amount of vertical ventilation shafts, divided into the smaller air vents that link living quarters and other individual rooms, to the wider central shafts, of which a 55-metre (180 ft) one appears to have been used as a well, providing water to both the villagers above and, if the outside world was not accessible, to those in hiding. The main central shaft which measures roughly 3 m by 2.8 m and connects to several levels, never has the openings of two different levels overlapping one another, in a layout that appears deliberately engineered to maximise airflow.
It looks like they combined the utility of a well with the necessity of an air shaft; rather an ingenious design.
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u/Svyatoy_Medved Aug 11 '26
By no means an expert, here is some pure conjecture: it’s possible that they weren’t exactly hiding in the sense of avoiding detection from a concentrated search, but just being slightly less detectable. Enemy soldiers observing from afar, or focused on looting the city above, or just incapable of coordination like a modern military, might easily see obvious ventilation holes and think “huh, weird.”
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u/Smelly_God Aug 11 '26
They were only used to hide in the later centuries during christian persecutions, they were actual cities earlier on and the inhabitants expanded their own caverns. For this particular one, they used ventilation wells and over 600 entrances have been found since the initial re-discovery
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u/Svyatoy_Medved Aug 11 '26
That does raise the question, why? My modern point of view is that you would only go to the trouble of building underground if you had a good reason.
Is that flawed? Was underground construction easier then? Perhaps beneficial in terms of heat? Why go underground if not to hide?
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u/pyronius Aug 11 '26
Having been there a few years back, I can't say for certain, but I can take a guess: the area is relatively barren, so not many trees to build houses with, but what it does have is really soft rock. A ton of old cities and castles in the area are basically just hills that the inhabitants hollowed out. So, I imagine that it was just easier to keep digging than to either try to build surface structures or to go start another cave elsewhere.
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u/Creampie_Service_247 Aug 11 '26
You speak with a lot of confidence on this subject, you must know lot.
Can you explain how skylights were possible in a structure like this?
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u/clone9786 Aug 11 '26
I’ll speak less confidently, but the skylight can be as simple as a pinpoint hole in the ground expanding downwards to what becomes the skylight
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u/Auggie_Otter Aug 11 '26
More likely things like lamps and candles and just getting used to having very low lighting levels. Torches aren't really that practical because they don't last that long and can make a lot of smoke.
Torches are heavily over-represented in movies and TV shows set in ancient, medieval, or fantasy settings. Real historical spaces like castles, dungeons, and corridors were far darker, and people rarely walked around constantly holding open flames.
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u/Plus-Yogurtcloset-85 Aug 11 '26
If you lived in a place like a castle or formal home you would have a butler, servant or slave 100% of the time. If you planed to go into the great room you would have them light the the room beforehand. He would extinguish the light in rooms you left. He would have the spaces you go in the morning lit before you wake and your itinerary in mind for the day. This could be a respect position as well as a position of servitude or slavery, depending on when where and why.
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u/Wide_Temperature_646 Aug 11 '26
I used to research in Mammoth Cave. Pre-historic people went deep into the cave in search of gypsum and other minerals, using only reed torches. We go in with five different light sources for safety purposes. It’s absolutely amazing to think about having only the reed torches.
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u/whereiseuvii Aug 11 '26
The city was primarily used during the Byzantine era to protect citizens during the Arab Byzantine wars
if you're interested you can read more about this city at : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derinkuyu_underground_city
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u/g_dude3469 Aug 11 '26
What's interesting is that whoever built the basement wall he knocked down, knew about those tunnels and decided to cover them up and not say anything about them
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u/FunkyPleasance Aug 11 '26
it was intermittently in use until 1923, so its possible the basement was built by people who didn't consider it unknown
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u/PleasantDraft9387 Aug 11 '26
The greek christians who used these structures as shelter from turkish aggression, were expelled in 1923, so most likely the "new" turkish owners didn't necessarily know what was hiding in these basements.
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u/AWorldwithoutSin Aug 11 '26
Was the wall to anyone from going in or to keep something from coming out?
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u/MadMartigans80 Aug 11 '26
Yes
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u/AWorldwithoutSin Aug 11 '26
Horror movie idea!
