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Quotes and diagrams from multiple books backing the Hollow Earth Theory and using logic to defend the existence of an inner Earth.

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Entartic Shelf Festival: 23 June - 3 July, 1995

Several quotes from books, describing the idea that inside the Earth is another, inner Earth.
A work in progress.
"Schwaller de Lubicz (1887-1961) compares the poles to the active (North) and passive (South), or male and female principles. Commenting on ancient symbolism, he depicts the movement from one to another as literally as the circulation of Kircher's oceans: Let us note something not generally known: that is, that the North Pole and the South Pole repels, with respect to the masses of these rotating bodies (planets, etc.) Our North Pole hollows out the earth and it can be said to absorb the continents, whereas the South Pole extrudes earth and it can be said to create the continents. The entire mass of our continents is projected in a spiral motion toward the North Pole.

R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, The Temple in Man, Autumn Press, 1977.

"As a young man in 1926, Giannini had been wandering through a New England forest when he had a vision. Guided by "his extrasensory perception" he suddenly realized that the earth was not round, but sort of spindle-shaped, and that the North and South Poles were illusory points. The earth's surface, he perceived did not end at the points of the spindle but continued into space and curved back over our heads. What looked like stars, planets, galaxies and comets were actually "globular and isolated areas of a continuous and unbroken outer sky surface."

This meant that these seemingly 'heavenly' bodies weren't heavenly at all, but points of the vast land surface of the universe, part of which was the earth's surface. There was no need to develop rockets to explore space, wrote Giannini for 'space' was an illusion created by the refraction of the lenses of our eyes, telescopes and cameras. All we needed to do to reach Mars or Venus was to climb into an airplane (or amphibious vehicle) with a very large tank of gas and fly (or drive) there. When Admiral Byrd flew beyond the poles he had proven Giannini correct - the earth did not end at the poles, but continued into 'vast new lands'."

Walter Kafton-Minkel: Subterranean Worlds, 100,000 years of dragons, dwarfs, the dead, lost races and UFOs from inside of the earth, pp. 195,198.

"In would-be scientific theories of the Earth's internal structure, beginning with the seventeenth-century treatise Mundus subterraneus (1665) of the German Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kirchner. Having visited Mt Etna in 1637 Kirchner devised a model in which chambers and channels of fire extended through the body of the Earth, along with a parallel system of internal rivers and seas. When the water and fire interacted earthquakes, volcanoes, springs and storms resulted. Kirchner's view of Earth's interior was thus one of violent convulsions - certainly no place for habitation. It had a clear appeal, however, for living-at-the-edge adventures, exemplified in Verne's Voyage au centre de la terre (1864). An alternative structure was proposed by the astronomer Edmund Halley in 1672 to account for the magnetic variations observed by mariners. By analogy with the planet Saturn surrounded by its rings, Halley proposed that the Earth consisted of an inner nucleus suspended in a fluid medium within the outer sphere of our experience and went on to deal at length with potential objections to his theory. In its time, and for more than a century afterwards, this hollow Earth theory was regarded as a serious scientific attempt to explain observed phenomena such as variations in magnetism. However, fiction writers like de Plancy reversed the process and used magnetic fluctuations to justify an alleged hollow Earth. An amusing remnant of this association with magnetism survives in Verne's novel".

Fitting, Peter, ed. Subterranean Worlds: A Critical Anthology. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2004.

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Entartic Shelf Festival: 23 June - 3 July, 1995 Several quotes from books, describing the idea that inside the Earth is another, inner Earth. A work in progress. "Schwaller de Lubicz (1887-1961) compares the poles to the active (North) and passive (South), or male and female principles.

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‎Dark Histories: The Bizarre History of the Hollow Earth on Apple Podcasts

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A 43 minute podcast going through the history of the Hollow Earth Theory, which stretches back centuries. Some thought the center of the Earth contained hell, others thought it contained intelligent beings, and even dinosaurs.

