Just half a century ago, almost no one knew about the underground cities and villages hidden in the hills of Jebel Dahar in Tunisia. In 1967, their residents had to reveal their secret. Ten years later, ancient Matmata became a Star Wars film set, and local youth flocked to big cities for modern amenities. Now underground dwellings are disappearing.

Salihi Mohamedi, 36, lives in an underground house on the outskirts of Matmata
The Berbers of Jebel Dahar learned to build underground dwellings more than a thousand years ago. Each house was essentially a system of artificial caves dug into soft sandstone. First, they dug a large hole - seven meters deep, ten meters wide. It served as a courtyard. Then the builders went deep into its walls and made all the necessary rooms in the sandstone.

Latifa Ben Yahia, 38, and her daughter peel peas while their son watches TV.
Like any other house, Berber underground dwellings have living rooms, bedrooms, dining rooms and kitchens. Numerous rooms are connected by a whole labyrinth of corridors. Usually, steps cut into the stone lead to other levels, but sometimes they make do with a rope hanging from the entrance.

Munjia, 69, weaves a carpet in her underground home in Matmata.
According to legend, the Berbers hid from invaders in the first underground dwellings. But their meaning is not only in invisibility. They are ideal for the local climate. In the summer in Jebel Dahar the thermometer rises to 45 degrees. In winter, temperatures drop below zero. And in artificial caves it is comfortable in any weather. It's warm there even when it's cold and cool when it's hot.

Saliha Mohamedi grinds wheat in her underground home in Matmata
Matmata, the largest underground city, stood in Jebel Dahar for hundreds of years. It was surrounded by Berber villages built on the same principle. Despite this, almost no one has heard of them. This continued until 1967, when unprecedented rain broke out in those places. The precipitation continued for 22 days and eroded the artificial caves. The Berbers had to ask the Tunisian authorities for help. This is how the world learned about their underground dwellings.

Saliha Mohamedi collects water on the outskirts of Matmata
The country's authorities have built new villages with modern buildings for the Berbers of Jebel Dahar. Little by little, the inhabitants of underground dwellings began to leave their ancestral homes and move there. Unlike artificial caves, they need to be heated in winter, and in summer it is unbearably hot without air conditioning. But there are air conditioners, as well as electric stoves, washing machines and other 20th-century amenities that are hard to ignore.

Munjia, 42, leads a donkey to her underground home in Matmata.
Now only those who either do not want or cannot go to other places remain in Matmata. Munjia, 42, falls into the second category. “I would like to move to a modern house, but I don’t have the money to build one in a new city,” she says. - Living in underground villages is tiring. We have to go get water and firewood, we don’t have electricity, we can’t even install a solar panel.”

Saliha Mohamedi drying washed clothes outside her underground shelter in Matmata
Not everyone is ready, like Munjia, to give up everything and go elsewhere. Latifa Ben Yahia, 38, does not want to leave her five-room home in the village of Tijima. “My father died, my mother died, my girls grew up and got married, and I was left alone. But if I leave, the house will disappear,” she says. The 60-year-old Matmata resident is not leaving for another reason. “I don't want to move into a modern house,” she explains. “We can buy everything we need, but not peace of mind.”

Tourists watch Saliha Mohamedi work in the courtyard of her underground home in Matmata
Saliha Mohamedi, 36, says she is doing well in Matmata. She has a house, a husband and four children. They grow olive trees and allow tourists to see their way of life for a small fee. True, most tourists coming to Matmata are not at all interested in Berber traditions. They want to see the places where Star Wars was filmed in 1977. In the film, one of the underground dwellings played the role of Luke Skywalker's Tatooine home.

Aicha, 64, dries olives on the outskirts of Matmata
However, tourism has also been a problem lately. After the “Arab Spring” and the terrorist attacks in Tunisia, the number of people wishing to visit this country has noticeably decreased. “Before the revolution there was tourism here,” says Saliha Mohamedi. - After that, not so much. Now, mostly Tunisians themselves come here for weekends or vacations.”

