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January 11, 2025 41 mins

Reunited, once again, for an episode filled with ancient mysteries! Alun's in his element, reliving his travels in Turkey, in particular the neolithic archaeological site of Göbekli Tepe. Created between 9600 and 8200 BCE, along with neighbouring Karahan Tepe, Göbekli Tepe is one of the oldest permanent human settlements ever discovered, resulting in the megalithic structures being dubbed the "world's first temple".

Alun also explored the underground city of Derinkuyu, in the region of Cappadocia. This ancient multi-level labyrinth of tunnels and chambers once housed 20,000 people! Forget the hot air balloon rides and the acrophobia; suffer from claustrophobia instead!

Alun's last stop was the ancient Greek city of Ephesus, including the famous Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Alun recounts spending a full day meandering through the streets, marvelling at the well preserved city ruins.

Tune in for ancient mystery and wonder, in an episide that asks more questions than it answers. What was Göbekli Tepe used for? Did the Christians dig the tunnels of Derinkuyu? And just when was ancient Greece?!

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
We just had our two year anniversary.
Play the theme music. Hello and welcome to this
episode of Tripology. I'm Alan and I'm here with the

(00:24):
ever archaeological Adam. Is that a Dick?
We're here, we're physically here making jokes already.
My goodness, if it hasn't been the most wonderful journey to
get where we are now to apology has been going for more than two
years. Yeah, end of December was our

(00:45):
two year anniversary, which it'squite crazy because I think when
we started, we, we did have conversations.
We thought, you know, we, we wanted to give it everything we
had, but I don't know whether weknew that it would be going
every single week for two years.I didn't know it.
I thought three weeks tops. And what I can't believe is that
the last year particularly has been the most crazy year of

(01:06):
travel I've ever done. What you're saying something?
I know, and to have it end here with you physically in the same
space as me, I mean, what a wonderful way.
Fans of the pod know that due toa game of tripping point won by
yours truly, Adams was forced onto a plane.
He's met me here in school, Scotland and we're in, I mean my

(01:26):
parents living room which is being there.
They've had to leave. Turn to a tropology studio,
which is what they signed up for.
Yep. So here we are, in the latest
iteration of the Tropology studio.
I'm wearing a lamb's wool fleece, 10 cell underwear and
bamboo socks, which can only mean we're in a post Christmas

(01:49):
realm where your whole wardrobe gets refreshed at Christmas
time, doesn't it? Yeah, yours might do.
I mean, I'm still wearing some old stuff that I was handed down
from another traveller over in Korea.
I've got a pair of bamboo socks you can borrow just in the other
room. I'd like it if we just spruced
ourselves up because we are going travelling again very,
very soon. We are separately, I think, but

(02:09):
it is nice to have this little period where we can join forces,
create some content, chat about what we've been doing over the
last four months because it's been a bit of a whirlwind.
It's been too much of A whirlwind.
I think in the last few episodesof tropology, we've been
flitting around. You were in Taiwan.
I was in Georgia. We were trying to cram a load of
stuff in. So in this episode, I want to

(02:30):
pump the brakes ever so slightlybecause there's so much that
happened to me. Yeah.
And I want to really, in meticulous detail, go through
exactly what that was, because Iwent after Georgia, which we
heard about last week. I went to Turkey with the
specific aim of a kind of seeingwhat was going on in the ancient

(02:53):
realm. There's some ancient wonders in
Turkey that I've been very, veryinterested in for a long time.
I don't know whether Turkey's inthe conversation for most people
when it comes to discovering ancient civilizations, because I
think lots of people know about Mayans, lots of people know
about Aztecs, lots of people know about, of course, the
Egyptians. Yeah, but I mean the the history
in Turkey goes back quite some way, doesn't it?

(03:15):
Yeah, they've just not the marketing team.
But the ancient Turks was not asgood as that of the ancient
Egyptians. The ancient gyms, they wrote
everything down in very colourful ways.
They made people go, oh, you know, pyramids, my goodness.
But a lot of stuff happened in the real, real ancient world in
Turkey, and it's stuff I've beeninterested, interested in for a
long time. You might know that I've been

(03:36):
obsessed with a particular Neolithic site, Gobekli Tepe.
Yeah, since time immemorial. Yeah, yeah, I've, we've had a
number of conversations about it.
I've been aware of it ever sincethat wonderful Graham Hancock
series on Netflix. Graham Hancock, he wrote
Fingerprints of the Gods and then he did a series called
Agent Apocalypse. Check it out.