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Far from being a modern, internet crackpot idea, hollow earth theory has walked a long and winding path, many centuries old. From the mythological pits of hell, to the pseudo-scientific theories of the enlightenment, right through to modern science fiction, founding philosophies of utopian cults and even tenuous links with the Nazis, the proponents have been many and the theories varied, though whether or not they were ever anything other than crackpot is a different question altogether.

SOURCES

Standish, David (2007) Hollow Earth. Da Capo Press, IN, USA.

Bernard, Raymond (1963) The Hollow Earth. Fieldcrest Publishing Co., NY, USA.

Griffin A., Duane (2004) Hollow & Habitable Within: Symmes's Theory of Earth's Internal Structure & Polar Geography. Physical Geography, Sep 2004. USA.

Kollerstrom, Nicholas (1992) The Hollow World of Edmond Halley. Journal for the History of Astronomy, Volume 23 Issue 3, August 1992. USA

Halley, Edmond (1692) An account of the cause of the change of the variation of the magnetical needle with an hypothesis of the structure of the internal parts of the Earth. Philosophical transactions, xvi (1692), 563-87. UK

Alexandria Gazette (1818) Food For Philosophers. 13 Aug 1818, p.2. VA, USA

Teed, Cyrus (1899) The Illumination of Koresh: Marvelous Experiences of the Great Alchemist Thirty Years Ago, at Utica, NY. Guiding Star, Chicago, USA.

Goodricke-Clarke, Nicholas (2004) The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and their Influence on Nazi Ideology. Tauris Parke Paperbacks, NY, USA.

----------
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The Dark Histories Butterfly was drawn by Courtney, who you can find on Instagram @bewildereye
Music was recorded by me © Ben Cutmore 2017
Other Outro music was Paul Whiteman & his orchestra with Mildred Bailey - All of me (1931). It's out of copyright now, but if you're interested, that was that.

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‎Dark Histories: The Bizarre History of the Hollow Earth on Apple Podcasts

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Far from being a modern, internet crackpot idea, hollow earth theory has walked a long and winding path, many centuries old. From the mythological pits of hell, to the pseudo-scientific theories of the enlightenment, right through to modern science fiction, founding philosophies of utopian cults and...

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Pilot Richard E. Byrd embarked on a mission to explore the North and South Poles, and he reported seeing green areas where there should’ve just been ice. Some think that this was actually a gateway to the center of Earth, or even to another dimension entirely.

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Cave Waters Tell a Story of Breathing Humans (U.S. National Park Service)

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How cave waters show human occupation through atmospheric changes and cave structure development.

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Cave Waters Tell a Story of Breathing Humans (U.S. National Park Service)

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A long-term study in a Utah cave shows that people's exhalations have measurable impacts on cave waters and the growth of mineral formations.

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In China, millions make themselves at home in caves

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People who live in caves today in China, renting or buying caves to use for themselves and even their families.

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Like many peasants from the outskirts of Yanan, China, Ren Shouhua was born in a cave and lived there until he got a job in the city and moved into a concrete-block house.

His progression made sense as he strove to improve his life. But there's a twist: The 46-year-old Ren plans to move back to a cave when he retires.

"It's cool in the summer and warm in the winter. It's quiet and safe," said Ren, a ruddy-faced man with salt-and-pepper hair who moved to the Shaanxi provincial capital, Xian, in his 20s. "When I get old, I'd like to go back to my roots."

More than 30 million Chinese people live in caves, many of them in Shaanxi province where the Loess plateau, with its distinctive cliffs of yellow, porous soil, makes digging easy and cave dwelling a reasonable option.

Each of the province's caves, yaodong, in Chinese, typically has a long vaulted room dug into the side of a mountain with a semicircular entrance covered with rice paper or colorful quilts. People hang decorations on the walls, often a portrait of Mao Tse-tung or a photograph of a movie star torn out of a glossy magazine.

The better caves protrude from the mountain and are reinforced with brick masonry. Some are connected laterally so a family can have several chambers. Electricity and even running water can be brought in.

"Most aren't so fancy, but I've seen some really beautiful caves: high ceilings and spacious with a nice yard out front where you can exercise and sit in the sun," said Ren, who works as a driver and is the son of a wheat and millet farmer.

