The underground city of Nushabad—one of the greatest masterpieces of ancient engineering
The ancient Underground city of Nushabad in Iran is considered by scholars as one of the greatest masterpieces of ancient engineering. Somehow, thousands of years ago, ancient cultures dug eighteen meters into the Earth and created a complex city beneath the surface, featuring extensive corridors, chambers, and tunnels, where people could live for extended periods of time.
Considered one of the greatest masterpieces of ancient engineering and architecture, the underground city of Noushabad (also referred to as Ouyi) is located in a region in the middle of the desert of Iran, where harsh weather is nothing out of the ordinary.
Temperature fluctuations are normal at Nushabad. During the day people must survive scorching temperatures, during the night, it gets freezing.
The underground city of Nushabad, one of its chambers. Image credit: Shutterstock.The city is located in Isfahan, a province of central Iran. This subterranean masterpiece is famous for its remarkable complex of underground tunnels and chambers which take researchers and tourists through a trip in time, to the Sasanian period.
Why built an underground city thousands of years ago?
Researchers have proposed several theories, ranging from extreme heat to warrs, and even extremely high levels of radiation and contamination in ancient times.
Nushabad, which translates to the city of tasty cold water, was build after a Sassanian king who passed through this area stopped to drink water from a well. After drinking, he found that the water from the well was extremely clear and cold, thus ordering a city to be built around the well which he named Anoushabad, which later turned into Nushabad.
But why was this city built? Did its ancient inhabitant’s really gone through all that trouble to escape from harsh weather?
Why did they not migrate elsewhere if they found the weather to be too extreme?
Nushabad, the tunnels under the city. Image Credit: Franco Pecchio/CC BY 2.0It doesn’t really make sense that an ancient culture would have gone through so much trouble, and create a complex underground city just to escape from harsh temperatures.
Other theories suggest that the ancient inhabitants of the city created this underground city because, in the distant past, the region was extremely insecure, which is why its inhabitants decided to dig into the earth and develop massive tunnels and chambers that would provide shelter in times of need.
This why, while hiding underground, its inhabitants could literally move across the city without being seen from the surface.
The city was extremely well built, and its builders planned everything perfectly.
The underground city even features a series of ventilation shafts that offer its inhabitants fresh air if they decide to remain for prolonged periods of time underground.
The Chambers and tunnels of the underground city. Image Credit: Alireza Tajfar/CC BY 2.0
The freshwater springs would offer them fresh water, and according to researchers, there is evidence of chambers located beneath the surface where the inhabitant’s of the underground city kept food.
Archaeologists researching the ancient city have found a series of complex tunnels and corridors in the city, as well as extensive cavities dug into the walls which served as benches and beds for its people.
This means the underground city of Nushabad was extraordinarily well-planned and offered its inhabitants protection from the outside world in times of need.
The depth of the underground city varies from four to eighteen meters.
Until this day, archeologists cannot agree unanimously as to why or who built this ancient city.
One of the most accepted theories suggests that its builders created the underground city in order to escape from the war.
The Sassanids were the last classical period of the region, and it was a very influential reign, rival of the Romans.
Another view of the tunnels and chambers. Image Credit: Enzo Nicolodi/ CC BY SA 4.0
The empire experienced numerous wars. The last Shahanshah, the King of kings, named Yazgerd (632-651), lost against the Islamic invasion after a massive conflict that lasted for 14 years.
It would not come as a surprise that many people looked for protection underground during times of war, and the underground city of Nushabad offer unprecedented protection.
Most of the entrances to the underground city are extremely small, which means that invading armies would have had an extremely hard time to enter the city by surprise.
However, if we put aside the theory of wars and extreme temperatures, as the reason the ancient city was built, a more controversial one suggests that in ancient times, people sought shelter after ‘nuclear’ explosions shuck the region.
Due to the fact that this isn’t the only underground city in existence, many authors and followers of the ancient astronaut theory have hypothesized that ancient people built numerous underground cities in order to escape from ‘nuclear war’ which beings, misinterpreted as Gods, brought upon the human race.
There are theories which suggest that at Mohenjo-Daro, in western Pakistan, evidence of a nuclear explosion that occurred thousands of years ago was found by experts, which has led many authors and researchers to propose that prehistoric civilizations existed on Earth before written history and possessed more advanced technologies than we could ever imagine.
The ancient city of Mohenjo-Daro was destroyed, and high levels of radiation were allegedly found among its ruins.
The buildings melted due to heat that surpassed 1500 degrees Celsius.
This is why many authors argue that the ancient cities we see across the globe are the result of ancient cultures escaping extremely violent events that struck our planet thousands of years ago.
Source / Reference:
The Underground City of Noosh Abad
Noosh Abad Ancient Underground City Near Kashan, Iran
Leave a Reply