Pearl Number 9: Cappadocia, A Strange Landscape and Stranger Inhabitants

First, an observation: If you want to know where many of the major world civilizations developed after they passed through after Mesopotamia, just visit any ruin in Turkey.

Today's pearl is about Cappadocia.

This area, in central Turkey has sustained life beginning in the Neolithic period ( 6500 B.C.E. ), then Hittite, eventually Roman. Christians arrived sometime in the 1st century, C.E. Capadoccia is all about the monasticism that developed in the Early Church. Their choice of habitat was either caves that they carved out of the mountains, or underground dwellings.Called anchorites, these ascetics devoted their lives to prayer, penance, and fasting. and they liked its austere landscape and difficult climate.

Some of the inhabitants were hiding from church hierarchy as well, since they were espousing some pretty unorthodox notions of Jesus( OK, heresies ), and the church fathers and mothers ( yes, there were some women in power in the early church ) were not happy with their philosophy nor did they want them to influence congregations to embrace the heresy
The landscape of Cappadocia looks like a moonscape. The plateau is formed from lava and mud that poured out from two volcanoes thousands of years before Christ. Massive erosion of the soft rock, called tufa, and, in some cases, a harder basalt layer on top of the tufa, left capped columns, pyramids and famous "fairy chimneys". ( See picture above )

When the Arabs began to raid this part of Turkey ( nearly the dead-center of the country ) in the 7th and 8th century C.E., the monastic communities went underground to survive. Eventually, their subterranean world included churches, housing, storage facilities --all complete with ventilation shafts. People from the surrounding hills and valleys joined the monks underground whenever danger warranted fleeing the countryside. Today, people still live in some of the cave homes.( Folks our guide called "old timers", who prefer to live simply, and many still use horse-drawn carts for transportation.

Eventually, the cave- church walls and ceilings were covered with extraordinary frescoes.( see fresco above ) Incidentally, each church was carved out of the hills in the same cruciform shape as a stand alone church above ground. There are an estimated 600 rock-cut churches in the Cappadocia area with names based on their style or decoration ( i.e. Apple Church or Buckle Church ). And there are many thousand underground rooms that can be crawled through. Many are long, narrow dark tunnels that angle down deeper into the earth, then quickly angle in one direction or another. That way, the Cappadocians could trap the Arabs if they tried to enter their dwelling into a dead end,and kill them.

[Editor's note: This is the one excursion that I did not do on the trip. The trek involved going into a pitch black, airless tunnel that was so narrow you could not stand up for ten or fifteen minutes that angled down, then required a climb--and finally light and the tunnel's end. I'm told from those that participated that I made a good decision!]

Tomorrow, #8.
M.C.