(03:57):
But he's, I mean, labeled by many to be a pseudo scientist.
Yeah, he he posits this idea that basically there was a huge
disruptive, cataclysmic apocalyptic event which wiped
out ancient civilizations and all their technologies to almost
extinction. And then certain people carry

(04:17):
these technologies and taught the ancients how to build
certain structures and things like that and basically kick
started the world again in just after the younger driest period.
Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely amazing when you think about it.
Funnily enough, one of the places he covered was just South
of where I was living in Canada,over the border in the US.
So. That was an area where they
thought that maybe some glacial floods happened and wiped out a

(04:39):
civilization there. Absolutely, yeah.
So it's no surprise that you're interested in this sort of
thing. And I've got a lot of experience
in Turkey, but unfortunately, it's only in the sort of holiday
maker, very touristic sense. So somewhere that I'm very lucky
to have been, I don't know, 15 times maybe, but two very
specific resorty type locations.But of course, being exposed to

(05:00):
Turkish people, Turkish culture,Turkish food, which I hope you
ate a lot of. Yeah, I was very eager for you
to go and for you to tell me what you thought of it.
Well, I think Turkey is a country of two halves in many
ways. I mean, as is every country if
you divide it down the middle. Like Korea?
Korea very much. Two countries of two halves.

(05:24):
Look, Kirky, you've got the Western side, which is where the
Brits go, you know, that's whereyou've got your Antalya, you've
got your Istanbul. Yeah, your Marmaris.
All that sort of stuff. And on the East, it's very much
an Islamic nation, a very ancient history nation.
There's a lot of stuff that is not the most accessible travel.
Totally. Yeah.
So I'd be. Line from Georgia straight down

(05:45):
to San the Urfa which is is mentioned in the Bible
potentially as the birth place of Abraham.
Wow. Also, you know, Abraham,
obviously a significant figure in the Quran, a significant
figure in the Bible, in the Torah, it's.
Been a couple of minutes since you mentioned religion, so I'm
glad you got that. Yeah, well, I mentioned it
because there was multiple reasons I was interested in sun,

(06:05):
the earth, and one of them was the fact that it was the birth
place of Abraham. And I actually went to the site
where Abraham was born, and it was quite an interesting
religious pilgrimage. But the main reason I was there
is because it's close to GobekliTepe now.
Gobekli Tepe got a lot of media attention when it was sort of

(06:27):
discovered. It was only really excavated to
completion in the late 90s, and it was found a little before
then. It's only been open to the
public. And since the 2000s, you know,
it's posited as the oldest Neolithic site ever discovered.
Yeah. And they think it was built
around 9500 BCE. Yeah, because it's one of the

(06:55):
most amazing things I've ever heard about and I had to go and
see it for myself. Doesn't it predate the is it the
pyramids by thousands of years? Oh, like.
Thousands of years. Conventional Egyptology suggests
that the pyramids are about 4000years old.
Some people think they're about 10,000 years old.
I mean at minimum Quebec. The tepee is like 12,000 years

(07:16):
old. Wow, Wow.
I think what it does it, and some people say it's rewritten
what we, what we think of as sort of human history, Right,
Right. And that it challenges the idea
that we were sort of hunter gatherers at that time because
it was pretty advanced in terms of its construction and and even
its orientation. It was discovered by a farmer

(07:39):
and he he just like uncovered when he was doing some stuff in
his farm. He has covered these tea shaped
blocks, these huge ton stones that have intricate carvings on.
And then an archaeological team went and went and excavated it.
But it what it proves is that ata time where we thought people
were just going and hunting and gathering, they at least had

(08:01):
agriculture in order to sustain the building community that was
making that megalith. Oh, right.
OK, so that's what it implies. That's well.
You can't have a megalithic structure like that unless
you're like feeding your population somehow because you
just can't generate enough energy, enough calories by
hunting and gathering to build something like that.

(08:22):
So either it means what Graham Hancock would posit that someone
gave that community agriculture and therefore allowed them to
build a Quebecly Tempe, right, or what the the official line is
of the archaeological team at Quebec Tempe.
They say that perhaps the peoplewanted to build a megalithic
structure and that necessitated developing agriculture.

(08:46):
Are there any sort of carvings, drawings of any kind on the
stones themselves? Any inscriptions or?
Yeah, so I went to the archaeological museum first.
It's a beautiful archaeological museum, and then took the bus
out to Quebec. They tap it and you come up on
it and it's a huge kind of football, pitch sized things
with different enclosures. Yeah, well, maybe a little bit

(09:07):
small. I've never played football, but
it's it's a large, large complexwith different enclosures and
each enclosure has these megalithic stones all around it.
And on the stones, intricate carvings of birds that
potentially line up with consolation prey animals and
balls and all these different carvings that obviously had huge

(09:27):
significance to the people at the time.
It was awesome man. I do remember, I think, correct
me if I'm wrong, from one of theepisodes.
I think it was about Quebecatepeof course, that we are able to
see what the sky would have looked like at the time when
this is supposedly to have been built.
So yeah, I think they can line certain certain world stones up

(09:48):
with stars and things, which is incredible really, because I
think they had a better reading of the sky back then than we do
now. You got to remember right that
we live in a world where entertainment is so prolific.
But for the people back then, looking up at the night sky was
the greatest show every single night.
There was no light pollution, soyou just had this incredible

(10:09):
thing to ruminate on every single night.
So of course they had a better understanding of of of like the
way the night sky worked and developed over time.
Yeah, Wow. Was it quite busy when you were
there? It was a little busy, but still
not busy enough that it would pervert your time there.
Really. It was nice.