Four-year-old Ahlem climbs the wall after a rabbit
Modern amenities are slowly appearing in Matmata and other underground villages. Electricity is supplied to artificial caves - at least from a solar panel on the roof, like Saliha Mohamedi's. But there are still fewer and fewer young people left. Matmata is emptying - people are moving to Nouvelle-Matmata, a new city with modern buildings 15 kilometers from the old one.

Saliha Mohamedi in the kitchen of her underground home in Matmata
Once upon a time, Hedi Ali Kayet from the village of Haddez built underground dwellings. He is one of the last residents of those places who still remembers how this is done. There is no demand, so there has been no need to dig new houses since the 1970s. Now Hedy spends her days trying to save the surviving buildings from destruction. “Every time after it rains, I go and fix them,” he says. “I won’t let them disappear.”

Even those who remain in old villages do not always live in underground dwellings. They build new Western-style buildings on the adjacent land and settle there. And a traditional house turns into a barn or workshop.

Matmata
But it is clear to the most stubborn inhabitants of underground cities that this tradition is dying.

The first mention of the mysterious underground people appeared in 1946. American scientist, writer and journalist Richard Shaver told readers of the magazine “Amazing Stories,” dedicated to paranormal phenomena, about his contact with aliens living underground. According to Shaver, he lived for several weeks in the underground world of mutants similar to demons described in ancient legends and tales of earthlings.

One could attribute this “contact” to the writer’s wild imagination, if not for hundreds of responses from readers who claimed that they also visited underground cities, communicated with their inhabitants and saw various miracles of technology, not only providing the underground inhabitants of the Earth with a comfortable existence in its very subsoil, but also giving the opportunity to control the consciousness of earthlings!

Polish researcher Jan Paenk states that a whole network of tunnels has been laid underground that lead to any country. They are literally scorched into the earth's crust, and their walls are a frozen molten rock - a kind of glass. Such tunnels have been discovered in Ecuador, South Australia, the USA, and New Zealand. Flying saucers fly along these underground communications from one end of the world to the other. Paenk even managed to find a miner in New Zealand who reported that while driving drifts, miners came across two such tunnels, but someone gave the order to urgently concrete these holes.

In April 1942, with the support of Goering and Himmler, an expedition consisting of the most advanced minds of Nazi Germany, led by Professor Heinz Fischer, set out to look for the entrance to an underground civilization, supposedly located on the island of Rugen in the Baltic Sea. Hitler was confident that at least some parts of the earth consisted of voids, inside of which one could live and which had long ago become home to the hyper-developed peoples of antiquity. German scientists, in turn, hoped that if they managed to place modern radar devices at the desired geographical point under the surface of the earth, then with their help it would be possible to track the exact location of the enemy in any part of the world.

Almost every nation has myths about the race of Ancient creatures that inhabited the world millions of years ago. Infinitely wise, scientifically advanced and culturally developed, these creatures, driven underground by terrible disasters, created their own civilization there, giving them everything they needed. They want nothing to do with people they consider low, dirty and wild. But sometimes they steal human children in order to raise them as their own. Ancient creatures are similar in appearance to ordinary people and live for a very long time, but they appeared on our planet millions of years before us.

In 1977, photographs obtained from the ESSA-7 satellite appeared in several American magazines, showing a regular dark spot, similar to a huge hole, in the place where the North Pole should be located. Identical photographs were taken by the same satellite in 1981, could this be the entrance to the underworld?

More recent scientific evidence also indicates some underground activity

American radars at Cape Canaveral detected strange signals coming from deep within the earth. Experts are confident that the signals were sent by intelligent beings. Most likely, someone or something is trying to establish contact with us, a senior NASA official told Sun magazine.

The first signals were received several years ago and have been repeated approximately every two months since then. Moreover, the call signs of creatures unknown to us are encrypted in the most complex mathematical formulas. While scientists cannot fully decipher the signals, they are ordered not to disclose what has already been decoded. NASA management explains this by saying that messages can be interpreted differently. Experts also cannot accurately determine the location of the underground civilization. However, it is already clear today that the underground inhabitants know more about us than we do about them. Some experts believe that evidence of the existence of another civilization on our planet could be the biggest discovery of the twenty-first century.