The caves have an important role in modern Chinese history. The Long March, the famous retreat of the Communist Party in the 1930s, ended near Yanan, where Mao took refuge in caves. In "Red Star Over China," writer Edgar Snow described a Red Army university that "was probably the world's only seat of 'higher learning' whose classrooms were bombproof caves, with chairs and desks of stone and brick, and blackboards and walls of limestone and clay."

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, who is expected to succeed Hu Jintao next year as president, lived for seven years in a cave when he was exiled to Shaanxi province during the Cultural Revolution.

"The cave topology is one of the earliest human architectural forms; there are caves in France, in Spain, people still living in caves in India," said David Wang, an architecture professor at Washington State University in Spokane who has written widely on the subject. "What is unique to China is the ongoing history it has had over two millenniums."

In recent years, architects have been reappraising the cave in environmental terms, and they like what they see.

"It is energy efficient. The farmers can save their arable land for planting if they build their houses in the slope. It doesn't take much money or skill to build," said Liu Jiaping, director of the Green Architecture Research Center in Xian and perhaps the leading expert on cave living. "Then again, it doesn't suit modern complicated lifestyles very well. People want to have a fridge, washing machine, television."

Liu helped design and develop a modernized version of traditional cave dwellings that in 2006 was a finalist for a World Habitat Award, sponsored by a British foundation dedicated to sustainable housing. The updated cave dwellings are built against the cliff in two levels, with openings over the archways for light and ventilation. Each family has four chambers, two on each level.

"It's like living in a villa. Caves in our villages are as comfortable as posh apartments in the city," said Cheng Wei, 43, a Communist Party official who lives in one of the cave houses in Zaoyuan village on the outskirts of Yanan. "A lot of people come here looking to rent our caves, but nobody wants to move out."

The thriving market around Yanan means a cave with three rooms and a bathroom (a total of 750 square feet) can be advertised for sale at $46,000. A simple one-room cave without plumbing rents for $30 a month, with some people relying on outhouses or potties that they empty outside.

Many caves, however, are not for sale or rent because they are handed down from one generation to another, though for just how many generations, people often can't say.

Ma Liangshui, 76, lives in a one-room cave on a main road south of Yanan. It is nothing fancy, but there is electricity - a bare bulb dangling from the ceiling. He sleeps on a kang, a traditional bed that is basically an earthen ledge, with a fire underneath that is also used for cooking. His daughter-in-law has tacked up photographs of Fan Bingbing, a popular actress.

The cave faces west, which makes it easy to bask in the late afternoon sun by pulling aside the blue-and-white patchwork quilt that hangs next to drying red peppers in the arched entrance.

Ma said his son and daughter-in-law have moved to the city, but he doesn't want to leave.

"Life is easy and comfortable here. I don't need to climb stairs. I have everything I need," he said. "I've lived all my life in caves, and I can't imagine anything different."

barbara.demick@latimes.com
Nicole Liu of The Times' Beijing bureau contributed to this report.

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In China, millions make themselves at home in caves

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Like many peasants from the outskirts of Yanan, China, Ren Shouhua was born in a cave and lived there until he got a job in the city and moved into a concrete-block house. His progression made sense as he strove to improve his life.

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Glow worms live in caves and create stunning pictures along cave walls. They’re protected and monitored by scientists to make sure tourists don’t disturb them.

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What is shown in most cave art and what does it mean for prehistoric humans and their experiences?

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Turkey's underground city of 20,000 people

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An underground city was discovered in Turkey that houses 20,000. It went very far down and had many different chambers for people to live comfortably in.

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Turkey’s underground city of 20,000 people

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More than 85m beneath the famous fairy chimneys of Cappadocia lies a massive subterranean city that was in near-constant use for thousands of years.

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People lived in the Panga ya Saidi cave network in Kenya thousands of years ago, and people today still make use of them for religious ceremonies and burials.

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People often like to show the scary side of cave exploration, which discourages others from doing their own research.

