The Incredible MASSIVE Ancient Underground City, How Romans Made Perfectly Straight Roads & More

Long ago in the region surrounding Nevsehir and Kayseri in central Turkey, an ancient people built, or rather dug, over 200 underground cities. The deepest of these, under the present-day town of Derinkuyu, delves over 250 feet below the Earth's surface and boasts numerous tunnels, halls, meeting rooms, wells and passages. Because the city was carved from existing caves and underground structures that had first formed naturally, there is no way to discern with traditional archaeological methods of dating when exactly Derinkuyu was built. As such, and with ties to the Hittites, Phrygians and Persians, Derinkuyu presents a fascinating riddle for ancient mystery enthusiasts. Derinkuyu is located in the Cappadocia region of Turkey, a place renowned for its unique geology. At the dawn of time, volcanoes in the area covered it with a thick layer of ash. Over the years, this ash transformed into a soft rock that itself eroded over the eons, leaving an exotic landscape of pocketed spires, columns, and rough pyramids, referred to by the locals as castles. Perhaps inspired by their surroundings, ancient people began to carve the soft ash rock into tunnels and rooms to be used as residences, storage stables, and religious temples. Cappadocia boasts a number of fascinating carved sites, including the churches and refectories at Garim, the Roman-made castle at Uchisar, and the largest underground city in the region, Kemekli. The latter has been inhabited continuously since its construction, and people today still use it for storage and even stables. Derinkuyu seems to attract the most attention of all the underground cities, because until 1963, modern people were unaware that this deepest of the underground cities even existed. As for specifics, the underground city at Derinkuyu has 18 stories that descend far into the earth. Sophisticated shafts, some as long as 180 feet, provide ventilation to the complex's of residences, communal rooms, tunnels, wine cellars, oil presses, stables, and chapels. The city also has numerous wells to provide fresh water, so many that most scholars agree that Derinkuyu could have easily supported as many as 20,000 people. It is widely presumed that the city was part of a larger complex. In support of this, many point to a commonly believed rumor that a tunnel extends from Derinkuyu to its sister underground city, Kemekli, some three miles away. Conventional wisdom holds that these cities were built for the same reasons other people built citadels and castles, to protect the populace during invasion. Some of the strongest evidence to support this theory includes the self-contained fresh water supply, as well as the enormous stone circular doors weighing up to 1,000 pounds that could seal off passageways for invaders. Derinkuyu had been lost to time until during renovations on a modern home, an opening to a cave passage was revealed. Although visitors have been allowed in the underground city since 1965, many passages and rooms still remain inaccessible. So who built this city? Unfortunately, there is no consensus on who built Derinkuyu, or when construction first began. Some suggest that the earliest construction started with the Hittites in the 15th century BC. The Anatolian Hittites, distinct from the group described in the Christian Bible, controlled a large portion of Asia Minor, extending from the Black Sea to the Levant. Cappadocia and Derinkuyu were smack in the middle of their territory. Throughout the history, the Hittites faced a variety of enemies, including the Egyptians, the Assyrians, and the Thracians, a group of loosely affiliated tribes from Southeastern Europe. In the 12th century BC, the Thracians destroyed the Hittites' main city of Hattusa, and many believe the Hittites used Derinkuyu as a shelter during that onslaught. They support this theory with a small number of Hittite-related artifacts, including a statue of a lion found on the site. Others are not convinced of a Hittite origin, and point instead to the Phrygians. One of the Thracian tribes that sacked Hattusa around 1180 BC, the Phrygians controlled the region until approximately the 6th century BC, when they were conquered by the Persian host under Cyrus the Great. Archaeologists consider Phrygians architects among the finest of the Iron Age, and they were known to have engaged in large, complex construction projects. One of their most well-known works was the sophisticated Great Citadel at Gordion, built between 950 and 800 BC. Because they are known to have possessed the necessary architectural skills and inhabited the region for such a long time, many credit the Phrygians with creating Derinkuyu. These experts place the first construction on the complex to sometime between the 10th and 7th centuries BC. Moving on from there, the second chapter of Enderdat, a section of the Zoroastrian book Avesta, includes the story of how the great and mythical Persian king Yima created places underground to house flocks, herds, and men. Relying on this, some opine that Derinkuyu was built by ancient Persians, since the Avesta dates to the founding of Zoroastrianism, 1500-1200 BC. Persian construction on the site would have to have predated any construction done by the Hittites. Although intriguing, because the Venedad makes no clear link with Derinkuyu, this theory has little mainstream support. Regardless of who built it, later generations have inhabited it. Many believe early Christians used the underground cities of Cappadocia, including Derinkuyu, as a place to hide from Roman persecution. In support of this claim, they point to the fact that St. Gregory and St. Basil had both presided in Cappadocia during the 4th century AD. Surprisingly, the ancient people of Anatolia weren't alone in their love of underground living. Like the Hittites and Christians hiding from their enemies, the people of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan built a network of tunnels and residences to hide the town's Chinese immigrants from persecution in the early 20th century. Later, smugglers reportedly used the underground city during Prohibition to hide their illicit wares from law enforcement. In France, the last inhabitants of the village Troglodytique de Berry, an underground community that dated back to the 6th century AD, were forced to abandon their homes just a few years ago when their houses began to fall down around them. According to reports, a few people died before the last inhabitants were convinced to leave. Today, in Montreal, Quebec, an entire complex of underground trains and tunnels connects residents and visitors to shopping centers, exhibition halls, office towers, movie theaters, and even an indoor ice rink. Speaking of underground awesome, hidden just below the landscape of modern Vietnam, localized mostly in the Chu Chi district of Ho Chi Minh, exists an expansive series of tunnels that, at their peak, spider-webbed from what was then known as Saigon to the country's border near Cambodia. During the Vietnam War, these multi-level tunnels were utilized so effectively by the Viet Cong forces that American troops had to resort to leveling the area of Chu Chi with artillery, which did little more than annoy the many thousands of troops and civilians who were then hidden safely underground. Initially built by hand in the late 1940s by Communist forces wanting to repel French colonists during Vietnam's War for Independence, at first the tunnels began simply as hiding places for guerrilla forces. But thanks to their tactical advantage, workers soon focused on aggressively expanding the tunnels until