A Step Back in Time

Cappadocia, Turkey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cappadocia is a city about 7 hours by car from Istanbul, Turkey. We drove on an expressway much like the ones in the USA; the roads were paved and well maintained. We spent several days in this region; we being me, my husband who came to visit, my Turkish daughter “Ece” and her husband “Metin”.

Ece is a former exchange student who lived with us in the USA for a year while she was a senior in high school. She is married and has a 2 year old son. The son stayed with his grandparents while Ece and Metin showed us another part of their country.

It was an interesting drive and one of my favorite sights was seeing shepherds with their flock of sheep, or a herd of cattle. The animals were not fenced in so, they needed someone to keep an eye on them.

Cappadokya is an ancient area. This was inhabited 1000 years before Christ was born, in the bronze age. The land is made up of soft rock so people were able to dig out rooms and tunnels, and even whole underground cities where the estimate is about 5,000 people lived. 

The rock that meets the air hardens, but a person can still scratch it with fingernails. The people who lived here, dug out stairways, domed rooms, pillars, churches, monastaries, even stables. The animals such as donkeys or camels would live on the top floor and more of the city was dug out downward.

We saw about 5 stories underground. Some of the tunnels are known to stretch 50 kilometers to connect to other underground cities.

One of my favorite memories was in a small village. We discovered this village by driving down the main road and seeing a handmade sign that said “Underground City” 2 kilometers. It was a small sign and pointed in the direction of a lightly traveled road, so we decided to stop and take a look around. It was like traveling back in time hundreds of years ago, just by driving over a nondescript ridge.

The dugout rooms were very large, some rooms were probably 1500 square feet. Shelving was dug out as were storage areas, even places where grapes were stomped and drained into another dugout basin for wine.

Storage was dug out of the walls to hold food stores and other items.

This particular city was only partially excavated because there was not enough money to continue. It cost about $2 to go in and climb around. What amazed me the most was seeing a piece of pottery that was completely intact and about 2 feet tall. It was used as some kind of storage container, but not fully excavated. Here was a piece of pottery 3,000 years old (or so), no cracks or anything, with the top ½ exposed and right there where I could touch it- not in a museum or anything. Wow!   Many have not been fully excavated yet, and we even met a man who came into his back yard one morning 5 years ago and discovered the back yard had collapsed, and now there were tunnels and rooms exposed right under his property.

Many of the homes in this village were made of stone, and animal dung was collected, dried and burned as fuel.

  

After we were done looking around, we decided to have a cup of tea and add some money to the local economy. School was letting out and the children were walking through the village to their homes.

They noticed us right away, both Ece and I were dressed in western style clothing, pants, not skirts and we did not wear a scarf over our heads. Plus, I am fair skinned with light colored hair and plenty of freckles. My husband stands over 6 feet tall, and is fair skinned as well. As the kids saw us, they started whispering and giggling, some shyly waved to us and as a group of girls about 8-12 years old walked past, the bravest one finally called out “hello” as she walked by. Probably this was the first time they got to practice their English with a real foreigner before.It wasn’t long before a village woman who had been watching us, sauntered over and sat next to me, just watching and listening to us speak.

She spoke no English, but communicated with gestures and smiles. I am sure that we were the talk of the village that evening.

While sitting and drinking our tea, we saw a shepherd guiding his sheep right through the downtown of this village,

and about 20 minutes later, another herder who had both sheep and goats. I have always heard that sheep are dumb animals, and I noticed that all the sheep kept their heads down, while the goats had their heads up and looked around. I don’t know for sure, but I bet goats are smarter.

Pretty soon, a tractor drove through downtown, and in the trailer behind the tractor was a donkey! Yes, the donkey was in the trailer, not walking. Now, why would there be a donkey in the trailer?

A donkey is riding in the trailer; it was traded for a dog.

We asked someone and he mentioned that the guy driving the tractor had brought a herding dog to trade for the donkey. That must have been some dog.