by Dimana Trankova; photography by Anthony Georgieff

Aliens had completed the link from the underground city of Agartha, at the centre of the Earth, to Cappadocia in Anatolia. Next they turned their attention to humans. The aliens predicted that Homo Sapiens would not travel farther than the moon over the next few millennia. So they built a shelter where the people of Cappadocia could live in safety.

A few million years earlier – between three and 30, according to different calculations – the eruptions of Erciyes, Hasan and Melendiz Dagları had covered the plateau north of the Taurus Range with a thick layer of ash. Over time, it solidified into soft rock. Later on, some of it eroded and was washed away, forming picturesque stone cones. Today, they are known as fairy chimneys and are an essential part of Cappadocia's scenery.

The aliens did not care about the “chimneys”. Beneath them, they carved out subterranean cities – over an area the size of Switzerland. However, events panned out differently. Humans gradually abandoned the underground cities and hollowed out homes and churches in the fairy chimneys and the hills dominating the area, like Üçhisar and Selime. At the end of the 20th Century busloads of tourists, tour guides and rug vendors arrived.

Apart from the Internet, the only place in Cappadocia where you can learn this alternative history of the plateau is the Uluslararası UFO Muzesi. It's easy to spot on the road from Göreme to the rock churches in the Open Air Museum. Its sign displays a fairy chimney and an alien very like the one that, most probably, crashed near Roswell in 1947.

But the official version of how Cappadocia turned from a plateau with picturesque stone cones into a plateau with picturesque stone cones and monasteries, churches, homes and cities carved into them is even more compelling.

It goes back 4,000 years, to the time when the Hittites arrived on the plateau and christened it “the land of the beautiful horses” on account of its fertile soil. According to some theories, they carved the first subterranean cities in the flat parts of Cappadocia. A thousand years later the Hittites disappeared, but people continued using and extending the underground settlements. When the Greek mercenary Xenophon crossed the area at the end of the 5th Century BC, he found them inhabited. Archaeological excavations prove that people lived there when Cappadocia was under Roman rule.

At present, there are nearly 40 known underground cities. The most popular ones are those under Kaymaklı and Derinkuyu. Superficially, they appear like ordinary Anatolian villages lying on a drab plain whose only landmark is the futuristic mosque in Derinkuyu. But the soft rock beneath them conceals a network of claustrophobia-inducing tunnels belonging to subterranean cities. Their compounds descend at least eight levels (Derinkuyu is 60 m deep) connected by cramped narrow passages. They include a complex system of rooms, churches, ventilation shafts, wells, storehouses, wineries and stables – enough for 30,000 people to survive a six-month siege.

However, the underground cities (some believe that Kaymaklı and Derinkuyu were connected) could not protect Cappadocia. The volcanic ash made the plateau particularly fertile, tempting ambitious rulers. In the 13th Century BC it was coveted by neighbouring Lydia, Phrygia and Urartu; in the 6th Century BC Persia arrived on the scene. Then it was the turn of Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire three centuries later, then the Byzantine Empire, continuously struggling to thwart Arab invasions there. Finally, in the 13th Century AD, the Seljuks appeared – a prelude to the Ottoman invasion. But the Greeks left Cappadocia only in the 1920s, when Turkey and Greece exchanged enclaves.

This turbulent history, and their maddening lack of sunlight, convinced Cappadocia's inhabitants that the underground cities were not the most reliable refuge. Gradually, the people ascended, but out of habit they continued living in troglodytic houses. However, they carved these out of the fairy chimneys – closer to the sun and the clean air.