Moria

August 8, 2004 3:00 PM

A three-story deep underground city dating from the 3rd Century AD has been discovered in Iran, near Nushabad. Unfortunately no pictures yet.
posted by stbalbach (19 comments total)

the secret WMD cache at last.
posted by quonsar at 3:02 PM on August 8, 2004

Iraq, Iran, hey. they all look alike to me.
posted by quonsar at 3:04 PM on August 8, 2004

Sounds a lot like the underground cities of Cappadocia in Turkey.
posted by twsf at 4:59 PM on August 8, 2004

wow. this is really something. can't wait for the pictures!
posted by muppetboy at 5:06 PM on August 8, 2004

Very nifty. There are a couple of small images here and here.
posted by lobakgo at 5:14 PM on August 8, 2004

The underground city has corridors, rooms and other architectural structures, all interconnected to the upper or under level with flights of stairways.

hey, it's Diablo! or any other rpg ever made, for that matter...
posted by jeffj at 6:37 PM on August 8, 2004

Good hunting lobakgo.
posted by stbalbach at 6:41 PM on August 8, 2004

Interesting - I'm curious on how the city was forgotten by the inhabitants. According to the original link, the city was possibly in use for quite a long time. How do you forget about construction this large and pervasive, literally under your feet?
posted by FormlessOne at 6:43 PM on August 8, 2004

I wonder if there is a ZPM in there somewhere.
posted by bargle at 7:08 PM on August 8, 2004

It does sound like the ones in Cappadocia, twsf. I've been to both Derinkuyu and Kaymakli, and they're pretty mind-blowing. Especially Derinkuyu, probably because it was the first one I saw. There's no sign of it above ground (well, except for the tourist infrastructure), and it's utterly amazing how far down it goes and how extensively it stretches.
posted by Vidiot at 8:07 PM on August 8, 2004

(d'oh... didn't notice the title bar!)

Does anyone know what kind of lighting would be used in structures like this?
posted by jeffj at 8:18 PM on August 8, 2004

bargle, you're watching too much Stargate!
posted by billsaysthis at 8:20 PM on August 8, 2004

How do you forget about construction this large and pervasive, literally under your feet?

Apparently, similar things happened in several ancient cities. Troy is the most famous of these. If you can stand to read it, this Michener novel is a fictionalized account of both the building of city upon city, and the archeologists trying to understand it.
posted by ilsa at 8:52 PM on August 8, 2004

Unrelated memory:

I'm standing in the back of a C-130 in Tallil, Iraq, when the copilot comes up to me and says, "see that building that looks kinda like a lump of dirt over there, that's the ziggurat of ur."

All these memories of sitting in elementary school hearing about the Sumerians and Babylon came rushing back. It was pretty surreal.

And people say war isn't fun.
posted by tcobretti at 9:13 PM on August 8, 2004

*shouts*
They're digging in the the wrong place!!!

*sings*
I am the monarch of the sea/I am the ruler of the Queen's...

/sallah
posted by .kobayashi. at 9:18 PM on August 8, 2004

jeffj, the article says they found "two fat-burning lanterns". That may seem strange (I would have expected olive-oil lamps, for example), but if you read this short article, you will see that the ancient population (dating back 7,000 years) had a lot domestic meat in their diet.

If the underground city is directly below the regular city, and has always been so (in other words, the upper city didn't just eventually expand to be located on top of the hidden city), I find it exceedingly strange that it was just completely forgotten. It seems to me that it is in the nature of people to convert significant resources to new uses once their old function becomes obsolete, and it I would have guessed that such an important space would be used for storage or something. How odd.

I'm having these images of one old, old lady living sometime around the 15th or 16th century who sort of vaguely remembers the underground city, of having once been down there when she was a child. Then one day she finally dies, and snap, there goes the last living memory of the city, from one day to the next. Of course, there must be some kind of written record somewhere, no? But because of the nature of its use, perhaps no specific location is given? I would love to read more about this.
posted by taz at 10:06 PM on August 8, 2004

The importance of available food (and animals with domestication potential) is discussed in detail in Guns, Germs, and Steel.

For one thing, the area was once not as desertic as it is now.
posted by magullo at 4:15 AM on August 9, 2004

Yeah, there's that whole "fertile crescent" thing going on.
posted by hattifattener at 9:36 PM on August 9, 2004

Noush Abad residents had been reporting about underground corridors and chambers when they were digging wells in their yards for sewage

Oh man, I hope part of the underground city isn't full of sewage now. That'd definitely make studying it a lot less fun.
posted by mikeh at 7:42 AM on August 10, 2004