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u/nhalliday Aug 11 '26
I'm sorry to inform you that Zach Cregger beat you to it, and it's called Barbarian.
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u/BoulderToBirmingham Aug 12 '26
The Turkish Christians delved too greedily and too deep. The men who built the basement wall knew what they had awoken in the darkness …
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u/SeaBuilding3911 Aug 11 '26
It was Christian Greeks. They got kicked out after. They didn't think to mention it.
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u/Oddisredit Aug 11 '26
It was mean to help people from being enslaved by the numerous and almost yearly slave raids by the caliph.
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u/Hopeful_Hamster21 Aug 11 '26
It's wild to me that they could keep it a secret for so long from the invaders.
Like, Surely the invaders showed up and wondered "where did everybody go?" For hundreds of years, and the existence of a massive underground city was never revealed.
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u/Pnkrkg6644 Aug 11 '26
It wasn’t really a secret. They blocked the entrances with these enormous cylindrical stones with one small hole in the middle. There was a whole system to keep them in place, and the hole was to stab the outside folk in the face if they got too close. (Or whatever body part was closest probably)
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u/Moon-33 Aug 11 '26
I’ve had recurring dreams of things like this happening 🤯
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u/hey-coffee-eyes Aug 11 '26
The caves yearn for your return, a̵̢̙̚n̷̪̭͛s̵̤͓̃w̴̦͍̆e̶̞̋ṛ̸̭͆͂ ̵̝̮͘t̷̢͉̀h̸̗͉̍e̶̦͆ ̸͕̋c̷̪̈́̓a̵̡͙͋͝l̵̺̻͐̑ḷ̴͇̎̾
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u/Superb_Algae5308 Aug 11 '26
There are several underground cities in the region, this is merely the largest.
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u/Auggie_Otter Aug 11 '26
I looked at this story and thought it sounds like something you'd find in Cappadocia then I looked it up and, yep, it's in Cappadocia.
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u/Cultural_Material_98 Aug 11 '26
My wife and I visited these amazing tunnels and even the guide could not explain how so many people and animals lived down there and how the ventilation system worked, how they got rid of waste products etc. The amount of work that went into these underground towns is amazing, some of these structures are connected by underground tunnels many miles long.
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u/funkhammer Aug 11 '26
Hide and seek must be legendary at this guy's house
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u/the_full_effect Aug 11 '26
What’s amazing to me is that it was still in use as late as 1923, then was forgotten until it was rediscovered in the 1960s. In movies and TV shows it always seems so implausible when some crazy event of the past gets forgotten by the local townsfolk in just a generation or two, like a curse or monster etc, but I guess communal memory is indeed short
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u/Alarming_Bottle2752 Aug 11 '26
If the community was murdered or displaced then the memory becomes fragmentated....
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u/moonmelonade Aug 12 '26
It wasn't forgotten by the locals - the native local population who'd lived there since antiquity was ethnically cleansed from Turkey in 1923 as part of the religion-based population exchange with Greece, and the tunnels were abandoned in that process.
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u/Many-Wasabi9141 Aug 11 '26
crazy that there have been so many times when invading foreigners were such a threat someone dug a secret underground city.
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u/svachalek Aug 11 '26
The more history you read, the more you realize Homo sapiens is a really aggressive and violent creature. As much as we complain about stuff that goes on now, people from even a couple hundred years ago would be just shocked about how nice everyone is these days.
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u/Honest-Appearance-25 Aug 12 '26
I think it's purely the circumstances in which we thrive or dont that makes us peaceful or violent. Both are equally human nature I'd say.
Look at bonobos and chimps. We share a common ancestor with both of them. Said common ancestor then split into chimps and bonobos, and its hypothesized that their innate behavior in current day is probably due to the environment. The chimp lineage may have had to protect their resources, while bonobos probably had plenty. One has a way more violent and competitive nature while the other is more interconnected and peaceful.
