A underground city In the current era? Under the streets of some areas of Türkiye, a network of tunnels housed thousands of people looking for refuge for invaders and religious persecution. The country is known by its underground cities, especially the extensive Derinkuyu, which could house more than 20,000 people. Although not yet excavated at all, current records indicate that the settlement, 11 floors, measures about 186 m², and potentially more than 460 m² still unbelievable. But since this summer, archaeologists who study a site located about 240 kilometers west of the old underground sanctuary believe that they could have unearthed one of the largest and most advanced underground cities to date. According to the Turkish agency Anadolu, the network of underground rooms and corridors known as Sarayini has an approximate extension of 19,975 m².
Under what is now the Sarayonu district, in the Turkish metropolitan area of Konya, a labyrinth of 30 cameras with chimneys, warehouses, wineries and wells. Apparently, the several level network dates from the seventh century. Hasan Uğuz, archaeologist at Konya's museums that directs the excavation, said the teams that work there did not expect the settlement to cover so much land. In addition to its numerous rooms and rooms, a specially wide passage is described as a “main street”, and the areas inside the structure resemble palaces because of its comfort and the high quality of life that allowed the network, far from the primitive caves that one could imagine in the debates about the conditions in a underground city. The refined character of space earned him the name of Sarayini, which means 'palace' in Turkish.
«We did not think it could spread through such a large area,» Uğuz told the Anadolu agency in August. «During surface surveys, the elderly who live here said they had visited this place when they were children and that it was a underground city Very big. «Uğuz believes that this year's excavation works have made the difference when determining how enormous the underground city was really.
The excavation works in Sarayini have prolonged over the last two years. Many of the old underground cities unearthed in Türkiye have only been discovered in recent years, and most have not been fully explored. Preliminary studies indicate that an underground complex found in the Turkish region of Neveshir could be greater than Derinkuyu and Sarayini, although archaeologists still do not have a complete image of the deposit. Since the neighboring underground cities of Sarayini are at a distance between three and seven miles, it continues to investigate whether the complexes can be connected.
Article originally published in AD Us.