the end of the conflict with the French. The tunnels remained dormant until the start of the Vietnam War when guerrilla forces found and began expanding them once again, creating a sprawling network comprised of hundreds of kilometers of multi-storied tunnels that went as much as 40 feet, 12 meters underground. The majority of these were located below the district of Chu Chi, hence the name Chu Chi Tunnels. At the height of the Vietnam War, this underground stronghold contained everything from kitchens to theaters where they showed, according to the BBC, politically motivating plays. In addition to this, they contained bomb shelters, hospitals, and ammunition stores, allowing Viet Cong forces to move supplies about the jungles of Vietnam virtually unchallenged. As for how to access the tunnels and how they handled ventilation, countless hidden trap doors were placed across the jungle, allowing the Viet Cong to melt into the undergrowth and launch surprise attacks against unsuspecting soldiers, even inside of American bases. To help prevent soldiers from finding and using these entrances to the tunnels, they also built dummy entrances that were booby-trapped in various ways, including with explosives, while the actual entrances were disguised as things like termite mounds and bushes. In the rare event an enemy soldier found an entrance that wasn't booby-trapped, few dared to venture into them for a number of reasons. The first, and most pertinent, was that many Western soldiers were simply too big to fit inside of the entrances, which were deliberately made as small as possible. In the event a soldier could fit, the tunnels were pitch black. Often purposefully built very short and narrow, and filled with critters like scorpions and venomous centipedes and snakes. Beyond the charming local wildlife, a soldier could expect to find countless hidden booby traps with things like pungi pits, sharpened bamboo sticks hidden in pits, venomous snake-filled containers designed to drop from overhead, and poison gas. That's not to mention the very real possibility of encountering enemy soldiers, or simply getting lost in the tunnels. As a result of all of this, in the early days of the Vietnam War, the extent of the tunnels was largely unknown and underappreciated. This isn't to say that enemy forces weren't aware of them. In fact, it was quite the opposite, and they launched two massive campaigns to destroy them. The most famous of these was a joint operation between the US and Australia called Operation Krimp. One aim of the campaign was to flush out the Vietcong forces, hiding below ground, and shut down or crimp off the entrances to the tunnels. Beginning in January of 1966, the campaign began with a massive bombing of the Chu Chi area, turning what was once a lush jungle into burning wasteland. This did little to disturb the literally deeply entrenched Vietcong, though being forced to After the bombings, ground forces began searching for the tunnels. In the case of American troops, whenever a tunnel entrance was found, the modus operandi was to seal it with a grenade, then continue searching for other entrances. Nobody wanted to go in the tunnels. Except the Aussies, that is. A group of Australian troops decided to carefully search the underground infrastructure to see just what they contained. Led by one Captain Sandy McGregor, they began to exhaustively map out the tunnels, finding ammunition, medical supplies, and dozens of hidden Vietcong soldiers. Their efforts revealed for the first time the truly massive scope of the network. It was around this time that several other specialized teams of soldiers were created to map and destroy the tunnels. The most famous of these are arguably the Tunnel Rats, a volunteer force comprised mostly of American, Australian, and New Zealand soldiers. Given that some parts of the tunnels were barely large enough to crawl through, the Tunnel Rats were generally particularly small individuals who, by necessity of space, went in armed with only a standard issue .45 pistol, a flashlight, and a knife. Needless to say, the Tunnel Rats proceeded extremely slowly in the pitch black, crawling along searching for traps at every turn while attempting to keep their presences secret. While these soldiers did their job well, the tunnel system was simply too massive to make even this approach particularly effective, and the Vietcong fought tooth and nail to defend their critical underground network when they did find enemy troops inside. In the end, these tunnels are largely considered to be one of the reasons the conflict in Viet Nam lasted as long as it did, and their sheer size and reach allowed the Viet Cong to essentially dictate when and where many pitched battles took place in the so-called Iron Triangle. The Viet Cong continued to use the tunnels right up until the end of the Viet Nam conflict in 1975, never mind the years of near-constant carpet bombing. Despite all efforts to destroy the tunnels, well over 100 kilometers still exist below Chu Chi alone, where certain safer sections have, in part, been made much larger to serve as both a popular tourist attraction and a cultural monument. The ancient Romans were a people famed for their architectural prowess, something no better demonstrated than by their ability to build almost perfectly straight and incredibly durable roads spanning expansive distances. For example, in Britain alone, the Romans built over 50,000 miles of roads, with the longest ruler-straight stretch spanning over 50 miles. They did all of this in an era without modern surveying tools, construction equipment, or even very accurate maps of precisely where their destination was for many of the areas. So how did they do it? To begin with, it's important to note that there were a few different types of road that were made throughout the Roman Republic and Empire, and the exact method and materials used for road construction varied somewhat from region to region and evolved slightly over the centuries. With that caveat out of the way, the three main classifications of Roman roads were Via Terreni, essentially dirt roads often made by people walking and wagons riding over the same path over time, Via Gleri, which was a dirt road that was then graveled, and finally, much more interestingly, Via Munitia, which were more or less paved roads, some of which have survived through modern times. With these types of roads, there were further classifications based on who could use them, such as public roads, military or state roads, and private roads constructed at private expense and for the owners to decide who they allowed access to, and this could be the general public or perhaps just a select few. To help pay for them, roads of all types often had tolls, particularly at locations like bridges and city gates, where it would be impractical to avoid the tolling location. So this brings us to the road construction process itself. As dirt and gravel roads are not particularly interesting, we'll focus this video on paved roads. So how did they make these incredibly durable and generally straight roads? After all, even with modern machinery, constructing and maintaining an expansive road system is an extremely time-consuming and labor-intensive process. To start with, a group of surveyors would be sent out to figure out the precise direction connecting the two main points. At the same time, they'd attempt to plan the route as efficiently as possible, while accounting for any major obstacles like tall mountains, rivers, etc. When possible, they may attempt to avoid such obstacles, but particularly in some of the earliest Roman road constructions, where it might result