Washington University in St. Louis seismologist Michael Wisession and UC San Diego researcher Jesse Lawrence analyzed more than 600,000 seismograms—records of vibrations resulting from earthquakes occurring across the planet—and became interested in a section of the Earth located beneath Asia. There, seismic waves for some reason become weaker and also slow down somewhat.

This effect can, in particular, be caused by a thick layer of water, so scientists have suggested that under eastern Asia there is an underground reservoir that reaches the size of the Arctic Ocean.

The hypothesis, of course, requires further research, but if we assume that it is true, then in this case science is faced with an extremely curious phenomenon. Indeed, in such a vast space filled with water, some developed civilization of a non-humanoid type may have existed for a long time. The fact of its discovery can provide an explanation for both the UFO phenomenon and various paranormal events observed in the area.

Is it possible that any civilization could survive the end of the world?

Suppose that millions of years ago there was a high-tech civilization, during which there was a collision with a meteorite or another global cataclysm that changed the climate of the planet, what would the civilization do then, most likely it would try to survive, and if the surface of the planet is not suitable for life and flying to another planet is not possible? The level of technology allows, only the “underground shelter” remains.

Then the question is, what happened to civilization and why, after the climate change, the underground inhabitants did not come to the surface? Maybe they just couldn’t, constant exposure to a different climate and different gravity (underground gravitational pressure is significantly different from normal), in addition, it should be noted that there is no sunlight underground, technological lighting does not contain the full spectrum, and a long stay under technical lighting may also be the cause of “weaning” from sunlight.

Taking into account that all this happened over thousands of years, it can be assumed that the underground civilization could have evolved greatly, it is even possible that it has developed an aversion to some aspects of the climate, for example sunlight, it is possible that sunlight simply burns the inhabitants of the underground world, all this is not as fantastic as it seems. Another aspect of survival, adaptation of food, since organizing vigilant food in the conditions of the underground world is not very simple, and rather depends on the level of civilization; it is entirely possible that civilization switched to only animal food. Some of the listed parameters undoubtedly had to influence the culture and mentality of civilization; maybe some monsters are just inhabitants of the underworld?

Living underground

In the beliefs of almost all peoples there are underground and cave dwellers. European gnomes, Norwegian zettes, Irish sids, Lapland chaklis, Nenets sikhirti... In Altai in the 30s of the last century, members of the Roerich expedition were told about strange people coming out of caves and paying with ancient coins, they were shown littered entrances underground, “where the miracle went " Legends about dwarfs turning to stone under the rays of the sun, inhabitants of the underworld, great wizards and sages are recorded even in Polynesia and Australia! Are these myths or legends about peoples that actually existed but have long since disappeared into oblivion? Or are they aliens from other civilizations? Does this world exist now, nearby - or rather, right below us?..

Underground legends.

Often underground people are described as short (one and a half meters), living underground and completely unable to tolerate sunlight. They are skilled artisans or shamans and healers.
However, for example, the Indians talked about strange people of very tall stature who sometimes descended from Mount Shasta in California. They said that there, inside an extinct volcano, there was a secret city. Aztec legends say that the ancestors of the Huichol tribe came from the underground kingdom, the entrance to which is located near the city of Tepic.
There is also information that one of the entrances to Agartha, an underground city, is located at the foot of the Himalayas, right under the Lasha Monastery in Tibet. Others believe that the entrance to the city is also in Ecuador, in the Los Tayos region.

What did the earth hide?

In 1963, a famous underground city was discovered in Turkey, named after the village located above it - Derinkuyu. This word translated means “deep wells,” and there really are some here. However, local residents had no idea about their purpose until one of them discovered a gap in his basement from which air was drawn. He became interested, and as a result, an underground city with more than 13 floors was found! Numerous cells and galleries are carved into the rock, and the air there is surprisingly fresh thanks to the system of more than a thousand ventilation shafts that is still in operation. All dwellings are connected to each other by passages tens of kilometers long. The entrances to the dungeon are tightly closed with granite doors in the shape of a wheel, behind them are stone tunnels the height of a person, along which three of you can walk 6 kilometers - until the next stone gate. The surprising thing is that there are no signs of excavated soil dumps around! According to scientists, this city was built around the 18th-9th centuries BC. It is estimated that between ten and twenty thousand people could live here at any one time. It is still unknown exactly what kind of people built it. It is believed that the Hittites were the first, and in the early Middle Ages Christians, hiding from the Muslim occupiers, took over the baton from them. Traces of underground civilization can be traced back to the Middle Ages. Where did people go then?..
There is information that on the territory of Ancient Rus' there were similar underground galleries hundreds of kilometers long, connecting the largest cities of the country. Having entered them, for example, in Kyiv, you could get out in Chernigov (120 km), Lyubech (130 km) and even Smolensk (over 450 km)!

