Derinkuyu Underground City

As you all know by now, I love turkey, and whenever anyone send me stuff about Turkey, I try to document it on my blog.  hope you will enjoy this article as much as I did:

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تعرف على مدينة الجن - مدينة أثرية عملاقة تحت الأرض تتسع لأكثر من 30 ألف شخص

إنها بلا شك من عجائب الدنيا وواحدة من أعظم المواقع الأثرية في العالم . كيف لا , وهي التي شبهها العديد من علماء الآثار بأنها مدينة غاية في التعقيد يضاهي تعقيدها وإتقانها تعقيد وإتقان الأهرامات الفرعونية . إنها (مدينة ديرينكويو تحت الأرض
 (Derinkuyu Underground City)
وهي مدينة أثرية عملاقة تحت الأرض في تركيا عثر عليها بالصدفة في عام 1963 أثناء أعمال التجديد لأحد المنازل في مقاطعة ديرنكويو التابعة لمحافظة نوشهر في وسط تركيا عندما تم العثور على بوابة وتم فتحها لتقود إلى هذا الإكتشاف لهذه المدينة العملاقة المهجورة تحت الأرض , لتثير الحيرة في ضخامتها ووجودها بالأسفل بهذه الطريقة من ما دعى السكان المحليين إطلاق إسم مدينة الجن عليها , إعتقادا منهم بأن الجن هو من بناها في باديء الأمر .

صورة للمدخل

تتكون جغرافيا منطقة ديرينكويو من صخور بركانية لينة ذات صلابة متوسطة , لعل هذا من أهم الأسباب التي شجعت من بنى هذه المدينة الغريبة تحت الأرض على إختيار هذا المكان بالتحديد لحفر وبناء هذه المدينة . وقد شكلت عوامل التعرية (الرياح والمياة) أشكالا غريبة في صخورها ومعالمها التضاريسية على السطح كما تشاهد في هذه الصورة .

تتكون هذه المدينة الأثرية العملاقة من 11 طابقا تحت الأرض وهو عمق يصل إلى 85 مترا وهي كبيرة جدا لدرجة أنها تتسع لما بين 35 إلى 50 ألف الأشخاص . ليس هذا فقط , فتحتوي هذه المدينة العجيبة على كل ما يلزم من وسائل الراحة من معاصر للزيتون والنبيذ وإسطبلات وأقبية وغرف للتخزين وحجرات للطعام ومصليات , والمميز هنا هو وجود معبد واسع المساحة في الدور الثاني من المدينة الأرضية . ولتأمين التهوية اللازمة للحياة , يمتد عمود تهوية يبلغ طوله ما يقارب الـ 55 مترا والذي يستخدم أيضا كبئر للماء لتزويد كل من القرية الواقعة على سطح الأرض وأيضا المدينة الواقعة تحت سطح الأرض بالمياه بالإضافة إلى ما يزيد عن 15 ألف فتحة تهوية صغيرة موزعة في أنحاء المدينة .

فتحت مدينة ديرينكويو تحت الأرض للسياح في عام 1969 , أي بعد 6 سنوات من إكتشافها .

الصورة التالية لمخطط للأماكن المكتشفة في المدينة

والمجموعة التالية لصور متنوعة من داخل مدينة ديرنكويو الأثرية تستعرض أهم معالمها .

القاعات 

معصرة النبيذ والزيتون

الإسطبلات

غرف النوم

المدرسة

حجر الرحى المستخدم في طحن الحبوب

الممرات

فتحة للتهوية

يتم الدخول إلى هذه المدينة المعقدة عبر عدة بوابات حجرية ثقيلة (تبلغ أطوالها من 1 إلى 1.5 متر وعرض كل منها من 30 إلى 50 سم وأوزانها من 200 إلى 500 كلج) وكل هذه البوابات تغلق من الداخل فقط وليس من الخارج في طريقة ميكانيكية مبتكرة تجعل من فتحها وإقفالها مهمة سهلة وممكنه لشخص واحد فقط وهي بواسطة داعمة خشبية في الثقب المتوضع على وسط البوابة .