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Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008) - IMDb

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Shows a theory that at the center of the Earth there’s livable space that hosts prehistoric life and conditions.

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On a quest to find out what happened to his missing brother, a scientist, his nephew and their mountain guide discover a fantastic and dangerous lost world in the center of the earth. On a quest to find out what happened to his missing brother, a scientist, his nephew and their mountain guide discover a fantastic and dangerous lost world in the center of the earth. On a quest to find out what happened to his missing brother, a scientist, his nephew and their mountain guide discover a fantastic and dangerous lost world in the center of the earth.

Review

Jules Verne's novel, it's true you know?

Originally released in 3D (I've not seen it in that format, sadly), Eric Brevig's take on the Jules Verne novel updates it to modern day and sends Brendan Fraser, his nephew (Josh Hutcherson) and Icelandic babe Anita Briem down to, well, the centre of the Earth. Where of course peril and wonderment await in equal measure. As adventure films go it's entertaining stuff as the intrepid trio run, dive, jump and fight their way through the hazards of a hot land that's getting hotter by the hour. The kicker in the story here is that they are saying Verne's novel is true, giving birth to a collective of people known as Vernians who believe this to be so. Therefore for plot drive the book is used as a sort of tourist guide to aid them in their attempts to escape from the Centre of the Earth. Cool or what? The production design is excellent, marking the film out as being very visually appealing, while a number of the set pieces are genuinely entertaining and suspenseful. It moves along at a good clip, too, and the three actors carrying the film engage firmly on the good side of good, especially Fraser, who can do the heroic kooky act with ease.

It's far from being a truly great film, but the makers have at least tried to put their own stamp on the story, making it a sort of modern day sequel to the wonderful novel. But even with that in mind, narratively speaking it's very predictable for the most part, but speeding along as a family friendly adventure the film never once outstays its welcome. Of worth as well is that Briem's character, Hannah Ásgeirsson, is not a token female put in simply to look hot and give Fraser the push to prove his masculinity. Ásgeirsson is tough, intelligent and resourceful, working on a par with Fraser's Professor Anderson, this also sets up a running joke involving the two of them as to who saves each others lives the most times! In 2D some of the impact of certain scenes is invariably lost, though we can easily imagine what the 3D sight of Fraser unleashing a mouthful of toothpaste and water on us is like! But as it is it's a film that is unlikely to garner much love from sci-fi buffs and haters of popcorn pleasures, but kids will love it, as will the adults who don't mind letting their guard down once in a while for a bit of good clean family friendly fun. 6/10

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Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008) - IMDb

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Journey to the Center of the Earth: Directed by Eric Brevig. With Brendan Fraser, Josh Hutcherson, Aníta Briem, Seth Meyers. On a quest to find out what happened to his missing brother, a scientist, his nephew and their mountain guide discover a fantastic and dangerous lost world in the center of the earth.

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“Underwater cave in fantasy underwater world. Digital illustration. Generative AI” by Ilugram.

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By ~Niel-Diel on deviantART.

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https://pixels.com/featured/red-bird-in-the-cave-fantasy-painting-mc.html

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Giant sinkhole found in China has hidden forest with ancient trees growing at its floor

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Video explains how sinkholes are made in caves, and talks about one found in China.

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Cave explorers in southern China may have found the modern-day equivalent of The Lost World.

At the bottom of the newly discovered 630-foot deep sinkhole lies a hidden forest, lush with shoulder-high flora and tall trees.

Researchers also think there may be new species of animals and plants within the sinkhole, which is made up of three caves and measures 5 million cubic meters, the equivalent of 2,000 Olympic swimming pools.

The sinkhole was discovered in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, near Ping'e village in the county of Leye, according to the Chinese government's official news agency Xinhua, The area of southern China is known for its caves, sinkholes, and karst forests, limestone formations that populate the landscape.
Prehistoric find: Exploring caves in 3D: Technology helps scientists discover cache of ancient Native American cave art Tooth of young girl found in Laos could help us understand modern human evolution
Leader of the cave exploration team, Chen Lixin, told Xinhua the ancient trees growing at the bottom of the sinkhole are nearly 130 feet tall - taller than most oak trees. Dense shade plants grew as tall as the explorers' shoulders, Lixin said.