Killed by the sun.

Does intelligent life now exist in the depths of our earth?..
In 1963, two American miners, David Fellin and Henry Thorne, while digging a tunnel, saw a huge door behind which marble steps went down.
Other miners - already in England - who were digging an underground tunnel, heard the sounds of working mechanisms coming from below. When the rock mass was broken through, a staircase leading to an underground well was also discovered. The sounds of running machines intensified. The workers got scared and ran away, and when they returned to this place after a while, they could no longer find either the entrance to the well or the stairs.
The testimony of anthropologist James McKenna, who examined a cave in Idaho that is notorious among the indigenous population, is also interesting. McKenna and his companions, after several hundred meters of careful progress along a wide stone corridor, suddenly clearly heard screams and moans, and soon terrible finds in the form of human skeletons appeared before them. Unfortunately, further exploration of the cave, which in these parts was considered the entrance to the underworld, had to be stopped: the smell of sulfur was unbearable...
However, if an underground civilization still exists, why do its representatives still avoid contacts with upper humanity? Perhaps due to religious or ideological prohibitions, or perhaps the ancient legends are true that the inhabitants of caves and dungeons die from sunlight. Of course, they are unlikely to turn to stone, but it is quite possible that they suffer from a genetic anomaly that causes high sensitivity to light. People susceptible to this disease, in order not to die, are forced to spend their entire lives in the dark. This defect is very rare, but can be inherited. It could well have spread among those who lived in darkness - in conditions where natural selection did not cull carriers of photosensitivity genes.
Or perhaps a secret people have been trying to get in touch with us for a long time - if not aliens, but intraplanetary people are connected with the appearance of UFOs! Intelligent beings who have been watching us for a long time...

A planet within a planet.

In 1947, US Navy Rear Admiral Richard Byrd went on an exploratory flight over the North Pole. Near the pole, he noticed a strange spot that shimmered in different colors. As the pilot approached, he saw something similar to a mountain range, and having flown over it, he saw forests, rivers, and meadows on which mammoth-like animals grazed. And also strange devices that resemble flying saucers, and cities with buildings that seem to be carved from crystal. The external thermometer began to warm up sharply until it froze at +23°C. And this is at the North Pole! Radio communication with the ground did not work.
And in the 1970s, curious photographs were received from an American satellite, which then circulated in many Western scientific journals: in the place where the North Pole should be located, the satellite discovered a dark spot of a regular shape, similar to a huge hole. One could attribute these pictures to failures in the equipment, if not for exactly the same photos taken several years later...
Russian Fedor Nedelin became famous for creating a theory that in his own way explains the origin of the Earth. He believes that at first our planet was a huge cold block. Under the influence of the Sun and the energy of the Universe, it heated up to the state of lava, and then began to cool. The crust formed on the Earth. But under this crust the matter continued to boil, gradually turning into gas. Gases expand when heated. A hollow space formed in the center of our planet, and part of the gas escaped out. A deep ejection occurred at the North and South Poles. Huge holes appeared there.
According to Nedelin, the Earth is completely empty inside, and solar energy enters through holes in the poles, accumulating in the center. If we assume that the Earth is hollow inside and has a light source, there may be life there.
True, geologists say that the presence of cavities in the earth’s crust can only be assumed at very shallow depths. And starting from three to five kilometers, high pressure will close even accidentally formed cavities. As for the photographed “hole” above the North Pole, this can be explained by the polar night, when the Sun, due to the tilt of the earth’s axis, is simply not able to illuminate it.