in having to take a large detour to get around, for example, a mountain, if possible given the terrain, they tended just to build the road to go directly over the mountain or directly through it. For example, the longest tunnel through such a mountain was the Grotta di Coceo, which was excavated from 38-36 BCE and is approximately 1 kilometer long and about 5 meters high and wide. Before WWII, it was also still a fully functional and safe-to-traverse tunnel, despite standing for about 2,000 years at that point, but unfortunately it was damaged during the war, though there are presently efforts going on to have it repaired and reopened to the public. As for going over a mountain, it's important to note here that we don't mean they'd use switchbacks as is the general method today. No, if at all possible, they'd just build roads straight up over a mountain and down the other side, expecting that soldiers and mules and the like would just man up and traverse the steep slopes without complaint. That said, as the empire matured, it did eventually become apparent that there were economic advantages to slightly longer roads that were easier for draft animals to pull carts over and thus there was a shift to favoring longer distances but lesser gradients when talking roads for general public use. Either way, during the process, the surveyors would set up markers, often at very visible points like on hills, mapping out the optimal path, again trying to ensure that the road would be as straight as possible between the start and the end point to reduce needed labor, materials, and distance needed to traverse the road once it was complete. So this all brings us to how they actually ensured perfectly straight roads between the markers. A key tool here was a device known as a gromer. In a nutshell, this was nothing more than a sort of cross with four weights hanging from a string at each end of the cross to function as plumb lines. The whole thing could rotate, with degree markers on top. Two of the plumb lines would then be lined up with a marker and then on the other side lined up with the previous marker. Where changes in direction would need to be made, the degrees were marked and ultimately the whole thing drawn up on a central document showing the entire route of the road with each segment. Once the actual construction was to begin, the gromer would once again be used, this time with rods pounded into the ground between markers using the gromer to make sure that every single rod was perfectly in line between the markers. Now, finally, construction of the road would start, usually first done via plows to loosen the soil. This would be followed by legionnaires and or slaves digging the ground out, with depth varying based on conditions. For instance, swampy land would need a lot thicker foundation if it was to have any staying power. For more typical ground, the trench needed to be somewhere in the realm of 3-6 feet, that's around 1-2 meters deep. Once dug out, this would then be tamped down to a leveled, compact layer of earth. From here, the exact road composition varied based on available materials in a given region, as well as land composition and a bunch of other factors. But typically, large stones would be packed as tightly as possible together and into the earth base. Onto this layer would usually be placed smaller stones, sometimes comprising broken concrete or somewhat crushed rock. Again, it would be packed and smoothed as best as possible. Depending on availability, they would also put a layer of sand on this foundation to On top of all this, at the minimum, gravel would be added, packed, and leveled. In some cases, such as near big cities, as described in one manuscript on the construction of roads in Rome itself, paving stones, often flint, lava rock, or marble, would be embedded in cement for the top layer instead. When the road was complete, they are thought to have been quite smooth, allowing for relatively bump-free travel in carts and things like that. During this whole process, special attention was taken to making the center of the road higher than the sides so that any water would drain off, with the entire road surface itself also elevated above the ground so on the sides drainage ditches could be put, and these would generally help move water away in times of heavy rains. As for the size of the roads, according to something known as the Law of Twelve Tables, which more or less formed the basis of Roman law for almost a millennia, Roman roads were required to be at minimum 8 Roman feet wide, about 2.5 meters, where the road was straight, and double that if the road happened to be curved. Beside the roads were footpaths, sometimes gravels, which were particularly handy in the case of private roads, where only people with proper authorization could use the road itself. Finally, at the very outer edges of the roads, any nearby trees and bushes would be removed to help reduce areas for bandits to hide and surprise anyone with an attack. It also helped to ensure that plant growth didn't overtake the road, or tree roots compromise it. But this still wasn't the end of the construction process. They now needed to know exact distances along the road. It's not fully clear how they did this, though a device known as the Odometer of Vitruvius is mentioned starting around 27 BC, and is often claimed to have been used for this purpose. However, whether it was actually ever used for road construction, or even made at all, is still up for debate. At a high level, this device used the spinning of a wheel to mark distance. In this case, it was the spinning of a wagon wheel, which was, in turn, hooked up to gears that would drop a pebble into a container every Roman mile, that's 4,841 feet, which is around 1,000 paces for an adult male. The word mile derives from the Latin milia, meaning, funnily enough, 1,000 paces. For whatever it's worth, while Leonardo da Vinci tried, and failed, to make such a device as per outlined, in 1981, one Andrei Sleznik was successful in building one exactly as described, except, unlike da Vinci, he used triangular gear teeth instead of square ones. His justification for this modification being that these same type of gear teeth were used in the Antikythera Mechanism, which was created sometime from around 250-70 BC, with the device itself used to predict various astronomical phenomenon like eclipses. Thus, perhaps if the Odometer of Vitruvius was ever actually built and used, maybe it had these too. There are, of course, many other, much less technologically advanced ways they could have However they did it, at every mile mark, the law required them to place an approximately two-ton, seven-foot-tall, with two feet in the ground, mile marker called a millerium. Helpfully, on this stone would be engraved the names of the locations the road connected to and how many miles to each one from that respective marker it was. A master marker known as the millerio aureae, or golden milestone, was also created during Caesar Augustus' rule and placed in the central forum of Rome itself. This was the one point at which all Roman roads were said to lead. It's not actually clear what was on this master marker, but it's been speculated that it listed the distances from that point to all major cities under Roman rule. Whatever the case, like the roads themselves, some of these mile markers are still standing today giving archaeologists and historians a valuable snapshot of the past, since they tended to include not just basic geographic information, but information about when the road was built or repaired, and by whom. Next up, it was also required by law that regular way stations be