هذه المدينة الغريبة , منذ متى ؟ ومن بناها ؟

تشير كل من تكهنات المؤرخين والدراسات التاريخية التي أجريت على المكان على أن هذه المدينة تحت الأرض بنيت على مراحل وأختير هذا المكان بالذات بسبب طبيعة الصخور البركانية اللينة التي تتكون منها الطبقات الأرضية من ما يجعل من مهمة الحفر مهمة أقل صعوبة من أماكن أخرى . ويعتقد أن أول مراحل بناء هذه المدينة كانت ما بين القرنين السابع والثامن قبل الميلاد بواسطة شعب الـ (بهريغيانس \Phrygians) وهم أحد الشعوب الهندوأوروبية والتي سكنت تلك المنطقة منذ القدم ومن ثم تم توسعة هذه المدينة في العهد البيزنطي الفارسي من قبل المملكة الأخمينيونية (والتي كان مركزها إيران الآن) . حيث يعتقد أن المدينة كانت تستخدم المدينة كمستوطنة لللاجئين حيث أن هناك إشارة وذكر في المراجع الـ (مجوسية - زراداشتية) في الجزء الثاني من كتاب (الأفيستا - Vendidad) وهو أحد أهم المراجع للزراداشتية - المجوسية) لمستوطنة لاجئين تحت الأرض بنيت في عهد الإمبراطور جمشيد . لذا يعتقد الكثير من المؤرخين أن هذه المدينة وسعت وتضخمت في أثناء الحكم الفارسي للمنطقة , حيث أن بعض القطع الأثرية المكتشفة في المكان تعود للفترة البيزنطية المتوسطة والتي يعود تاريخها لما بين القرنين الخامس والعاشر قبل الميلاد , حيث قد يجمع العلماء أن هذه المستوطنة كانت ملجئ لإيواء الهاربين لكن السبب الأكيد ومن ومتى ؟ تضل الإجابات عبارة عن توقعات .

شعار الزراداشتية وبعض النقوش في أحد المناطق الأثرية في غرب إيران

ما يثير العجب هو إتصال هذه المدينة الغريبة بمجمعات أخرى حفرت تحت الأرض في المنطقة ومن أهمها مجمع (كايماكلي - Kaymaklı) الديني والذي يصل بينه وبين مدينة ديرينكويو (موضوعنا لليوم) مجموعة أنفاق تحت الأرض يصل طولها إلى 8 كيلومترات !

 

Will that child ever thank us

How many grownups today think of the Education industry that was behind putting him or her on that desk, how many reflect on their up-bringing and thank those that spent hours and minutes preparing for their lessons and lectures and how many thank us for being there for them when they needed some educational help.  I wonder!

I did a search on Google (he is my best friend you know, I am not sure how he was only there since 8 years and all of us know him that well, we will not be able to live without him anymore and I think because of Google and Wikipedia life had become simpler!  I was hoping that one day someone will say lets EZONE it, not only lets Google it, or lets WIKI it! I am sure this will happen).  Sorry about the digression, I am known to do that, so please forgive me.  Anyway, I did a search on google to see how many organisations exist just for education.  Baffling results really.

Ok to start with, I split the policy making that can be government, or non-government or private; there are 192 ministries of education, and over 200 educational organisations that are part of governments (in the UAE for example we have ADEC, KHDA, ADVETI, NIVE, Educational zones etc, in Qatar we have SEC and QF, in Saudi we have a million and more NGOs and GOs that work on education).  Then we have all the women societies, the youth societies and many others that have the child and the youth as their main focus.  Thirdly we have the private organisations that also focus on teaching policies and practices.

We spend billions of dollars on education around the world with the highest spender being United States http://www.businessinsider.com/us-education-spending-compared-to-the-rest-of-the-developed-world-2012-1 (if I look at my company only being a tiny player, we spend 2 million dirhams a year on education)

Then I did a search on the number of teaching organizations, this link says that we have 9000 universities in the world: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_university_in_the_world#slide=2 , so basically we have thousands of universities around the world

Google went mad when I asked about the numbers of colleges around the world, thus saying hundreds of thousands of colleges is a fair and square number.  Also saying that we have millions of schools and high schools is not a tricky number.

