Day 542 In Beijing: Derinkuyu: The Underground City, Part 2.

 

 

Jill and I continued to explore Derinkuyu and were utterly amazed.

We could not imagine over 20,000 people living in these tight quarters for hundreds of years.

As we walked, we noticed the ground had a lot of small depressions dug into it.

We learned that this was a way of tripping up intruders if they happened to find the underground cities.

Each level had certain depressions, that members had to memorize, so they could run down the hallways in the dark, and not trip over them.

The intruders would not be able to see them and break their ankles as they stepped into them.

If they had torches, they’d see them but be slowed down enough where the city dwellers could kill them before the attackers could do much damage.

If you notice, the tunnels are incredibly tight and very small.

We had to bend over, almost touching our toes, when we went through them.

There are also many stairs and they get quite tiring.  I couldn’t imagine trying to bring any armor or weapons into these cities and mounting an attack.

It would be impossible and the attackers would just have to wait out the people living in the underground cities.

However, the people living there had massive stores of food, and since the people above ground had no idea that these cities were here, there is no reason that they’d even be found!

By the way, the pictures of us were taken by our Colombian friends who we met on the Blue Tour the day before.

They happened to be on this tour with us also so we were able to spend a lot of time with them and it made our tour even more amazing.