built for official use generally every 16-19 miles apart. These were more or less really nice resting areas, providing food and drink and the like for the officials. For the general public, inns would tend to pop up near these way stations. On that note, at particularly high-traffic way stations, many other businesses would pop up as well, sometimes leading to the creation of whole towns. Along these roads, you'd also find, at similar intervals, changing stations where people could get the services of veterinarians, wheelwrights, etc., as well as potentially find new mounts. To give you an idea of how fast one could move along these roads with its network of way stations and facilities, it's noted that Emperor Tiberius once traversed about 200 miles in 24 hours after news that his brother was dying from gangrene after being seriously injured falling from a horse. A more typical time to traverse for, say, a government mail carrier was usually about 50 miles per day, if not in a particular hurry. But to sum it up, it turns out that Roman road construction, amenities and all, wasn't all that different from modern times, often featuring deep foundations, paved surfaces, proper drainage, landscaping around the roads, sidewalks, tollbooths, rest areas, hotels, restaurants, the historic equivalent of gas stations and convenience stores, etc. In short, the ancient Romans were brilliant in a lot of ways. Let's get into those bonus facts. The infamous phrase, Nero fiddled while Rome burned, has come to mean a person who is neglecting their duties probably by doing something frivolous, but did Nero actually sit around and play music while Rome was burning around him in 64 AD? To begin, there was such a fire, though its extent is unknown. According to Tacitus, the fire lasted for six days and decimated Rome, with only four districts untouched out of 14. He goes on to state that 10 of the 11 districts that burned were heavily damaged, with three of those completely destroyed. However, oddly, there is very little documented mention of the fire from those who actually lived through it. The only Roman historian during that period who even mentioned it was Pliny the Elder, and even he only mentioned it briefly in passing. Had it been as widespread as Tacitus claimed, one would think that the likes of Plutarch, Epictetus, or other famed Roman historians who lived through the fire would have mentioned it as a significant event. And, indeed, we see that perhaps it wasn't that great of a fire from the only other documented first-hand account of the scope of the disaster, a letter from Seneca the Younger to Paul the Apostle, where he explicitly stated that only four blocks of insulae were burned. These were a type of apartment building, along with 132 private houses being damaged, which was about 7% of the private houses in the city. In terms of the insulae, this was only about .009% of them. So, basically, it was not anywhere close to as widespread as Tacitus later claimed, though Seneca did say the fire lasted six days, as Tacitus stated. As to Nero's reaction to the fire, the first and biggest flaw in the fiddling story is that the fiddle, or violin, didn't actually exist in Nero's time. Historians aren't able to give an exact date for the invention of the violin, but the vial class of instrument to which the violin belongs wasn't developed until at least the 11th century. If Nero did actually play a stringed instrument, and there's no evidence that he did, whether during the burning of Rome or otherwise, it was probably a lyre or a kithara. Some details can get muddled through history, but did Nero neglect Rome while it burned? Historians argue that probably not. Reports do place Nero 35 miles away from Rome at the time of the fire, as he was staying in his villa at Antium. However, an account from Tacitus tells us that he returned to Rome immediately when word of the fire reached him in order to begin relief efforts. As the fire raged on, Nero even opened up his own gardens to provide a temporary home for those who were now homeless. He also ordered the construction of emergency accommodation and cut the price of corn as well as provided food directly so that people could eat. Besides that, he paid for much of these relief efforts out of his own pocket. However, Tacitus also tells us of the rumor that had spread among the masses. While the flames surged through the city, Nero stood on his private stage and sang about the destruction of Troy in a comparison of the two events. Whether or not the rumor had any evidence to back it up or was just something made up by the unhappy masses, we don't know, but this and Suetonius' account are the most likely source of the fiddle story we hear today. Unfortunately for Nero, at least in the context of the story, he did have a reputation for enjoying concerts and participating in music competitions, so the activity itself wasn't entirely unlikely even if the timing of the act is highly questionable. While Tacitus claims the singing story was a rumor, Suetonius wrote about it with conviction. However, the story could have been an attempt to further mar Nero's name. Nero faced problems during his reign from the very start when it was reported that his own mother poisoned his predecessor, Claudius. He was also blamed for the death of Claudius' son, Britannicus, who was being urged to take his proper place as emperor by overthrowing Nero. Numerous other deaths were thought to have been committed by Nero's hand, including one of his wives and, indeed, his own mother. As such, Nero was painted as a man who was difficult for the masses to trust. No one knew how the fire started and many Romans believed that he had actually started the fire that burned the city. It actually likely started in shops containing flammable goods and was probably an accident rather than one person's intentional act. With the mob out for blood, Nero was forced to turn to a scapegoat and blame Christians for starting the fire. There were only a small number of Christians in Rome at the time and they were considered a strange religious sect, so they were an easy target. As Tacitus stated, Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the gilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name has its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our pro-curators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all Christians who pleaded guilty to the fire, then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination when daylight had expired. Even finding someone to blame for the fire didn't help Nero's plea of innocence. In the wake of the fire, he built a palace on top of some of the land cleared by the flames, which people argued he had been planning from the start, though this is highly unlikely as the place he built the new palace was over half a mile away from where the fire started. In addition to a new palace, Nero did provide for the reconstruction of the city, but rebuilding stretched the limits of Rome's treasury at the time. He was forced to devalue Roman currency, which was not a popular move. Nero ended up committing suicide, or at least begging his secretary to kill him when he lost the nerve to do it himself, four years after the fire. Accounts of his life and of the time of the fire are highly contradictory. Further, Suetonius and Tacitus wrote their histories 50 years after Nero died, and Cassius Dio wrote his 150 years later. Many historians also think it likely that Nero was more popular with the people of Rome than he was with the senators, and as all three of the main sources were from the senatorial class, it's likely they carry more than a little bias against