(10:30):
It was still on touristy enough.I took a bus there.
There was, I was the only tourist on the bus from the
museum in San Diego for all the way to Quebec, the TAFE.
The bus was really cheap. Entry to the museum itself is
like a little expensive, but it gets you access to the museum on
site as well. Still in its infancy of tourism,
I feel like. Right.

(10:50):
Are there guys offering sort of guided tours and stuff like.
Because the museum so like an eminent force in that town.
So yeah, for Archaeological Museum and then the
Archaeological Museum at Quebec,the Tepe are just two huge like
composites of information. So not really.
There's actually another site called Karen Tepe, which is an
active excavation site that yourticket to Gobekli, Taipei covers

(11:14):
as well, but it's incredibly hard to get there.
You have to have your own car toget there.
Your own car as well. Yeah, there's no bus routes or
anything. It's off.
The taxis don't even know really.
You can ask a taxi driver and stand the earth and can I go to
Karen Tepe? They'll be like.
Oh fair enough. How is it a full day then to
spend at the museum and also thesites?
Yeah, you can do the Sun on the Earth for Archaeological Museum

(11:35):
and then go back to deputies, sort of like a one day thing.
Yeah, God, I bet you're in your element, weren't you?
Dude, it was amazing. It was one of those times where
you go and see something that's ostensibly a tourist attraction,
an archaeological site that's become a tourist attraction.
It blew my mind looking at thosehuge T shaped building
structures and thinking 12,000 years ago there were people who

(11:58):
were carving into that rock human beings who existed, you
know, before ancient Egypt. You got to remember ancient
Egypt with the pyramids at Giza.They coexisted, albeit in
completely different locations at the time the woolly mammoth
was around. Yeah, we're talking about 12,000
years ago, a world that looked nothing like the world today.

(12:19):
But there was people looking at the sky and making art and
building things. And it was community, a
community of people working together to create this
structure. That's awesome.
It is incredible. Have they got any idea of how
many people would have lived in that location at the time it was
constructed and what it was usedfor at the time?
So they don't know how what, what the purpose of Gobekli Tepe

(12:40):
or Karen Tepe was, but they think many, many of these all
over those hills. And what's even more incredible
is the fact that the only reasonGobekli Steppe still exists, the
only reason it's there for us todiscover today, is because it
was deliberately backfilled by the people.
So 12,000 years ago, 9500 BCE, they they deliberately abandoned

(13:05):
Quebec, Li, Taipei and filled itwith dirt to protect it.
Are you thinking in order for itto be discovered many years down
the line? The only reason it still exists
and hasn't been completely discouraged is because they
filled it and covered it carefully.
How, how would they even work that out?
Is it because the the dirt that's been used, the material
that's been used to fill and bury Quebec tepi comes from

(13:28):
somewhere completely different, or?
Yeah, they just know that that'sdirt that's been worked.
And yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah.
Oculus because they have amazingways of discovering a lot of
different things so. Maybe it doesn't seem like
natural sedimentation or something like that.
Yeah, sure. So they just know that it's been
deliberately protected. Yeah.
In order to hide it from someoneelse or to preserve it for

(13:49):
future generations. God, I'd absolutely love to go
there. I'd love to go there.
It's one of the top things to doin Turkey and I'm sure it must
be. Yeah.
I mean, it's still in the part of Turkey that's less
frequented, right? And I met many travellers who
were, you know, in Georgia, having come from Turkey or in
Armenia and, and none of them had been to Gobekli tape and
didn't know what it was. So I still think it's kind of a

(14:10):
cultish kind of little travel gem.
Yeah, there's a number of chambers or something.
I've got it in my head and I don't want to do it a
disservice, but it's it's almostcircular, isn't it?
With enclosures it's like there's like 5 enclosures within
a larger circle. And I think it was all built at
the same time or was it added toovertime?
Do you know that? Well, that's one of Hancock's

(14:31):
big mysteries about Gobekli Tapeis that it seems like they were
just good at it straight away. It's not like one practice
enclosure and then a good enclosure and then they slowly
built up to building this megalith.
It's just suddenly we have megalithic technology.
God, that sort of stuff really fascinates me.
You know about it before you watch the Graham Hancock thing.

