4,000-year-old community where thousands of residents still live in underground houses

Daily Mail ^ | 24 January 2018 | Gabriel Samuels and Tracy You

[mairdie]

A new aerial video has provided a rare glimpse into a mysterious Chinese village where residents have lived in subterranean 'pit yards' for some four millennia.

The series of underground dwellings in central China's Henan Province used to have nearly 10,000 homes.

Right now, around 3,000 people still live there while the others have moved to modern homes, according to Chinese media.

[null and void]

Shame on you!!!

LOL!

[21twelve]

Those pit homes look really nice. They sure beat those photos of the people living in the high rises with about a 12’ square room as their “apartment”.

We are getting a lot of Chinese into our area near Seattle. They are building 5 story apartments that take up an entire block - with no parking! And no improvements to the roads. A friend made the astute observation that these people are coming from countries where having 2000 people in a building is great living compared to the 10,000 where they come from. And they ALL are used to taking the train and so don’t think about the roads.

[mairdie]

Very interesting observations.

[JoeFromSidney]

The underground cities in Cappadocia are no longer inhabited. They are a tourist attraction. They were carved out of a very thick layer of volcanic ash. The volcanoes are extinct, but in prehistoric times had put down a layer of ash several hundred feet deep. Starting at the surface, the city builders had dug down into the consolidated ash. They carved out several layers of rooms and galleries, with couches and other furniture likewise carved out of the ash. Air vents extended from the surface to the lowest layers. Walls had places for lamps carved into them, and the soot was still visible.

So far as I could see, the only problem for the inhabitants would have been water. They'd have had to haul it down the stairways, or lower buckets down the Air shafts.

[mairdie]

Absolutely wonderful!

[Redcitizen]

Holey Caverns Batman!