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Suppose one day you are working on your home, trying to renovate it, and discovering an entire city behind your basement.
As unlikely as that sounds, precisely, this is what happened to a man from Turkey. In 1963, a local man in the Cappadocia region of Turkey noticed his chickens disappearing through a gap in his basement that had opened up during renovations.
After knocking down a wall, he found a strange room and continued to dig further, exposing a tunnel system with a series of cave rooms. Little did he know it then, but he had discovered the ancient underground city of Derinkuyu, once home to more than 20,000 people.
After that, excavation began immediately, revealing a tangled network of underground dwellings, dry food storage, cattle stables, schools, wineries and even a chapel.
It was an entire civilisation underground. Thousands of tourists soon visited the cave city, and in 1985, the region was added to the Unesco World Heritage list.
The city's exact date of construction remains to be discovered. However, the oldest written work, Anabasis by Xenophon of Athens in 370 BCE, references Derinkuyu.
In the book, he mentions Anatolian people, in or near the region of Cappadocia, living underground in excavated homes rather than the more popular cave dwellings that were well-known in the area then.
Originally, Derinkuyu was likely used for storing goods, but its primary purpose was to provide temporary shelter from foreign invaders.
Cappadocia was experiencing a constant flux of dominant empires throughout that time, so most of the people of that region decided to live underground to shelter from the invaders.
While the Persians and Seljuks, among others, inhabited the region and expanded upon the underground city, Derinkuyu's population peaked during the Byzantine Era, with nearly 20,000 underground residents.
Each level of the city was carefully engineered for specific uses. Livestock was kept in stables nearest to the surface to reduce the smell and toxic gases produced by cattle.
The inner layers of the city contained dwellings, cellars, schools and meeting spaces. A school with adjacent study rooms is located on the second floor.
The upper levels were used as living and sleeping quarters, as they were the best-ventilated ones. The lower levels were used primarily for storage but also contained a dungeon. In between were spaces used for various purposes; there was room for a wine press, domestic animals, a convent, and small churches.
The most famous one is the cruciform church on the seventh level. There are also specialised rooms that indicate that inhabitants of Derinkuyu were prepared to spend months beneath the surface.
However, the most impressive thing about this underground city is its complex ventilation system and well-protected well, which would have supplied the city with fresh air and clean water. It's thought that the early construction of Derinkuyu centred around these two essential elements.
When shut off from the world above, the city was ventilated by more than 15,000 shafts, most about 10 cm wide and reaching down into the first and second levels of the city. This ensured sufficient ventilation down to the eighth level. The well was dug more than 55m deep and was easily controlled by the city inhabitants.
Derinkuyu's living story ended in 1923 when the Cappadocian Greeks evacuated. More than 2,000 years after the city's likely creation, it was abandoned for the last time. The modern world forgot about it until some chickens brought the subterranean town back into the light.