(14:53):
I heard about it from a from a travelling friend ages ago, like
back in 2015. I was somewhere that I'd really
love to go. What is that the best thing
you've done over in in Turkey? Would you say I?
Think it was like one of my favorite travel things this year
in a year that's been like an incredible year for travel.
I think it's like stands out to me as being something which was

(15:14):
just change my perspective. One of those rare travel things
that you come away from and you're like, oh, I understand
the vastness of time more now. Jesus, and when did you make the
decision not to go to the other side?
Because I tried to go to the other side hard.
I was like on couch surfing, messaging random Turks from

(15:35):
Sound the Earth are saying, is there any chance you can just
take me? I'll pay you some money.
Like, I was really trying to getto Karen Tepe.
What's the distance between 2:00again?
Like an hour in a car. Oh, OK, I'm going to be too
expensive, obviously. Yeah, it would have been like
$60.00 there, $60.00 back. There's worse things to spend
$120 on, but Karen Tepe is like an archaeological site.

(15:57):
So sometimes you could have a great experience where you go
and get to talk to the lead archaeologist and he's there.
Really. I've heard people online say
they've had that experience, then other people have gone and
it's just like a load of unexplained kind of enclosures
are. They still excavating the site
as we spit. Yeah, still learning stuff every
day. As well, but both sites will.
No, just Karen Tepe. Oh, right, and.

(16:18):
Then there may be other ones, other enclosures elsewhere in
the hills that they've not yet gone to.
It's scary, isn't it, to think about because, you know, you've
obviously read a lot more about this than I have, but I do like
fantasizing about ancient civilization and thinking, you
know, if there was a civilization that was far more
advanced than we may be first thought.
What else does that suggest? Because I I know that Graham

(16:38):
Hancock's bugbear is that peoplein the mainstream, and certainly
Egyptologists are like almost refusing to accept.
Yeah, it's difficult to get archaeological theories past
ingrained archaeological culturebecause like, you can have a
theory about what Quebec the Tepe was and what it was used
for. And even if that theory makes

(16:59):
sense, you have to prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt
before it will ever be accepted by modern archaeologists.
And on that, you know, I'd love to go to a meditation break
because there's another two ancient sites in Turkey that I
would love to go into detail about.
And both of them kind of have like mythological origins and
potential beginnings that aren'tconfirmed.

(17:20):
Oh, nice one. Let's go away, Alan.
We should make a place where fans of the show can listen to
episodes, read articles and maybe contact us.
Done it what topologypodcast.comso.
We put a link in the description.
It's. Already there.
You are good. Like an ancient stone carving

(17:42):
mysteriously depicting a constellation on the side of a
big megalithic rock. Allow your conscious mind to
return into your brain. Not only am I here talking to
you about Gobekli Tepe and all that stuff, but you're
physically next to me in the same realm, which is, I mean,
that's a beautiful thing. It is.
Yeah, it is. I I've missed you very dearly

(18:03):
mate. And I don't want to use an old
cliche, but it has flown by, wasn't it?
Yeah, the time we've been not together always fires by an
anticipation of the next time that we are.
And that's the beautiful thing about friendship, mate.
We'll just talk to you about Gobekli Tepe and the ancient
civilization and and how amazingthat was and life changing for
me. It whet my appetite for ancient
civilizations to such a degree. I just, I couldn't get enough of

(18:24):
them when I was in Turkey. Well, it seems like the place,
doesn't it? And it's no surprise you
recommend highly that people go to Gobeki Tepee, even if they're
not necessarily interested in ancient civilizations and stuff.
Is that eye opening, I suppose, and that important in human
history? Yeah, I think so.
If you're a curious human being who listens to Tribology
podcast, there's two things. Tell me enough about you that I

(18:46):
think you'll enjoy Quebec with tape and.
One last question that you know,I could have asked in the first
half, but just how big are thesestructures in comparison to,
say, us, a human, a person standing next to one of the
rocks? Yeah.
So what's on the earth are they actually have a life-size
reconstruction of enclosure D, right.
There's like being laser scannedso the proportions are exactly
the same. Oh well, yeah.

(19:06):
When you're looking down at Gobekli Tepe, yeah, you don't
get as much of A sense as when you're walking into the
reconstruction of enclosure D and it's like 10 foot tall like.
Huge. Well, like.
It triple, maybe actually tallerlike triple my size.
Yeah. I don't know if the 15 foot 15
foot triple your size 15, I am walking around ancient, you

(19:31):
know, these structures and stuff.
I always think, and I don't knowif this is really the best way
to think about it, but if I was tasked with reconstructing it,
yeah. Would I be able to achieve it?
No, no. And I think you're talented.
I'm the number of fan. I love you.
I think it takes an understanding of agriculture
that you don't have to feed yourself on the grain.

(19:52):
And engineering probably that I just wouldn't be able to, yeah.
Have you ever heard of Cappadocia?
Yes, Cappadocia. That's what I was singing when I
was going around there. I like it.
It sounds like maybe quite an American term for something
That's cool. I think like Cappadocia, baby.
Yeah, it doesn't, Surfers might say on the West Coast.

