12/5/2018 0 Comments Bonus article: Göreme, Turkey. The Open Air Museum of Göreme is a UNESCO World Heritage site near the town of Cappadocia in Turkey. I have added Göreme to the exhibit at the last minute, despite it not being included in the catalog of this year's coursework. I had made the decision to include it after I stumbled upon Göreme's existence whilst watching at home a recent airing of a 'Rick Steeve's' travel episode. While viewing the manmade subterranean world, that was begun nearly four thousand years ago, an idea struck me that when nature has provided similar surrounding of cliffs or hillsides made of pliable rock, humans across the globe have a tendency to independently utilize comparable rock boring techniques to create both dwellings and places of worship that can pass the test of time. The Göreme area is famed for both the naturally formed 'Fairy Chimneys' and the hand carved troglodyte town that has been continuously carved into the soft volcanic rock of the surrounding slopes since the Hittites first settled the area around 1800BC. In their time the caves have housed early Christians seeking refuge from Roman persecution, monasteries and mosques and was continually inhabited up until the early 1950s. The artwork of the Byzantine churches, with almond eyed saints portrayed simply in their robes offering gifts to God the most famous of which are is the eleventh century dark church of Karanlik Kilise, bare a striking similarity to those frescos found five and a half thousand miles away in the Coptic mountain churches of Ethiopia.
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