"I wouldn't be surprised to know that there are species found in these caves that have never been reported or described by science until now," Lixin said, according to Live Science.

These type of sinkholes and caves could harbor new flora and fauna, international cave expert George Veni told Live Science. "This is cool news," said Veni, who was not involved in the discovery or exploration of this new cave. He is the executive director of the National Cave and Karst Research Institute in Carlsbad, New Mexico.

Sinkholes and caves are created over time as water dissolves limestone, according to the institute. Large sinkholes can have small ponds and fields of plants at the bottom.

Zhang Yuanhai, a senior engineer with the Institute of Karst Geology of China Geological Survey, categorized the find as a large sinkhole, with a well-preserved primitive forest at the bottom, Xinhua reported.

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The explorers completed their expedition on May 6, emerging from the sinkhole after rappelling more than 100 meters down (about 330 feet) and walking several hours to reach its bottom, according to Xinhua. The sinkhole measures about 1,000 feet in length, 500 feet in width and 630 feet in depth.

That such a sinkhole might be found in China is not a big surprise because the region has "this incredibly visually spectacular karst with enormous sinkholes and giant cave entrances and so forth," Veni told Live Science.
Follow Mike Snider on Twitter: @mikesnider.
Zhang Yuanhai was part of a team that explored an even larger sinkhole found in Guangxi five years ago.

This latest discovery brings the region's number of such sinkholes to 30, Xinhua reported. Mexico and Papua New Guinea are other countries where sinkholes are frequently found.

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Giant sinkhole found in China has hidden forest with ancient trees growing at its floor

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Cave explorers in southern China may have found the modern-day equivalent of The Lost World. At the bottom of the newly discovered 630-foot deep sinkhole lies a hidden forest, lush with shoulder-high flora and tall trees.

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Many caves are discovered by accident, such as this one in Canada, named the Sarlacc’s Pit from Star Wars.

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Exploring Son Doong, the world’s largest cave. A sinkhole leads to an area of vegetation and daylight within the cave.

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Media Credits

The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited.

Web Producer

other

Last Updated

September 27, 2022

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Located in Vietnam, near the border with Laos, the largest cave in the world wasn't widely known until 2009. Join photojournalist Martin Edström, as he photographs The Son Doong Cave in 360 degrees.

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Animals in caves have adapted to have less pigmentation, small/no eyes, and the development of senses besides sight.

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How have animals living only in caves adapted? : Ocean Exploration Facts: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research

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Animals living only in marine caves have adapted to environments with low light and often low levels of oxygen.

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Earliest hunting scene in prehistoric art

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Rock art from thousands of years ago show how humans hunted animals, and even what animals they hunted.

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Earliest hunting scene in prehistoric art

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Describes the different structures in caves and how they form.

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Gypsum

Gypsum is a mineral that forms in the dry areas of the cave. It is a calcium sulfate mineral that is soluble in water. It is most commonly seen as delicate white crystal found along tour routes such as Cleveland Avenue and Kentucky Avenue. Along Broadway in historic section of Mammoth Cave you can also see gypsum, but it is covered with a dark coating (so it looks dark brown instead of white).The coating on this gypsum is from smoke from the torches that people used in the cave 2000 - 3000 years ago. This discoloration can be seen particularly well near Giant's Coffin and the historic Tuberculosis Huts. Gypsum will also grow as crystals in the dirt along some cave passages.

Types of Gypsum Formations

Crusts - Crusts are where gypsum lines the walls as thin (or sometimes thick) plate covering (actually extruding from) the limestone. Crusts are common along the Historic Tour, Grand Avenue, and Great Onyx routes.

Flowers - Gypsum may also grow outwards in shapes that resemble flowers. This occurs in areas such as Cleveland Avenue and Kentucky Avenue. Flowers, like crusts, form as the gypsum extrudes from the rock (like toothpaste from a tube). In a crust all the crystal grow at about the same speed, but to form a flower, some of the crystals grow faster than others.