(20:12):
Exactly. Like, how did I surf that wave?
Cappadocia. I went there.
Yeah, I saw the hot air balloons.
Yeah, from from being inside a hot air balloon yourself.
Just from the balcony of an hotel.
You didn't do the hot air balloon right?
No. Why not?
I've already been in a hot air balloon and I like hot air
balloons, but I actually think Cappadocia, I've not been in

(20:35):
that hot air balloon, so I can'tsay for certain.
I think probably not the place to do hot air ballooning because
everyone's also doing it. The main thing you'll see, yeah,
is other hot air balloons. Right.
You know what I mean? Yeah, well, I've obviously that
is super Instagram famous. It's beautiful aesthetic.
It's the one thing that lots of people want to do when they go

(20:57):
to Turkey. Yeah.
Are you saying it's sort of maybe underwhelming?
No, I'm sure it looks amazing, but going hot air ballooning in
Cappadocia would be like going scuba diving in a pool with lots
of other scuba divers. As if the main thing to see when
doing a thing is other people doing the thing.
Right, I understand what you mean.

(21:18):
You think it'd be more spectacular if you were the only
person? I'd say so.
I'd say hot air ballooning must be.
I think the most beautiful thingabout it is the views that you
can see. Yeah, not the other tourists
doing the same thing as you. Yeah, yeah.
Do you know how much it was to do one of these rides?
It's got to be a hundred 200. Dollars.
I think it was actually only like 75 bucks or something to go
up in a high air balloon. If you've got a spare 75 bucks

(21:40):
I'm sure it's beautiful. Yeah.
But I preferred less people doing it because I can see the
high air balloons from a balcony.
So if the main thing you're seeing when you're up there is
all the hot air balloons, stay on the ground.
I mean, you're nowhere near as high as you would be surely on a
balcony than you would be if you're up in the air on a hot
air balloon. No, the hot air balloons were
above me. Yeah, before, but then when they

(22:03):
were landing they came down to my level, so I saved.
Money. At least twice in the journey,
they would have been roughly theheight that you were at, yeah.
That's what they say about high air balloons.
If you go up some stairs just for some of their journey,
you're higher. Than that, yeah.
No, no, you can't argue that. The thing with hot air balloons,
and I don't know a lot about howthey work, but I would be quite

(22:25):
frightened. I have been in one before and it
felt quite say now a lot of it is computer based.
No way. A lot of hot air ballooning mate
is done on a Apple MacBook M1. Send US1 in the post.
Yeah, that's crazy. I I just think because I don't
understand them. I mean, not that I understand
planes and I still get in those,but I would be, I think I'd be

(22:49):
quite terrified. Are they unstable?
Depends on the wind, but we're living in a world.
Where you're within the island, but I imagine.
Because if you're in a world where you can, you can pilot
unsuccessfully a submarine with an Xbox controller, right?
Yeah. The world's changing, Adam.
And you know, before long I always I felt quite secure in
the hot air balloon. Yeah.

(23:10):
And not just emotionally, physically as well secure.
So I would recommend it, but if I did it in the King's Valley in
Egypt. Nice.
And my favorite thing about it? Was a little name drop.
Looking down at the King's Valley.
With no with fewer air balloons.Very little in the way of the
hot air balloons. And I like that fact.
That's all I'm saying. So the reason I went to Gap

(23:32):
Ocean wasn't for the high balloons.
The reason I went to Cappadocia was because of an ancient site.
Go on, which one was it? Darren Kuyu.
I mean, I've not heard of it myself.
You've not and I hadn't heard ofit either, but the person I was
travelling with, I love him to bits.
I've traveled with him before. He's an alternative character

(23:55):
with alternative decisions and alternative brain and an
alternative way of doing things.And he said to me, Alan, oh, I
noticed you're not wearing any shoes and don't worry about
that. Let me tell you about Darren
Kuyu. He doesn't wear any shoes.

(24:16):
And I thought amazing, like he told me all about it, he said.
Alan Darren Kuyu. It's an ancient cave structure.
Nice. That at its peak was home to
20,000 people. Really 20,000?
20,000 people. It's around the same size as the
town I used to live in. In Canada, yes.

(24:37):
Which wasn't in a cave. It's an underground city that
exists just a short distance away from Cappadocia.
Right, right. Shit, I think I do know about
this. It's 445 square kilometres in
size. About the size of a football
pitch. Yeah, 2 football pitches swashed
together. No, that's a math barrier.