him, not unlike what happened with the popular history of Marie Antoinette, who popular culture remembers very differently than who the actual woman appeared to be. That being said, Tacitus did state that while Nero's death was welcomed by senators, the lower classes mourned his passing. So in the end, the implication that Nero fiddled while Rome burned, or played the lyre, sang a song, or neglected his duty in any way, is likely the result of anti-Nero propaganda and an attempt to tarnish his name. The morality of many of his actions during his reign is open to debate, but the fiddling or playing music story is almost certainly a myth, unless he was playing to entertain the displaced masses he'd taken in. When we first think of Sparta, the first thing that comes to mind is the Spartan warrior. Unlike other historical warrior peoples like the Samurai, the Spartan warriors were pretty close to our imagined conception of them. They were manly warriors who were very muscular, fought wearing red capes and holding big shields. They were the face of Sparta, to the point that we often don't realize that Sparta is not a state, but the capital of the larger region of Lacedaemonia and the only city in which the warriors were permitted to live, hence their description as Spartans. Today, the Spartans are remembered as a society completely geared towards war and fighting, but how accurate is that? Isn't this actually Sparta? And how did one become a Spartan warrior, anyway? As mentioned, Sparta is not the name of the region. It is just the name of the central city. The region was called Lacedaemonia in the Greek Peloponnese Peninsula. It isn't really all that surprising that we know the Spartans by the name of their central city. Ancient Greeks organized themselves politically into city-states, or polis. Think Athenians, Thebans, or other well-known ancient Greek peoples. We usually refer to them by the name of their polis, even if they lived in the surrounding regions of the city-state. What makes the Spartans special, not just in our modern eyes, but in the eyes of their fellow ancient Greeks, is that they had a very different society from other Greeks. Despite Sparta controlling the whole region of Lacedaemonia and sometimes beyond, citizens could only come from the city of Sparta and only live there in their special society. Spartans went on several colonial campaigns to capture neighboring lands and refer to their area of political control as Laconia. The citizens referred to themselves as Spartans, outsiders referred to the Spartans as Lacedaemonians after the region, but we might also see them referred to as Laconians after the political area they controlled. So who were the Spartan warriors? The citizens of Sparta were those who not only lived in the city of Sparta, but belonged to the ruling class. These were the Spartans you saw in films like 300. They see themselves as descendants of Hercules and Dorians who settled in the region of Lacedaemonia. As an outside force, they ruled over the native population of second-class citizens or slaves. This class of people were known as the Spartiates. So that begs the question, who are the other Lacedaemonians? And for our purposes, did they fight? There are many classes of people in Lacedaemonia, but the three most prominent were the Spartiates, the Dwellers Around, and the Helots. The Dwellers Around and the Helots were probably the original inhabitants of Lacedaemonia, but we don't know as much about them as we do the Spartiates. The Dwellers Around are the regular, everyday free people of Lacedaemonia. They lived a similar life to most Greeks at the time, neither required to live the Spartiate warrior lifestyle nor live as slaves. They tended to be traders, manufacturers, artists, but also put on their warrior uniforms and followed the Spartiates into battle at the command of the state. The Exarch King Damaratus warned the Persian Xerxes about the necessity of the Dwellers Around to Spartan society and their bravery in combat. As Spartan history went on, the Spartiates began to rely on the Dwellers Around to fight more and more until they came to outnumber the Spartiates in their armies. Even then, we don't know how Dwellers Around became warriors. Then you have the Helots. The Helots were a type of slave that comprised the majority of Lacedaemonia's population. Other than the Spartiates, the Helots are remembered mostly because of the intense level of class disparity between them and the Spartiates. By disparity, I mean the Spartiates were known to have abused and murdered Helots in a way that often shocked other slave-owning Greeks to the point that the Spartans always feared an intervention by their rivals to support the Helots. As to what these slaves got up to, Helots supported their masters on campaigns and fought on the front lines. If all you know of Sparta is the movie 300, just know that there were Helots on that campaign and that they far outnumbered their 300 Spartiate masters. Spartiates always kept an eye on their Helots during campaigns, even changing camp formations so that they faced inward at camp rather than outwards. Because of past revolts that rocked Laconia, they never turned their back on their warrior slaves. There are other smaller and less significant groups in Lacedaemonian society, but the Spartiates, Dwellers Around, and Helots are the main three. Of the classes, we know more about the Spartiate warriors and their upbringing. Spartiates relied very heavily on the Dwellers Around and the Helots for their warrior lifestyle. The Helots did the heavy lifting in Lacedaemonian society, and the Dwellers Around took care of the state beyond the Spartiates' role as warriors, defenders, and decision makers. The same exiled King Demartos acknowledges as much to King Xerxes. Being freed from mundane matters of labor, farming, and administration, the Spartiate citizens were allowed to focus on their training. Modern scholars even refer to the Spartiates as a class of leisure. While that may be true, they endured childhoods of hell to reach that point. Spartan education is considered a 30-year process, broken down into three parts. The education of a Spartan, and by Spartan I do mean Spartiate, is a communal effort the state is involved in. It takes a village to raise a child, and in the case of Sparta, that village would mercilessly beat them into adulthood. The first phase of formal education began around the age of seven, when boys were assigned to groups of boys called herds by a herder. If the assigned herder was not present, any Spartan citizen could order the herd around if need be. The Spartans considered following the rules to be very important, and herders were usually accompanied by whip-bearers who whipped the boys for any infraction. If you were whipped as a Spartan child, you can expect your father to continue with a staff when you got home. If you broke a rule in front of another boy's father and he beat you, your father was also honor-bound to beat you again when he heard of it. This can happen when the herder is absent and another father takes charge of the group, again going to show just how communal the raising of children was in the city of Sparta. Despite this instilling of rules, the instilling of rule-breaking was also part of the boys' education. The boys were fed meager meals even by Spartan standards. They were expected and even encouraged to steal food to supplement their meager diets. Despite that encouragement, boys were punished for being caught and even killed in the process of that punishment sometimes. So why encourage rule-breaking when you're just going to punish a boy for breaking the rules? It