Now lets look at the teachers, we have over 75 million teachers (that I got from the #GESF forum that I am attending now) and mentioning teachers we must mention the allied/support staff that work in the education industry, this figure is startling and could be in the hundreds of thousands.

Please do not forget the lands, buildings and other infrastructures that support the education field, this would be in the billions of dollars’ mark.

The most important of all are the parents, they are the ones that brought up that child and spent hours and days of their lives educating him or her until he or she took that chair.

If these people, schools, figures didn't help in educating you Mr and Ms Employee would you ever be on that chair?

We care about our kids, I am hoping that they in turn care about their own kids to complete the circle so one day all of the world's living people will be educated, we all have a part to play. 

Someone will have a joyful time doing empirical research

All we need is to have a look at the news these days, I think they are funny really (you must be careful with this write-up as it may scare children and adults alike)

To begin with, I am restless and thinking for every minute of the day about this Malaysian airplane that got lost in the middle of the China sea.  My interpretation of course is that aliens took it, please don’t laugh as every one else laughed at me, but being a star wars believer, I guess this could be a reason amongst other reason.  However the other reason for the disappearance could be that there was so much diamonds on the plane so the hijackers made it land somewhere that is completely unknown to the satellites of this world.  Of course this hypothesis makes me so happy as the theory that claims that all of us are being watched by the BIG BROTHER is incorrect, else how come a triple 7 airplane just disappears in the middle of nowhere or in thin air.

Let us look at another piece of news yesterday; the CIA and NSA are being accused of spying on their own politicians? Ok, hold on a second, who were they supposed to spy on?  I am sure it was not on missing airplanes? Otherwise we would not have any missing planes would we now??  Jokes apart, why spy on people that the CIA and NSA had checked, re-checked and made their due diligence reports on prior to choosing these politicians.  Unless of course there are two sets of CIA and NSA one that starts the check prior to the job being undertakes by the politicians and another one to confirm that reports on the politicians are in fact correct.  Of course this is normal as we as a country want to protect tax payers’ money by double spending.

 

The woman from Nigeria was crying on the BBC when she was saying that 10.9 billion dollars had disappeared from the coffers.  How on earth does a 10.9 billion dollars disappear? Thin air? Robbery, James bond story? Should we get inspector Gadget or Sherlock Holmes on the job? Maybe that is a job for CIA and NSA too, at least here one will make money for the tax payers!

But the weirdest thing to me is that guy who released from prison after being charged with murder thirty years ago. He is now 64, and had lost his youth for something that he didn’t do.  Of course, the CIA and NSA are busy checking and re-checking their politicians they cannot spy on every man and his dog and confirm the possibility of him being a killer or not, can they?  If I was this man, I don’t know what I would do.  I think Hollywood should be on the story before Bollywood gets its hand on it. 

But Bollywood has a much bigger fish to fry, there is a politician who has been an MP till the age of 92 (or 94, not sure, but the two years may not make a big difference), the reason for leaving the parliament has nothing to do with his age of course.  He says that it had become very noisy and no one respects the other in that cube.  

Sorry, these bits of news are funny, and I am not ready to condolence the families of the people on the missing airplane until they find the black box.  Please tell me that I should stop watching the news.

Thanks to Shakespear and the Merchant of Venice

Some of the banks in the world will give Shakespeare a run for his money, as if he is alive now, he will regret writing his story “the Merchant of Venice”, as what the banks are doing these days is not just taking a pound of flesh  of every person that needed a loan, they will suck his life too, and it will be a pity as we do not have the judge that saved that gentleman’s life back in the days of Venice and the Jewish lenders; what we have today is a system that live on the likes of the Shylocks of this world, with a total disregard to what the society pains and feelings were.

I did mention before that many banks over here had established these loan sharks divisions, of course without prior approval from the central bank, because if you are a bank that is open already, then you had your approval, and whatever you do next is limited to the board of directors’ choice, so if the board thinks that by having the loan sharks established and charging the people 25% interest is making sense, then they go ahead with it. 