(24:58):
There's tunnels there, they're 9kilometers long.
Oh my goodness. It goes down 85 meters below the
surface. It's a huge, huge sight.
That is difficult to comprehend actually.
It's difficult to comprehend that I remember all those facts
so easily. Let me tell you this.
So now this is the controversialthing.
We know that in the sort of 7th century, Christians hid there

(25:22):
from Islamic raids. Right, OK.
So it was being used so wheneverthey carbon day objects found in
The Cave it turns up to like 7thcentury.
It was the Christians hiding from the Islamic raids that they
lived inside those tunnels. And that you can walk in.
You can explore them as a tourist.
Oh, I've walked in there. Maybe I've gone down and I'll
tell you that in a minute. But there's an ancient

(25:43):
alternative history, which has been suggested by people like
Graham Hancock. The potentially ancient
civilizations used those caves to hide from meteor showers and
evade cataclysmic events. Oh, I like that.
There's some evidence, like the way that the tunnels were carved
that suggests that people much earlier, I'm talking like a few

(26:04):
thousand years BCE, was carving inside those tunnels and and
made them originally. Oh, so does that mean The Cave
system potentially already existed?
Those chambers had already been carved out and then we're like
occupied years later by perhaps,say, Christians.
Yeah, opportunistically opportunistic hiding places for
Christian hiders. But I mean living underground,

(26:30):
certainly in places like Turkey where it does get very hot, it's
dry, it's arid. Could have also been protection
from the sun, I imagine. Live underground, slightly
cooler, yeah. Something there was meteor
showers in the area that might have been really problematic for
an ancient civilization living out there.
And I know that the certain people posit that perhaps people
would just go down there and shelter for four months at a

(26:52):
time, and then that civilizationwould then come out and dwell
back around Cappadocia and then go back in.
If there was any problem, it waslike a bunker city.
That is absolutely incredible. I mean, it must have been
constructed over a number of years, surely?
You'd imagine so, yeah. And expanded.
But you go down there, you can see obviously there's the
there's the modern history as well.
But rooms have been carved, there's hearths.

(27:14):
There's like a number of different dwellings that clearly
people lived in. There's a more modern area that
was clearly dug in the 7th century, which is like for water
filtration. There's a huge water basin there
and stuff, but it's this huge place that you can explore and
go around. It's phenomenal are.
There any like really large chambers where you can see like

(27:34):
what's? World Match.
What goes between them? Like staircases and stuff?
Or is it all tight tunnels? Yeah, there's staircases,
there's wells, there's 50 ventilation shafts that run down
from the from the ceiling to thefloor.
You know, like this huge ventilation system so you're
always getting fresh air. They go right the way up to the
top, yeah, to Oh my God. So you can crane out and see

(27:56):
like back, you can see the sunlight coming in through these
ventilation shafts and then. That's incredible.
I'm trying to picture it in my head.
Is it quite sort of basic in theway it's been excavated or have
they got, you know, really, really straight lines and
corridors, you know it? Looks like it's been carved by
like stone tools. Hand, Yeah.
Oh my God, there's like raking marks where they've taken tools

(28:19):
and scored out chunks of rock. Has it been fortified or
reinforced by, you know, by people later on to kind of open
up as a tourist attraction? Can you walk around a lot of it
and it feels quite safe? Yeah, but it not it feels very
claustrophobic. Is it very very?
Are they put lights in? There, there's some lights in
there. Yeah, yeah.
And there's makeshift doors as well that people have put in,

(28:40):
presumably the Christians, like huge rock kind of turning
boulders that you can roll to the side.
Yeah, yeah, well, what do I do for food?
Well, this is it. Presumably they only stayed
there for a certain amount of time.
It would never have been a permanent dwelling for any
civilization, but for four months they could take supplies
down there because obviously they have to defecate and stuff

(29:01):
down there as well, right? So.
You would have thought so, yeah.I got up and take it back when
the meteor showers over. Can they have used it for fuel
like the old Nepalese? Yeah, exactly.
Well, that was made the yak feast.
Human feces famously makes a very inefficient.
Fuel. Well, hang on, Did they have
animals down there as well then?Well, maybe.
I think they, I think I've seen a documentary where they said

(29:23):
that there were perhaps animals being kept down there as well.
Dude, it was really amazing. It feels like a city that you're
going round and down and it's still, you know, if you, if it
was in the West, it would be really reinforced and stuff like
that. But often me and my friend were
just exploring. We just had Open Access to a
huge well with a 55 meter drop where if you just took a wrong

(29:43):
step, you'd fall down. It's like crazy to see.
Wicked. That's crazy him walking around
with those shoes on. Yeah, I know.
Completely shoeless. He was going around there.
How alternative? I would have loved to have done
that. That's really cool.
How much of it can you explore? Does it feel like you can get
around a lot of it? And, and oftentimes we just go
completely off paced and like gothrough someone's house and up

(30:06):
into a different corner and another room would open up and
there was no other tourists there.
And you're like, wow, this is like a little secret bit of
Derinku. That's absolutely amazing.
Yeah, I loved it. And was what's the entrance fee,
just out of interest, do you remember?
Oh, it's not as expensive as Gobekli Tepe, like €20,
something like that on my head. Full day, half a day.
Oh, half a day. Half a day for that one.

