BLDGBLOG just posted a fascinating entry on the underground metropolis of Derinkuyu, and I had best start by quoting the same source as the post, Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us:
No one knows how many underground cities lie beneath Cappadocia. Eight have been discovered, and many smaller villages, but there are doubtless more. The biggest, Derinkuyu, wasn’t discovered until 1965, when a resident cleaning the back wall of his cave house broke through a wall and discovered behind it a room that he’d never seen, which led to still another, and another. Eventually, spelunking archeologists found a maze of connecting chambers that descended at least 18 stories and 280 feet beneath the surface, ample enough to hold 30,000 people – and much remains to be excavated. One tunnel, wide enough for three people walking abreast, connects to another underground town six miles away. Other passages suggest that at one time all of Cappadocia, above and below the ground, was linked by a hidden network. Many still use the tunnels of this ancient subway as cellar storerooms.
The rest of the post tries to dissect why this seems so cool to so many people, touching on the more modern sprawling subterranean constructions under many current cities, as well as insinuations of underground cities in Foucault’s Pendulum (a point that we’ll be getting back to later). Another important touchstone might be Mark Z. Danlielewski’s House of Leaves, featuring a house that - to start out with - appears to be larger on the inside than its outside dimensions would allow.
Outside the house, Navidson climbs up a ladder to the second story. Not an easy ascent he casually confesses to us, explaining a troublesome skin condition he has had since childhood has recently begun to flare up around his toes. Wincing slightly at what we can assume is at least moderate pain, he reaches the top rung where using a 100′ Empire fiberglass tape with a hand crank, he proceeds to measure the distance from the far end of the master bedroom to the far end of the children’s bedroom. The total comes to 32′ 9 3/4″ which the house plans corroborate - plus or minus an inch. The puzzling part comes when Navidson measures the internal space. He carefully notes the length of the new area, the length of both bedrooms and then factors in the width of all the walls. The result is anything but comforting. In fact it is impossible.
32′10″ exactly.
The width of the house inside would appear to exceed the width of the house as measured from the outside by 1/4″.
Certain that he has miscalculated, Navidson drills through the outer walls to measure their width precisely. FInally, with Karen’s help, he fastens the end of some fishing line to the edge of the outer wall, runs it through the drilled hole, stretches it across the master bedroom, the new space, the children’s bedroom and then runs it through a hole drilled through the opposite wall. He double checks his work, makes sure the line is straight, level and taut and then marks it. The measurement is still the same.
32′10″ exactly.
Using the same line, Navidson goes outside, stretches the fishing line from one side of the house to the other only to find it is a quarter of an inch too long.
Exactly.
The almost-scientific way in which this is covered only adds to the horror and fascination, as we are viewing something in clear contravention to all our scientific laws. And I think the mix of emotions this passage incites is the same as Derinkuyu, in that they both reveal that the world isn’t quite as it seems.
Occam’s razor is the rule-of-thumb that given two possible theories that explain the facts equally well, we should choose the simpler explanation of the two. For the most part, this has served us well, quashing theories of witches, aether, and other pseudoscience that has since been laid to rest. But every once in a while, some errant fact is discovered that unravels the entire sweater, requiring a wholly new substructure to explain what we observe.
Foucault’s Pendulum, in its larger scope, is a novel about conspiracy theories, about constant attempts to rewrite the world’s history and explain some of the more confusing footnotes in ways that assume extraordinary competence and cooperation by the alleged conspirators. Unfortunately, the protagonists discover that their flights of fancy have an unexpected grounding in reality, that there really was an unseen network of connections and political machinery under the world’s surface.
Derinkuyu makes the metaphor literal, showing us an entire city underfoot of a sophistication unimaginable before its discovery. And that is why it’s so awesomely frightening at the same time.
Tags: Weird