Geography: Learn about the giant monoliths of Turkey's Cappadocia

Ever heard of fairy chimneys? Wondering what they might be? Take a tour with us to Goreme, a small town in the Turkish city of Cappadocia and allow our avid native host to tell you all the stories around the tall monoliths that populate the region.

Cappadocia lies in the Anatolia peninsula in Western Asia, which is surrounded on all three sides by mountain ranges and a high plateau on the fourth. Anatolia was believed to have volcanic mountains nearly 13 million years ago. Interestingly, instead of a singular conical shape, these were strata volcanos. As erosion occurred and the tectonic plates collided over one another, many of these volcanos erupted. The lava that spewed became volcanic ash but tremendously high temperatures led them to turn into tuff, a kind of basalt rock typical to the area. Even though it didn’t provide the kind of soil fertility that lava was known to result in, tuff was soon to be discovered as a softer, malleable material, excellent for construction.

Fairy chimney was the name these tall monoliths earned from the pages of history. From as early as BC 2000s, Assyrians from Northern Mesopotamia wanted to visit the Kings of Anatolia for the purpose of trade. As they were approaching Cappadocia, from the outskirts itself, the land was nothing like what they had seen before, with a very dry climate and scarce vegetation. They could spot the towering monoliths from a distance, and though they could see no people dwelling in it, smoke seemed to be arising from it. The smoke from the fires lit by the cave dwellers, was believed to be the work of fairies, and hence the monoliths were referred as fairy chimneys.

Weather and natural phenomena meant that infrastructural development to the region was out of the question. That’s probably why, most families moved out of their cave homes to go to cities. Most of the earth pillars have now been converted to cave hotels, inviting many a tourist to have a unique living experience.

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