(30:27):
Very factual. Question very formative.
Yeah. Well, I love stuff like that.
I think if I think people would be really interested in going to
see Gobekli Tepe and can you do both in within like a couple of
days of each other, They close enough that you can go from 1:00
to the other. Sun, the Earth are two.
Cappadocia's quieter but an overnight boss?
You could do it. Oh, we love an overnight boss on
this show, don't we? Cappadocia now is coming into

(30:48):
the like, it's the popular part of Turkey, surely, like well
visited part of Turkey. And there's one side.
I mean, I want to carry on goingwith the ancient wonders, mate.
Look, Turkey I think is an ancient, just a hub.
There's so much amazing ancient stuff.
And they're probably the most famous one is Ephesus.
Have you ever heard of Ephesus? I have heard of it.

(31:10):
I've not been there myself, I'm ashamed to say, but.
So it's like kind of like the opposite of Derinkuyu in this
nature city that it exists almost completely above the
ground. And it was, it's the most
amazing city, ancient ruin I've ever been to.
It's like, truly awesome. Was it ruined by meteor shower

(31:32):
by any chance? Yeah, the same media show that
people were protecting themselves from.
Yeah, it's it's right, really incredible.
It was created by basically the all the oracles of Delphi.
Told this guy his name was Androcles.
OK. Well pronounced, they told him

(31:52):
that wherever he found a boar and a fish, that's where he
should start this city. OK.
And he's hunting around the areaand he's frying a fish, right?
It falls out of the pan and a boar comes running across.
And he goes, Oh well, this is itthere.
You go there's yeah. Written in the stars, so.
He makes this city and it is a huge, big, beautiful ancient

(32:15):
Greek city, and at some point they build this temple to
Artemis there. Right.
And an army comes to invade in accordance with the tenants of
Artemis. They tie a string around the
city balcony. OK.
And when the army comes, they meet that string and they just
get like perplexed and turn round and leave.

(32:36):
They're like, well, I don't wantany of the string smoke, right?
I don't want any of this. So then the people of Ephesus
go, Oh my God, Artemis protectedus.
And they build the most amazing temple to Artemis.
Artemis is the God of the hunt, the goddess of like nature and
raw natural power. So it's like Demeter is flowers

(32:56):
and all that sort of stuff. Artemis is like Hunt.
Nice. So they build the most amazing
temple to her. It becomes a wonder of the
ancient world. And Ephesus is sort of the city
that was built around that. It had 250,000 inhabitants.
My goodness it. Survived all the way through the

(33:17):
Greek period. Cleopatra and Antony visited
there. It became the Roman trading hub
to to Asia, one of the capital cities of Rome.
Eventually that temple to Artemis was completely ruined
and now it just stands as just one pillar.
It was ruined. It was destroyed by Christians.
It was burned. They're like.

(33:37):
What are they like Artemis? I went to the Temple of Artemis,
the old site of it. Just one pillar and a pack of
stray dogs. No entrance, no nothing.
Like it's just completely ruined.
Michael, what sort of size are we talking?
The Temple of Artemis. Yeah, the size of a football
pitch. Well, Ephesus is like the size
of a modern day town. It's that you can walk around it

(33:59):
freely. Wow. €40 entrance fee.
Yeah, but the most well preserved ancient city I've ever
been to. You can see shops with like the
placards in Greek like written on the outside.
Oh my goodness. You can see like mosaic floors
of terraced housing. You can see the old plumbing
where the you know it would go to the sea.

(34:22):
Like gutter systems and this. Sort of stuff.
All that sort of stuff. What about areas where people
would congregate, like courtyards and all this?
Yeah. Cropolises.
Yeah, Oh my goodness. Where the aggro's and stuff
where people would yeah congregate me haven't like
social events, amphitheatres forcomedy for later gladiator

(34:43):
fights. That's incredible.
An Amphitheatre that was originally settled by the Greeks
and then later Co opted by the Romans.
Yeah. Yeah, they added a back wall.
So the acoustics were better when the people were speaking or
bounced off the back wall and then everyone could hear.
It was like so well preserved. There's a big library building.
I guess there's absolutely a question then about that.
It's like so obviously a town that was inhabited by 10s of

(35:04):
thousands of people. Yeah.
I mean, so much so there's scoremarks on the road so that
people's sandals would have moregrip.
Really. Yeah.
That's that's been proven to be the reason why.
Yeah, yeah, Well, it's also welldocumented because the Greeks
and the Romans wrote down so much.
And were you also discovering this with the our friend who

(35:25):
doesn't wear shoes? Well, so he didn't because he
felt like it wasn't particularlyan area of his interest.
He was more interested in like ancient Derinkuyu and all that
sort of stuff. And it was, you know, that's
basically $40 is a lot of euros,is a lot of money.
It is a lot of money, It is. But it was one of the greatest
things that I saw in my time in Turkey.

(35:45):
Yeah, again, I would absolutely love to go.
I bet you were exploring it all day, were you?
That that is a whole day that islike, I went and I spent six
hours exploring Ephesus. Really.
That's walking around the city? That's incredible.
Going into going into the publicbaths, like going like going up
to the top of the Amphitheatre and back down.