What the banks had forgotten is that, there is no way that a business can do 25% profit knowing the economy of the time.  So a lot of people default in their payments (of course) and for that a new division will be established by the loan sharks called collection. 

The subject of today is about these divisions, the banks will get CV’ from all sort of people, so they chose those school drop outs, criminals, the scum of society, the types that you wouldn’t want to be associated with, and the residues of boiling sewage water and real human stool.  The place they put these collectors in is the hoods, the buildings have no name, and if you are passing by you wouldn’t even notice that it’s a place where dormant criminals reside. These people are vicious, they are ready to jump on you and extract your limbs because that is how they are paid.  Body parts, pounds of flesh and liters of blood.  They will continue to call you and visit your house and may even kick you out of your house, your office, take your computers and books just to cover the money that you owe them. And if they cannot find you, they will call your staff or your friends and try in every way to tell horrible stories about how mean you are and how you are avoiding the payments.  No confidentiality in the whole matter at all, so if you sign up with them, then you have given them a lien on all your life.  

People beware, as if they get hold of you, there is no saving, your life is in jeopardy, and the only way to get out of their face is to pay.  Of course if you cannot pay, you can commit suicide or run with their life, as you will not be spared.  

The surprising thing though is that the police will act on their instructions, and if they tell the police that a person didn’t pay, the police is ready to arrest.  No questions asked, and no intention of reaching a remedial action is even proposed, so the police become part of this cult; normally over here the police are not scary, in actual fact they are very nice and to agree to be involved in this loan sharks scheme is not something that I would like the police to be involved in, so this has to stop.  The police has to investigate how many people committed suicide in the country and why, I bet that 99% are due to these loan sharks.

Many things need to be investigated over here, beginning with the percentage of interest charged to the way the whole thing is handled.  If the central bank or the police need my help, I am ready, and will devote my life to save those unfortunate who gave their pound of flesh, liters of blood to these banks, and to find the judge who will save the merchant of Venice.

Thank you Mr Shakespear for giving me ammunition to use as analogy.

Am I a prodigy child?

Now the answer to this question will not be possible because as I stand now I wasn’t one and had not been discovered as one; also being 58 already, I don’t think it possible to do those checks to ascertain the possibility of being a prodigy.

This came about when I watched some youtube channels showing some of the prodigy children that made it into college at 12, graduated as doctors at 20, and are writing books, playing music, playing sports, and having a life time of enjoyment in reading books and discussing science. So I wondered if it is possible to discover kids with special talent in our countries.  Do we have the elements that make this discovery possible?

Well, I don’t think we do for many reasons.  To begin with most of the marriages are not compatible, and parents spend a lot of their time arguing or fighting, the kids are neglected and left to their own devices while that is going on.

Secondly parents are busy working and trying to make ends meet, so instead of focusing on their children’s abilities and watching if the kids have the reading power at two, playing music at three, writing music at 4, finishing school at 6 and going to a college at 8, and so on, they come home, cook dinner and put the kids to sleep without noticing what the kids did or about to do.  The small means do not allow the kids to even buy those books, and the few items at home don’t provide enough inspiration to the children to explore.  

Thirdly, most of our countries are living in turmoil, political problems, religious differences, fighting for no reason and debates about unimportant issues.  This environment is not conducive to cultivate a prodigy child. 

Fourthly, our schools are not equipped with the right teachers that will notice clever children, and in any case by the time the child reach the schools it’s a bet too late to find out if he or she is prodigy.

Last but not least, our society at large believe in negative things, for example they are worried about evil eye, envy, black magic and so on, so they would rather have a child that is “normal” in their standards than have a child that is clever who will be the envy of the neighborhood. 

I think that a child’s brain is a sponge for information, it’s a fertile soil, anything can grew on it, so with a little bit of nourishment and planting the right amount of seeds, we could have prodigy children, and I don’t really care if we are the envy of the whole world, as maybe these prodigy children will discover a cure for that evil eye, or they  may eliminate black magic. 

Happy reading