I'd say the same is true for humans. When resources are abundant and the fear of survival is low, we tend to be much kinder to one another. Obviously there are so many deviations, sometimes we see the greatest kindness arise from some terrible circumstances and vice versa, but there is nuance in everything
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u/AmandaUggnkiss Aug 12 '26
Resources are abundant now, yeah people would think the opposite with what’s portrayed by the media but it’s market manipulation and intentional resource mismanagement propagated by the ruling 1%… the violence that comes about is literally from external societal pressures that are the same globally and again can be eliminated if the right reforms and governance was allowed to exist
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u/Pnkrkg6644 Aug 11 '26
This area was like a major trade crossroads, so everyone wanted to own it. Armies would come back and forth conquering to own the area, and the residents were like “bro just let us live gahd…” so they built these to just get out of the way while fighty dudes did their thing. They didn’t care so much who owned that part of the country. They just wanted to keep on living their lives and not be killed or enslaved.
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u/PacinoWig Aug 11 '26
I haven't been to Derinkuyu but I visited Kaymakli (a nearby, connected underground city) a few years ago. I went down one very narrow tunnel sort of off the main visitor route only to find a small, pitch black room with an even smaller tunnel leading out. I can't prove it but I'm 100% sure if I had gone down that second tunnel I would not have come back.
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u/Hopkinsad0384 Aug 11 '26
....when was his house built that this information didn't change hands between subsequent owners?
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u/notquiteultralight Aug 11 '26
The house and whole village most likely, were abandoned in 1923 during the Greek-Turkish population exchange. Basically the Christian’s and Armenians left turkey to avoid being genocided, and in turn Greece sent away their Muslims.
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u/oldguydrinkingbeer Aug 11 '26
Hell my house is three years old and only had one previous owner and we have two mystery wall switches. Old owners never tell new owners everything.
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u/LegnderyNut Aug 11 '26
Byzantine Christian stronghold cities meant to hide them from the incursions of the growing Ottoman Empire. Iirc a lot of them failed but some were successfully abandoned.
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u/zubairhamed Aug 11 '26
i've been to the one in Kayamakli. Are they also dug by phrygians and early christians i wonder? same concept and all.
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u/zushiba Aug 11 '26
I legitimately had an extremely detailed nightmare about this very scenario once that still sticks with me to this day. It was about a closet that I had a weird feeling about as a kid.
There’s an earthquake and part of the wall breaks away. This part of the house is under ground. So the wall breaks open revealing a path into what looks like a cave at first but it slowly descends and turns into a roughly hewn set of stairs. The stairs go down very far and eventually open up into a massive underground void. It’s dimly lit but the whole void is visible but goes on so far you can’t see an end. You can see the stairway continue on for a time before it ends in a dock like structure by a river. Across the river is a massive underground city carved out of stone. There are houses and streets. Huge buildings meant for business and stuff. None of the architecture looks human.
The city is completely empty but there’s this existential sense of dread. Like humans were never meant to be here. You can hear things scurrying about in the alleys and swear you see movement at times. The city appears to have been completely abandoned for eons. But it’s clear something is here.
Then I woke up. Never went near that closet again.
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u/SandyEggo_73 Aug 11 '26
If you're interested in a deeper dive about this amazing place, give this piece that I put together a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZvxto-szRQ
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u/Awkward_Wrangler_895 Aug 11 '26
Did underground city was hidden & use during war times, I think as of now there’s a lot of country that have a hidden underground city so far but still unknown
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u/GarysCrispLettuce Aug 11 '26
This is a real world version of my recurring dream where I find a door I've never noticed in my apartment and I open it up and there's an entire new wing of my home I didn't even know about. I always wake up so excited to go see my new rooms, before it kicks in that I was just dreaming. If I were this guy I would have been tempted to keep quiet and make the entire structure a new wing of my home.
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u/mencival Aug 11 '26
So some other person discovered Derinkuyu and decided to build a basement wall over it
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u/Inevitable-Wheel1676 Aug 11 '26
If you think this is cool, imagine what may be deeper. What is older. What is kept from public knowledge. Could be all manner of lost places like this that belong to private owners, et cetera. There are many artifacts unknown to the public in private collections. Similarly, there will be sites like this as well, some undeveloped and not yet researched, catalogued, or understood.
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