(36:05):
There's an experience there as well.
That's including your ticket price, which is like, it's not a
museum. It's like an alternate, like an
augmented reality sort of thing where you go into a room and
there's projections on all the walls showing the history of the
Temple of Artemis. Really cool to see one of the
best like museummy experiences that I've ever been Privy to.

(36:28):
Yeah, I mean the the area itselfand when it was inhabited, how
many thousands years ago do theythink that was again?
Oh, Ancient Greece. So whenever ancient Greece was,
I think, yeah, I don't want me under pressure.
But yeah, for any fans who are interested in ancient
civilizations, I mean, get yourself over to Turkey, how

(36:49):
many weeks do you think they need to explore?
Because surely like less than two, you're pushing it on you if
you want to get around and give everything enough time.
Yeah, no, I think 3 weeks minimum for Turkey in the months
better. Wait three weeks only seeing
ancient civilizations and exploring that sort.
Of stuff, you were going from the Far East of Turkey all the
way to the West and you wanted to spend some time in Istanbul
and all that. You need a month minimum I would

(37:10):
say. Go on.
I mean, you save a bit of time and money not doing the hot air
balloon, right? Yeah, but people do 2 weeks just
in Antalya on the beach. Also true.
Also true. Do you think it's a bit of a
shame that people go to Turkey like me and don't see that side
of it? Yeah, no, 100%.
I think people right off the East as being too complicated to
travel. There's even like certain you
can Google it and it will tell you that maybe the East isn't

(37:31):
safe. Again.
Experienced a massive amount of kindness and beautiful people in
the East so. Well, let's quickly talk about
that then, because eastern Turkey, and I mean I've been
told by people in western Turkeywho are from eastern Turkey,
yeah, it isn't the safest place for tourists to go, but it's
great that you you received sortof kindness and were treated.

(37:51):
Really. I arrived in Trabzon off the bus
from Georgia and went to a kebabshop my first day.
Yeah. And the guy said, oh, so nice
that you've come here to try Trabzon, have a drink for free,
have a free apple. I'll give you another kebab for
free. Like, thank you so much for
coming. And I was like, oh, OK, I'm back
in. Like, the kind of kindness we
experienced in Pakistan, the kind of we experienced in

(38:14):
certain parts of India, It felt like I was coming home in some
sort of way. Trabzon was the furthest EI
went, and it was incredibly safe.
I was on the border, you know, when I was in sun, the Earth, I
was on the border there of Syria, right?
Yeah. Yeah, sure.
So it's, you know, a little bit.It's complicated, yeah.

(38:35):
But there's a lot of refugees there.
OK. But were you being told by
locals that you were safe or wasthere any sort of mentioned that
it was a bit hot around the border or anything like?
That there was like more police checks and stuff.
Oh, fair, it's getting possible.Yeah, a few times.
There's more police checks and it was, yeah, I had to get my

(38:56):
passport out and give it away. But All in all felt very, very
safe the whole time was there. Wicked, wicked.
Have you got any other wrecks for people that want to go to
Turkey? I mean, definitely spend some
time in Istanbul, there's amazing food and stuff there,
but just try and get those untouched little sites.
Like really go to come back and tap it.
Of course go to Darren Kuya. The ancient sites are what make
Turkey amazing. You can skip going to Isafia for

(39:19):
45 euros. Spend that money, go to some of
the ancient sites where no one else goes to.
Yeah, well, I think that's a newthing, probably this side of
COVID and the pandemic, isn't it?
So anyone who is going to Turkey, just remember if you're
going to go to Hagia Sophia, thethe mosque that is a Blue Mosque
isn't. It Blue Mosque is the other
side. The other side next to each
other so you can go to that. One Yeah, yeah.
Blue Mosque's free of charge. If you go to that one instead.

(39:42):
There you go. That's wicked mate, I love it.
I've got to get over there. I'm I'm sorry I wasn't there to
do it with you because it is something I would have loved to
have done. Next time, Adam, next time.
But you've also been on your owncrazy, crazy adventure, so we'll
get to talking about that next week, will we?
Yeah, yeah. I can't wait.
There's loads to share. I will talk to you about my time
in South Korea. I did an amazing three weeks

(40:04):
there. It was far colder than I
anticipated, so I was complaining about the
temperature and the fact that I didn't take enough clothes.
But I, yeah, I can't wait to talk to you about it, mate.
It was wonderful. There you go.
If you guys want to get in touch, it's
tropologypodcast.com. We've got a contact form there
to ask us any questions. Instagram at Tropology podcast.
Yeah, and if you want to check us out the the extra little bit

(40:27):
that we do after the show calledLost and Found
patreon.com/tropology podcast, we're going to go there right
now. Yeah, let's go there now.
See you there. Bye.
Can you show me what is true in my heart?

(40:58):
What is true in my heart?
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