Snowballs -This formation is the one that gives the Snowball Room its name. They are globular white gypsum balls that cover the ceiling.

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Stalactites, Stalagmites, and Cave Formations - Mammoth Cave National Park (U.S. National Park Service)

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Gypsum is a mineral that forms in the dry areas of the cave. It is a calcium sulfate mineral that is soluble in water. It is most commonly seen as delicate white crystal found along tour routes such as Cleveland Avenue and Kentucky Avenue.

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The history of cave exploration.

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History of Caves
Caves have been used by humans for a long time and for a number of reasons. For many they provided shelter, for others they were a source for minerals and economic prosperity. The first mentions of karst landscape date back to the ancient Assyrian King Salmanassar III. As reported on bronze engravings, he was investigating the caves and springs at the source of the Tigris River. There are also mentions of karst topography in the writings of the ancient Greek and Romans ( Jennings, 1971). In Israel there is a cave called the Cave of Letters and inside this cave documents from the second century C.E. describing in detail one woman's life were found (Figure 1). The woman was named

Figure 1: The Cave of Letters in Israel which was used for protection and storage 2000 years ago is no being excavated and explored. (NOVA, 2004).

Babatha and it is thought that she used the cave for protection and to store her documents for safekeeping (Tyson, 2004). For information on Babatha and the Cave of Letters click here. It wasn't until the 17 th century, when scientific societies began to emerge that books devoted to karst started to appear. The earliest work was written in 1654 by a Parisian by the name of Jacques Gaffarel, however little of this text remains today ( Jennings 1971) (Figure 2). In the mid to late 19th

Figure 2: The first page of Jacques Gaffarel's 1654 work on karst topography. ( Martel, 1952)

century Vienna, Austria was the center for scientific study and karst was a hot topic. This area was the hub for karst study because there were karst areas, primarily the Dinaric karst, around Vienna which fueled research and discussion ( Herak and Stringfield, 1972). In the late 19 th century Edouard Martel, with his extensive investigation into karst landscapes, however brought France to the front in karst study with Austria where it has remained since ( Jennings, 1971). The following quote from Martel's first work Les Cevennes published in 1888 speaks of the caves he examined in France,

Here are natural wonders of inconceivable beauty: Kilometre-long caverns, full of huge stalactites and stalagmites. Subterranean rivers and lakes in a shimmering bed of crystal. A dark and mysterious realm, which, cast in the eerie glow of the magnesium lamp, is transfigured into a magical palace. A fantastic spectacle, just waiting to be discovered (Martel,1888).

After World War I institutes devoted to karst and caves emerged along with the world's first University Professor of speleology in Vienna, Georg Kyrle (Figure 3). After World War II interest is caves spread around the world and Europe was no longer the center for the study of speleology. After the study of karst landscapes was spread worldwide the International congresses of speleology held it's first meeting in 1953. This has evolved into the International Union of Speleology which still operates and will hold the next congress in Athens, Greece in 2005.

Figure 3: An important Austrian speleologist and possibly the world's first professor of speleology, Georg Kyrle (Österreich-Lexikon,1995).

In the 1950's and 60's there was a rush to open the biggest and best cave which is referred to as the cave wars. During this time it was realized that people would pay money to see these mysterious caverns underground and everyone tried to make their cave the biggest and the best on order to attract the most tourists. A National Parks Service ranger and tour guide at Mammoth Caves in Kentucky said in 2004, "Wealthy people in Europe and in the East wanted to see Mammoth Cave, and the owners of Mammoth got a wild idea -- that people would pay money to see a hole in the ground" (Associated Press, 2004).
Crystal Caves in Spring Valley Wisconsin was part of this national contest which is how it got its name. The owner who donned the caves Crystal Caves thought that name would help attract tourists. Even before Wisconsin was a state caves drew people to the area for their mineral resources. Lead miners flocked to modern Southwest Wisconsin. The miners would sometimes spend days inside the caves which is how Wisconsin got its knickname of the Badger State (Green, 2004). This competition actually threatened the integrity of the cave at one point. One of the owners wanted to make one of the rooms in the cave more dramatic by carving out the rock and raising the ceiling. This dramatically weakened the ceiling and the overlying layers of soil were too heavy. Eventually the ceiling in that room collapsed and it is no longer accessible to visitors.