Researchers at Yale University recently suggested that the creatures we mistake for aliens may actually live underground and not on other planets at all. From there come the devices that we call UFOs. By the way, in folklore there is a lot of evidence of the so-called “underground” life...

The fact is that in the bowels of the earth, at a depth of about 19 kilometers, conditions have developed that are quite favorable for life. Radiation and temperature there do not exceed the norm, beyond which the human body may be in danger.

Legends about underground people: Chud

Legends about underground “people”, “spirits”, “demons”, “gnomes” and others have existed since ancient times. Thus, in the Urals and Western Siberia there are many legends about a tribe of dark-skinned people who had magical abilities - the “Chud”. They allegedly built cities underground and still live there. Sometimes traces of them are found in caves and mountain adits. And other people even had the opportunity to visit the underground cities of the country of Chudi, about which they later told amazing things.

According to one version, the Chud lived in Altai, on the territory of modern Kolyvan. Hence the name: in the language of the Chud people, “kola” meant “fish,” “evan” meant “stream,” and all together meant “fish stream.” It was a miracle they mined ore here. Part of it was melted down and used to make weapons and some other mysterious things. The rest of the ore was simply scattered around. When the king’s envoys began to visit these regions, the Chud went underground: “the earth closed over them.”

According to another version, the Chud inhabited the Upper Pechora region. They went underground, and another tribe, the Pechora, remained, and from them they gave the river that name...

Easter Island Underground People: Bird People

The famous researcher Ernst Muldashev believes that “underground people” can live on Easter Island. In addition to the famous idols, there are also mysterious stone structures that scientists have long mistook for ancient chicken coops. But one of the local aborigines told Ernst Muldashev that going down to these “chicken houses” is dangerous, since there you can meet a “bird-man”.

There are legends among the local population that such creatures once lived next to ordinary people, but then went to live underground, and the entrances to their homes were disguised as “chicken houses.” According to the aborigines, they try not to harm people, but they don’t let them get close to them. If a person steps into their territory, they send him a mental order to leave... “Birdmen” attack only those who show aggression towards them.

Bird People of Mongolia

Indeed, underground tunnels were discovered on Easter Island, which theoretically could have been built by “bird people”... Similar tunnels, by the way, were also found during excavations of Mongolian burial mounds. Archaeologists stumbled upon a cave of a strange spherical shape, apparently of artificial origin. On its back wall was a huge, several meters high, image of a man with wings. According to the Mongols, the cave was once ritual. And when they threw a stone into the hole, there was no sound of falling. But when people stopped visiting the cave for ritual purposes and began to throw garbage down - one day they heard a roar below, as if a slab had moved... It seems that the “dungeon inhabitants” closed the hole and completely fenced themselves off from people...

Facts about underground civilizations from Edward Snowden

The notorious Edward Snowden also told ufologists about the existence of an underground civilization. According to him, he managed to copy a number of documents in the possession of the CIA. If you believe them, the American government has long been aware that “flying saucers” belong to representatives of a highly developed race living underground. This race originated billions of years ago and was significantly ahead of humanity in development.

Over the years, the CIA, using various tracking systems, managed to collect data about this civilization. Its representatives can be classified as “homo sapiens,” but they are much more “advanced” intellectually. Their habitat is the Earth's mantle, where conditions remain stable for billions of years.

The evolution of underground inhabitants proceeded much faster than ours, since the development of this civilization was not “slowed down” by numerous disasters and catastrophes that befell the inhabitants of the surface of the planet.

All information about the underground race is a state secret, to which even scientists working for the government are not allowed, says Edward Snowden. Today, the “undergrounders” do not pay much attention to us, since we are simply “ants” in comparison with them. But the intelligence services still do not exclude the possibility of aggression against humanity and, just in case, have developed a plan according to which, in the event of an emergency, nuclear explosions will be carried out in deep caves, which will “bury” the enemy civilization underground and destroy its communications, which can prevent further attacks ...

Earth unknown to us

Despite all the technical achievements, a person still cannot say that he knows the planet as his own apartment. There are still places where no scientist has gone before. In other corners, if he appeared, it was only to write on a rock “I was here” and leave this area in pristine purity for another 200-300 years.

