How were those plants watered? How would they get sun?
Makes you wonder how they foraged for food and hunted. Did they cook their food? Inside or outdoors? How did they light those tunnels? With torches? Did they have ventilation or did they die from smoke inhalation and lack of oxygen?
Where were the children kept? People need sunlight as much as plants and animals. What was the life expectancy?
So many questions;) Bet they built it and no-one came!!!!!
They got sun because of the holes (skylights) left in the roof. As far as water, I don’t know if they got more than the natural rain. Fresno is a very hot and dry climate, and most plants need artificial water (irrigation). Yet, my elderly mother’s yard got NOTHING in the last 10 years of her ife (in the back). The grass dried up, as did the weeks. But, the established orange and grapefruit trees continue to bear fruit and to grow just on the little bit of rain that they gt each year and the fact that their roots reach deep.
Of course, my father had holes blasted before he planted those trees in the early 1950s, and the article about the Underground Gardens said that Forestiere used no dynamite to build his complex. I think that Forestiere used some type of sestem to gather whatever water he could and to portion it out as needed.
My father planted a fruitless mulberry that got so large that it nearly knocked down the house. That tree received no water (other than the less than 10 inches of natural rain per year) the last 15-20 years of my mother’s life. It took 5 men a week to cut that tree down and haul it away.