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History of Caves Caves have been used by humans for a long time and for a number of reasons. For many they provided shelter, for others they were a source for minerals and economic prosperity. The first mentions of karst landscape date back to the ancient Assyrian King Salmanassar III.

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How to map a cave by hand, and how to use software to make a finalized 3D render of the cave.

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The National Speleological Society funds cave research by giving grants to qualified teams worldwide.

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There are no application forms. Applications should follow the standard format of : Title, Name(s) of the Researcher(s), their affiliations (if appropriate) and NSS number(s), Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Expected Results, Timetable, and Budget. All applications must be accompanied by a curriculum vitae of the principal investigator(s) including a publication list. List peer-reviewed papers separately. Applications should be submitted to the Chair of the RAC, electronically where possible (Word or Adobe Acrobat file preferred).

RAC grants range up to $1500, average $500-$1000, and are for one year. Proposal budgets should indicate the amount and source of additional funding received or requested.

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There are no application forms. Applications should follow the standard format of : Title, Name(s) of the Researcher(s), their affiliations (if appropriate) and NSS number(s), Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Expected Results, Timetable, and Budget. All applications must be accompanied by a curriculum vitae of the principal investigator(s) including a publication list.

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Plants become more primitive and sparse as you travel further into the cave, but they're still important for cave life.

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A closed-off cave revealed unique prehistoric organisms existing in conditions similar to those 5 million years ago.

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What kinds of animals live in caves:
Trogloxenes, troglophiles, and troglobites.
All organisms depend on each other for food and energy.

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Unlike the surface environment that is very changeable, cave environments are constant. It is a world of total darkness, constant temperature and high humidity. The animals that live in caves must not only adapt to these conditions, they must live in an environment where there is very little to eat.

The population of animals living in caves is very small compared to the animal life on the surface. Consequently, a number of cave animals are on the endangered species list. This means that they are in danger of becoming extinct.

Scientists are just now beginning to appreciate the amazing role that micro-organisms, including super small "nanobacteria" play in cave systems.

The Cave Food Chain
All life depends on sunlight, even in the darkest areas of a cave. No green plants grow here because they need light for photosynthesis. On the surface, green plants make food. Cave animals must depend on occasional floods to wash leaves, twigs and plant debris into the cave. Another food source is provided by droppings from animals that go outside to feed then return to the cave to sleep or raise their young. The droppings from animals, such as bats and crickets, may provide the only major food source in some caves. Few animals can directly feed on these droppings. Instead, bacteria and fungi decompose these materials into simple foods and nutrients.

Fungus-eating insects, such as beetles and mites, feed on the fungi and bacteria on animal droppings and plant debris. These animals then become the food supply for the larger predators like salamanders or crayfish. The droppings from larger cave animals replenishes the food supply for fungus and bacteria. Thus the food chain continues.

All species in the cave system are dependent upon each other for survival. Remember, the number of animals in a cave is far fewer than their relatives on the surface. For these reasons we remember: DO NOT DISTURB life within a cave.

Blind cave fish adapt by having sensory cells in their skin that detects movements in the water nearby.
Rick Olsen, NPS

Types of Cave Life

Cave animals fit into three categories based on the amount of time they actually spend in the cave.

Trogloxenes: from the Greek words "troglos" (cave) and "xenos" (guest). They are temporary cave residents which freely move in and out of the cave. These cave visitors seek out such a habitat from choice, and never complete their entire life cycle in the cave. Bats are usually the first trogloxenes that come to mind. Some species prefer the constant temporature of caves for hibernation and to bear their young. Bats, bears, skunks, moths, and people are examples of trogloxenes. Many of these animals are not dependent on the cave for their survival, they show no special adaptations to the cave environment.