While studying the World Ocean, man descended to a depth of 11,000 m, but is in complete ignorance of what is deeper than 200-300 m. (To visit does not mean to study) As for the natural voids of the Earth, here a person has gone no further than the “hallway” and has no idea how many rooms there are in the underground “apartment” and what size they are. He only knows “a lot” and “very large”.

Endless underground labyrinths

There are caves in absolutely all parts of the world, on all continents, right down to Antarctica. Underground corridors intertwine into endless labyrinth tunnels. Walking and crawling through these galleries for 40-50 km without ever reaching the end of the tunnel is quite a common thing for speleologists, not worth mentioning. There are caves 100, 200, 300 km long! Mamontova - 627 km. And none of the caves are considered to be fully explored.

The scientist Andrei Timoshevsky (better known as Andrew Thomas), who studied Tibet and the Himalayas for a long time, wrote that the monks led him into tunnels of endless length, through which, according to them, it was possible to go to the center of the Earth.

After an underground nuclear explosion at a test site in Nevada, in caves in Canada, located more than 2,000 km away, the level of radiation jumped 20 times. American speleologists are confident that all caves on the North American continent communicate with each other.

Russian researcher Pavel Miroshnichenko believes that there is a network of global underground voids stretching from Crimea through the Caucasus to the Volgograd region.

In fact, we have another continent - underground. Is it really not inhabited by anyone?

Masters of the Underworld

Our ancestors did not think so. They were simply convinced of the exact opposite. The peoples of Australia, the North American Indians, the same Tibetan monks, Hindus, residents of the Urals and the Rostov region of the Southern Federal District have traditions and legends about intelligent lizards living in underground labyrinths.
Is it really an accident?

Most likely, as a result of climate change, life for lizards on the surface of the Earth has become impossible. If the unreasonable creatures remained on the surface and died, the reptoids went underground, where there is water, there are no deadly temperature changes, and the deeper it is, the higher it is even higher due to volcanic activity.

Having left the surface of the planet to man, they took possession of its underground part. Undoubtedly, someday the long-awaited meeting will take place. And most likely this will happen in South America. It was here that the wall separating the two civilizations thinned to a thin partition.

Chinkanasy

Even the Jesuit priests wrote about the presence in South America of a huge number of underground caves connected together. The Indians called them "chinkanas". The Spaniards believed that the Chincanas were created by the Incas for military purposes: for a quick retreat or a covert attack. The Indians insisted that they had nothing to do with the dungeons; they were created by snake people who lived there and really did not like strangers.

The Europeans did not believe, as they thought, these “horror stories” were intended to prevent the valiant settlers from getting to the gold hidden by the Incas in underground caches. Therefore, there have been many attempts to explore the chincanas of Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Ecuador.

Expeditions do not return

Most adventurers who set off on a risky journey through the underground labyrinths never returned. Rare lucky ones came without gold and talked about meetings with people covered with scales and huge eyes, but no one believed them. The authorities, who had absolutely no need for emergencies with missing “tourists,” blocked and covered all known entrances and exits.

Chinkanas were also studied by scientists. In the 20s of the 20th century, several Peruvian expeditions disappeared in the Peruvian chincanas. In 1952, a joint American-French group went underground. The scientists planned to return in 5 days. The only surviving member of the expedition, Philippe Lamontiere, came to the surface 15 days later, slightly mentally damaged.

It was not possible to establish what in his incoherent stories about endless labyrinths and lizards walking on two legs that killed everyone else was true and what was the fruit of a sick imagination. The Frenchman died a few days later from the bubonic plague.
Where did he find the plague in the dungeon?

Reptoids, on their way out?

Who lives there, in the dungeon? Research into caves, including the mysterious Chancanas, continues. Returning members of the expeditions are confident that intelligent creatures live in the depths of the caves. The stairs and steps they found in the dungeons, the halls whose floors are paved with slabs, and kilometer-long gutters carved into the walls leave no other options. And the deeper and further the researchers go, the more often they come across all sorts of “surprises”.

Scientists in France, England, the USA and Russia have repeatedly recorded powerful flows of electromagnetic waves, the source of which is located in the depths of the Earth. Their nature is unclear.
Are the Reptoids preparing to come to the surface?

Klim Podkova