seems the purpose was to instill a respect for the rule of law, yet teach the children how to undergo covert operations as training for later life. Like most things in Sparta, stealing was a collaborative project. The herd had to collectively organize their stealing, with members acting as lookouts while others stole. The whole process required endurance, something necessary to instill in future warriors. Endurance was the name of the game, from their meager food to their harsh punishments. Finally, the leaders of the Spartan state, the Air Force, inspected the boys of this age naked every ten days, ensuring that the boys did not get too fat and were progressing in their training. At fourteen, the Spartan boys moved to the next level of their education, which got even harsher. But before we get into that, you might at this point be wondering who established this bizarre and brutal way of life for the Spartiates. The Spartiates cite a lawgiver king called Lycorgos. To date, scholars tend to agree that Lycorgos might have been mythical, and even the ancient Greeks could not nail down a time in which he ruled, although they didn't doubt his existence. Herodotus places Lycorgos in the middle of the 6th century, and puts forward two stories as to how he developed the Spartan way of life. He either received instructions from an oracle at Delphi, or borrowed his system from Crete. Lycorgos may be a part of what is called the Spartan mirage. Spartans were very secretive, mischievous, guarded, and xenophobic people. This extended into their training, everyday lives, and conduct with other Greeks. They created this image of Sparta to hide their true activities and intentions, so that their enemies were always in the dark. Even aspects of their training and leisure activities, such as their ball games, were meant to hide their intentions, which is to train for combat. The Spartan mirage throws some of what we know about them into question, especially because so few of our sources are from Sparta. Most of what we know about Spartans actually comes from contemporary Athenian writings, which are openly anti-Spartan, or later Roman sources. But in any event, as mentioned, at the age of 14, the Spartan boys moved to the next phase of their education as youths. This phase of the education is the toughest. Spartan elders saw this phase of a teenage boy's life as the most rebellious and cocky, so they piled on the work for the boys. They designed the training so that the boys had as little free time as possible, and had no choice but to go about their tasks and duties, all the while continuing to be held to a higher standard of abuse for breaking the rules. Youths also practiced the many sports and exercises for which the Spartans are known. Wrestling, javelin, and discus throwing, several types of running and sprinting races, equestrian sports if the youths came from rich families, and a group bare-knuckle boxing contest where the boys split into teams of two and tried to drive each other into a moat surrounding the battlefield. They also played a game called battle ball that required cooperation between teammates and brute strength as it was similar to ball sports such as American football. Youths began to learn to read and write, but we don't know how. The Spartans didn't hire foreign or slave tutors to educate their children, but we do know that they did learn. We know this because we have records that Spartiates sent messages to each other and could make use of cryptography in the messages between various warriors and their commanders. The Spartiates seemed to enjoy a Spartan formal education to suit their elaborate and demanding physical education. Even elite Spartiates were not allowed to bring in tutors for their children, meaning that all Spartiates enjoyed the same state-level education. This lack of literary flourish didn't mean they were simpletons. While not too many Spartan works of literature came down to us, we do have other evidence of the Greeks' fondness for Spartan wit. Spartiates tended to speak directly and bluntly to the point of being known for their one-liners. It wasn't just the men, but women who seemed to be known for their wit as well, since a large portion of surviving Spartan one-liners came from women. Speaking of women, it should be noted that girls had a very physical education as well. Unlike other Greeks who tended to heavily segregate the sexes and keep women at home, Spartan girls underwent an education that put them on par, at least within the bounds of their respective strengths, physically with the boys. The girls even competed in front of men in activities that other Greeks considered too sexual, whereas the Spartans didn't seem to mind. One such activity was an endurance competition that was kind of like skipping rope without the rope. The girls often participated in the same sports the boys did, such as throwing, running, wrestling, and even practiced dancing. On top of that, the Spartan girls went about dressed in clothing non-Spartan Greeks considered too revealing and immodest, with exposed thighs, or even sometimes completely nude. This made Spartan girls much more athletic than their non-Spartan counterparts in most places in the world. The wisdom behind this was utilitarian. The Spartiates wanted healthy mothers and healthy fathers to bear healthy sons. The women had a role as mother and wife to make sure her son did his part as a warrior. There are even cases of women killing their warrior sons for cowardly behavior. Despite that, there is evidence to suggest that once a Spartan woman is married and gives birth, she is generally veiled and gender segregated, just like the rest of the Greek women. They did not fight in battles, but their function was to bear and raise the next generation of warriors for the Spartan state. It should be explained that the Spartiate men were organized socially into groups you ate together at a mess hall. They called this group either a men's club or friendship club, depending on the era. Spartiates dined in groups of 15 and contributed the food of the mess from their own properties. Youths were sometimes brought to the clubs to see how the adults are expected to act once they reach adulthood. Dining in these clubs was mandatory for all Spartiates. This communal experience was meant to strengthen the bond between warriors and even had democratic aspects to it, such as members having to vote in new members. Those new members were about ready to join at the age of 20. On this note, at 20, the Spartiates entered the next phase of their education as young men. They can now join a club, but are still forced to sleep in communal barracks rather than their own homes. They can take part in fighting and even qualify for the elite 300-member bodyguard corps of the king. Part of their training included a little-understood and much-debated ritual called Kryptoi. Scholars can't seem to agree on what exactly took place during the Kryptoi. Some believe the ritual involved searching for and slaughtering unsuspecting helots. Others contend that it was simply a survival and endurance test. Thinkers as far away in time as Aristotle in the 300s BCE and the Roman Plutarch in the 1st century CE debated the nature of this ritual. Either way, once the Spartiates turn 30, their education is considered complete and they are fully-fledged citizens. Success in completing the Kryptoi doesn't mean the training is over, however. Spartans continue to regularly train in battle tactics and maneuvers disguised as games and exercise routines. They also practice coordination during hunting. The training never stopped. The clubs play a significant role in the life of a