(Public Domain)
Posted on 03/11/2019 1:34:23 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
In desperate circumstances people are often driven to perform feats of mythical proportions. In the late 1100s the medieval kingdom of Georgia was resisting the onslaught of the Mongol hordes, the most devastating force Europe had ever seen. Queen Tamar ordered the construction of this underground sanctuary in 1185, and the digging began, carving into the side of the Erusheli mountain, located in the south of the country near the town of Aspindza.
When completed this underground fortress extended 13 levels and contained 6000 apartments, a throne room and a large church with an external bell tower. It is assumed that the only access to this stronghold was via a hidden tunnel whose entrance was near the banks of Mtkvari river. The outside slope of the mountain was covered with fertile terraces, suitable for cultivation, for which an intricate system of irrigation was designed. With such defenses, natural and man made, the place must have been all but impregnable to human forces. Alas, the glorious days of Vardzia didn't last for very long. Though safe from the Mongols, mother nature was a different story altogether. In 1283, only a century after its construction, a devastating earthquake literally ripped the place apart. The quake shattered the mountain slope and destroyed more than two-thirds of the city, exposing the hidden innards of the remainder.
However despite this, a monastery community persisted until 1551 when it was raided and destroyed by Persian Sash Tahmasp.
Today the place is maintained by a small group of zealous monks. About three hundred apartments and halls remain visitable and in some tunnels the old irrigation pipes still bring drinkable water.
(Excerpt) Read more at atlasobscura.com ...
shambala west
how in the heck did they do that hundreds of years ago ???(by hand)!!!
Wasn’t it dark inside?
Yes.
That's where Jussy was beaten and raped and humiliated.
Get more woke.
Is that the place in which KFC hired a RoboCop to store a backup copy of the Colonel’s Secret Fried Chicken Recipe?
Well, most of it is carved from soft, porous volcanic rock, so it’s not like they carved it out of granite or something like that.
“Minibus transportation daily from Akhaltsikhe.”
The bucket list just got a little longer...
I figured that minibus would suck people in. ;^)
The Cave of Caerbannog is the home of the Legendary Black Beast of Arrrghhh (named for the last utterance of anyone who ever saw it).
It is guarded by a monster which is initially unknown.
King Arthur and his knights are led to the cave by Tim the Enchanter and find that they must face this guardian beast.
Tim verbally paints a picture of a terrible monster with "nasty, big, pointy teeth!", so terrifying that Sir Robin soils his armour at the mere description.
When the guardian appears to be an innocuous white rabbit, surrounded by the bones of the fallen, Arthur and his knights no longer take it seriously.
Ignoring Tim's warnings ("a vicious streak a mile wide!"), King Arthur orders Bors to chop the rabbit's head off.
Bors confidently approaches it, sword drawn, and is immediately decapitated by the rabbit biting clean through his neck, to the sound of a can opener.
Despite their initial shock, Sir Robin soiling his armor again, and Tim's loud scoffing, the knights attack in force.
But the rabbit injures several of the knights and kills Gawain and Ector with ease.
The knights themselves have no hope of killing or injuring the rabbit.
Arthur panics and shouts for the knights to "Run away!".
Knowing they cannot risk attacking again, they try to find another way to defeat the beast.
The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch is ultimately used to kill the rabbit and allow the quest to proceed.
Cue the Three Dog Night!
Alas, the complex did not save Georgia. The Mongols invaded (several times) and devastated most of the country, as was their wont.
The Georgians could have used something like that against the Mongols and Persians.
It's too bad the Mongols didn't manage to exterminate the muzzies.
Always thought this was cool. This, Derinkuyu, and a few others.
Thanks Openurmind. It turned up in a search for something else (I don't even remember what) and I'd never previously heard of it, and Googling turned up no occurrence on FR, hence...
Thank you for the article, it’s cool stuff... I always wondered if some of these underground cities might have also been somehow need for environmental reasons aside from security reasons?. Be interesting to try and see what suspected environmental science claims about these particular timelines of some of these.
This one is one of the few which has a definite start date, assuming that much of it wasn't already in existence when the order was given (6000 apartments is a remarkable about of work getting done by a fairly small number of people with medieval infrastructure support (the food, the water) in the middle of nowhere. Many of these structures are found in Anatolia, and Robert Schoch (among others) has suggested that they continued to be expanded and extended, but that the original excavations go back to the Neolithic.
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