Spartiate, regardless of their level in society. Just like in their youth, the type of food provided to the Spartiates in the club made sure they did not eat or drink too much. Excessive fattiness or excessive drinking were highly scrutinized and one could get fined for indulging. Spartiates spent a lot of time on physical exercises, ball games, and other pursuits, but scholars still debate whether they were disguised military training or leisure activities. Whatever it was the Spartiates were up to, it worked. Their intense upbringing and constant focus on physical training meant that the Spartans did live up to their reputation as fierce warriors. Whether they worked with other Greeks or fought them off, the Spartans were considered a formidable foe to their enemies. The Spartans themselves always prized their unique system for raising warriors and always kept an eye out for any threats to that system. It is important to note that all of this happened within and around the city of Sparta, which was just a tiny part of Lacedaemonia. It took a village to raise a Spartan and, in this case, it was the village of Sparta itself. Before graduating to the next phase of their lives, the boys usually found a lover by the age of 12. sexual while also admitting that the reader probably would not believe him. This is because Spartans in general developed a reputation for anal sex, especially in this sort of relationship. It seems in reality that Spartans did not take place in this practice as much as other Greeks, although it can be attested by some surviving Lacedaemonian artwork. It was such a stereotype of Spartans that they enjoyed anal sex regardless of gender that it became slang in ancient Greece to refer to anyone who enjoyed the same thing as having Lacedaemonian buttocks. Lost civilizations, a sunken continent, human-god hybrids, an ancient Egyptian connection, possibly psychedelic drugs that help you lift rocks with your mind, and maybe even including the staple of all solid history, ancient aliens. The story of Atlantis has captured the imagination of humans for centuries, though for most of history, it was generally accepted as nothing more than a myth, coming from Plato, a known myth inventor who had even an explicit philosophy backing up why one should always invent myths. As we all know from more modern times, like when noted science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard invented Scientology, just because someone commonly writes fiction and then randomly creates a largely sci-fi-like religion, it does not mean it's not totally valid and highly factually based. I mean, it literally has science in the name, you guys. And yes, as stated by former Scientologist Marjorie Wakefield, one of the core governing policies written by Hubbard himself with regards to Scientology was to, quote, make money, make money, make more money, make other people produce so as to make money. But I mean, let's be objective here, Scientology seems partially based on the goal of improving mental health, and my general impression is that being super rich is handy for reducing stress and other negative mental health factors. So, and I'm just speculating here, this religion seemed to work phenomenally well at improving Hubbard's bank account metrics by allegedly many, many millions of dollars, and thus by a confluence of outside factors that, in turn, affects, probably improved his mental health considerably. And the proof is in the pudding, because he was whiling away parts of the latter bits of his life bobbing away on the ocean in his own insanely large cruise ship, while drinking a lot of alcohol and taking stimulants, both claimed to be for research purposes, and I could totally see how chilling away on the ocean with drugs and alcohol might be very relaxing and thus, again, help improve mental health. It's science. But going back to Atlantis, what did Plato actually say, why did he say it, and how did his contemporary Greeks react to Plato's claims? Did they understand he was just making something up, or were they among the first to buy into it all as a real thing? Well, dial in your Stargate, but don't forget to plug in a strong power source for the 9th Chevron, and let's dive into what the ancient Greeks really said, and thought, about Atlantis. To begin with, Plato talks about Atlantis in two of his dialogues, the Timaeus and the Critias. That said, only the Critias is solely about the Atlantis myth. But as for the Timaeus, summarizing it is much more difficult. It follows up the events of his earlier dialogue, the Republic, taking place the next day. Socrates, usually seen as the mouthpiece of Plato in his dialogues, starts by recounting the very long discussion he had in the Republic on the best way to order society. He asks Critias, a figure based on a real politician with familial ties to Plato, for an example of such a constitution as the Republic's being applied to a real place. Critias then tells Socrates how Critias' ancestor, the Athenian statesman Solon, spent some time in the town of Sias, Egypt, studying with priests there. There he learned a story about ancient Athens, one that the Sias priests preserved about their sister city. He claims that Athens was, by Solon's time, 9,000 years old and predates Egypt. This was a very suspect claim, even to the Greeks, as Egypt's antiquity was a long-established fact by that time. But in any event, Solon was a well-regarded poet, and Critias claims he intended to write an epic poem about the Atlantean-Athenian conflict that remained unfinished, yet its lore was passed down by his family. And conveniently, the Egyptian priest claims the Athenians forgot about this great history. So what happened? In a nutshell, the Athenians led the Mediterranean peoples in a war against a foreign threat. Specifically, outside of what we call today the Straits of Gibraltar, was the continent of Atlantis, described as being larger than Asia and Africa put together. Although keep in mind, Plato did not mean the continents of Africa and Asia, but the regions in what we would today call roughly Anatolia and North Africa up to Egypt. On that continent were the Atlanteans. Atlantis was reportedly an ancient power that started colonizing Europe and Libya up to Egypt's borders, but fear not, because Plato's prehistoric Athens stood up to their colonial ambitions and saved the region, and once Atlantis was defeated, it sank into the sea, because sure, why not, they were probably super sad about losing to the Athenians or something. Now, noteworthy in all of this, Plato doesn't exactly spell out what he wants to say overtly in his dialogues. Usually there are some point of view characters that can be held to reflect what Plato really wanted to say. For example, if Socrates is speaking, he is most likely speaking for Plato, and in it all, Plato had no problem inventing myths, even Egyptian myths, for which he has a character call out Socrates for doing just that in a past dialogue, the Phaedrus. But in a nutshell, he believed that myths can be utilized to teach poetic truths, even to the point of inventing them. Moving on to the Critias, it is purely about the Atlantis myth and prehistoric Athens. It takes place later in that same day as the Teneus, Socrates asks Critias to go more in depth in his story. Here again, the focus is largely on prehistoric Athens rather than Atlantis, but Critias does describe Atlantis. It all started out as a territory of the god Poseidon. Plato claims the Atlanteans descend from Poseidon and a mortal woman named Cleto. Poseidon purportedly created for Cleto and her descendants the island's inner seas and landmass in concentric circles with a mountain in the center, and he also fed the continent with springs. In the end, Poseidon had five pairs of twins with her and entrusted the eldest Atlas with high kingship. He also divided the continent into ten parts, one for each brother as governors or kings. Ultimately, Critias explains Atlanteans began colonial expansion campaigns beyond Gibraltar, as well as discusses their palaces and cities and how they got around the strange continent with its concentric inland seas and islands. Their religion is also described as centering around the worship of Cleto and Poseidon. Atlas, the first king, is also said to have left behind inscribed laws in the Temple of Poseidon to follow. After that, the nine regional kings, governors, and their high king would meet in the Temple of Poseidon every half-decade to decide policies and engage in a bull-hunting ritual in the temple that leads to sacrificing a bull to Poseidon. It's also claimed it was a religious taboo for the kings to go to war against each other. On top of that, it's also described that the capital city and region can field 10,000 chariots and 12,000 ships for combat, which only accounts for a fraction of Atlantis' strength, which kind of leaves you wondering how the Athenians won against them, but okay. Finally, the Critias ends with describing how the culture started to decline. The king simply became too human as time went on, and that loss of immortal blood led to greed. The dialogue ends as Zeus becomes troubled by the moral sliding of the Atlantean kings because Zeus is known for his morals. He thus gathers the gods to pronounce judgment on Atlantis, but before he speaks, the dialogue ends. Now, whether Plato intended for this dialogue to be incomplete is a matter for debate, but we see similarities between ancient Athens and Atlantis and Plato's Athens and his hypothetical state in the Republic. Atlantis starts high and degenerates over time, allowing greed to distance them from their laws, while an organized and utopian prehistoric Athens uses the inherent power in its organization to defeat a larger foe. From all this, you can see why scholars take the Republic, Teneus, Critias, as a trilogy. The prehistoric Athens of the myth reflects Plato's Republic, and its victory over Atlantis is the victory he hopes to show his Greeks with his philosophical system, all wed to an imaginary history of the Atlanteans. Now, we should also point out that in modern times, we tend to think of the Republic as Plato's magnum opus, but for most of history since, Plato was the Teneus guy. So much so that Teneus was the only full Platonic dialogue translated into Latin in the medieval world and enjoyed great circulation. Thus for centuries, academia associated Plato with Atlantis. As you might be gathering at this point, if you've ever watched many modern documentaries and the like on Atlantis, many today are not exactly well versed in Plato's original Atlantis, or works in general, or really history at all if we're being honest. And possibly, and we can only speculate here, are terrible disappointments to their mothers because of it. But going back to Plato and his story, the supposed original source Solon was born in 630 BCE, Athens, and is remembered as a philosopher, statesman, and poet, with some of his poetry surviving today. His political career started in 594 BCE when he was elected archon and helped reform Athens' laws to promote a more harmonious society. After his archership, he left Athens for 10 years and then again near the end of his life. It is generally thought he did go to Egypt and study with Egyptian priests, as Plato said. We can place him there, but did he actually hear about Atlantis from the priests? As you can probably guess, probably not, as we have no similar myth from ancient Egypt, despite the Sias priest's true claim that Egypt has a few flood myths. And here we should explicitly note that Plato wasn't the only one to use Solon as a mouthpiece for his own ideas in a pseudo-historical account. For example, a later Plotinus who wrote about Solon also reports meetings between Solon and other ancient figures that would have been historically impossible. But using a famous name from the past to be the mouthpiece for your own ideas was simply a great way to give them more oomph. Not unlike the common practice today of saying Einstein said all manner of things he definitely never said. As Abraham Lincoln famously said of all this, pimpin' ain't easy, but it's necessary. Now all that said, there was a lost epic poem called Atlantis before Plato wrote his thing. However, from the little we know, it was about the daughter of the god Atlas, hence the name, and doesn't seem to have had anything to do with Plato's Atlantis, and there are a smattering of similar Atlantises that seem to have nothing to do with what Plato was talking about. But as for Plato's Atlantis, Theopompus of Chios, 377, accused Plato of plagiarizing the Atlantis theory from the story of Meropia, another allegorical tale about a continent with two cities at war with each other. What makes Theopompus' critique interesting is that he was both a historian and a philosopher, and was criticizing Plato during his lifetime as well. Further, as alluded to there, he not only disagreed with Plato's allegory, but very much understood it as an allegory, again accusing Plato of lifting it from a similar story elsewhere. Moving on from there, if you're wondering what Plato's biggest critic and former student Aristotle thought, well, he does not mention Atlantis in surviving works. He did write about Solon in the Constitution of Athens and even Solon's visit to Egypt, but again did not write about Atlantis. As for the Romans, they adopted many parts of Greek intellectual life and incorporated Greece itself within their empire. But Pliny the Elder expresses skepticism of Atlantis' existence, though to be fair in a throwaway line. More notably, even the Platonists tended to dismiss it, though keeping in mind that the Platonic school also underwent massive changes over the centuries since Plato's death. But one thing they seemed to have in common was a reticence to explicitly talk about Atlantis when teaching the Tenaeus in class, generally an embarrassing subject for most Platonists, although why Atlantis embarrassed Platonists has changed over the years. But going back to the beginning in Plato's time, he was laughed at for drawing his philosophy from the Egyptians, especially his idea of society in the Republic. Contemporary students found his reliance on Egyptians to be a hard point to defend. For this reason, Cranter, whose work we don't have but is referenced by other Platonists, claims that Plato invented the Atlantis myth to show Greeks that his philosophy has Greek roots recognized by the Egyptians in the form of prehistoric Athens. But in the end, the general attitude for most of history was that Atlantis did not exist. It was just something Plato made up to make a point. But as ever, now that the internet has made all human knowledge readily accessible to almost anyone anywhere in the world, naturally, belief in Atlantis is on the rise because humans are gonna human. Except when those humans are secretly human-suited lizard people from the fourth dimension of Cylon who have not yet quite perfected their British accent or, though their beard game is strong, how to get hair to grow on their scalp. Those humans are not gonna human. They are our clear superiors and I for one welcome them to our humble planet. And I'd like to remind them that as a trusted YouTube personality and author, I could be of great use in helping to convince people to toil away in their basements.