Troglophiles: from the Greek words "troglos" (cave) and "phileo" (love). These cave loving animals can live in the dark zones of a cave, or they can also survive outside the cave. At times they will venture out in search of food. This group includes earthworms, some beetles, cave crickets, frogs, salamanders, and some crustaceans (such as crayfish).

Troglobites: from the Greek words "troglos" (cave) and "bios" (life). They are the true cave dwellers which spend their entire lives in the cave. Living permanently in the dark zone, these species are found only in caves and cannot survive outside the caves.

Troglobites have developed special adaptations to help them survive in caves. Since cave food sources are meager, the sense organs and physical resources of troglobites are devoted to finding food. Sense organs and physical adaptations that are beneficial to the animals' survival are enhanced. Sense organs that are not necessary have degenerated.

Most troglobites are white to pinkish in color. They lack pigment (color) because they have no need for protection from the sun's rays or for camouflage to hide them from predators. Many have no eyes or eyes that are poorly developed. Eyes are not necessary because of the lack of light. Since eyes require food energy to maintain, and are very prone to injury, an eyeless cave fish can survive longer with less food than a fish that has eyes.

What the troglobites have lost they make up for with longer legs and antennae, or feelers, and with adaptations that enable them to go for long periods of time with little food. Animals that have completely adapted to cave life include: cave fish, cave crayfish, cave shrimp, isopods, amphipods, millipedes, some cave salamanders and insects.

A little brown bat
Michigan Department of Natural Resources

The Big Story: Bats

What animal can fly with its hands, "see" with its ears, and sleep hanging upside down? Your friendly neighborhood bat. Bats are tiny mammals that are often feared by many people. Bats are one of the most misunderstood animals. The truth is that bats are gentle, intelligent animals that are quite timid when it comes to interacting with humans.

Did you know that bats are the only true flying mammals in the world? They are one of the most numerous and diverse orders of mammals. The total world population of bats is more than ten billion. About 1,000 species are recognized. In the United States, there are over 40 species of bats working to keep mosquitoes from bugging you.

Cave bats range in size from three to five inches long, with wingspans between eight and thirteen inches. Most bats in Missouri have wingspans of less than five inches. The wing of a bat is actually a hand. (Bats are of the order Chiroptera, Latin for "hand wing.") The wing is composed of the forearm and extended "fingers" of the hand. The third, fourth, and fifth fingers, or digits, of the hand support most of the wing membrane. The thumb is a tiny hook on top of the wing. The wing membrane connects with the body, back legs, and, in most bats, encloses the tail. Cave bats weigh very little, less than an ounce.

Bats can live up to 25 years and usually have only one young each year. As with other mammals, the baby bat is born alive and is fed milk by the mother. Females often nest in large colonies. They roost in caves during the day, preferring dome shaped ceilings for safety from predators. Roosting bats hang by their feet with their wings folded around them. Bats not only roost in caves, but also in attics, towers, and other man-made structures; some species even live in trees.

Many people think that bats are dirty and carry diseases. Bats are actually clean and almost disease-free animals. And yet, people are concerned that all bats carry rabies. This misconception began over forty years ago when inadequate testing procedures found that all bats tested positive for rabies. After better testing procedures were developed, it was found that bats carry a harmless virus that gave the same reaction as the rabies virus. Unfortunately, the damage was already done and this peaceful little creature was labeled as a menace to society. However, as with all mammals, there is a possibility that a bat may contract rabies. In the United States, rabid bats are rare; less than one-half of one percent of bats carry rabies. Many more rabies cases can be attributed to dogs, cats and raccoons than to bats. As with any wild animal, a sick or injured bat should not be handled!

You are most likely to see bats swirling around a streetlight as they devour your local mosquito population. Bats are the only major predator of night-flying inects. One gray bat may eat up to 3,000 insects in a single night! In Texas, there is a colony of Mexican free-tailed bats that eats more than 250,000 pounds of insects every night!

Bats feed at night, catching insects such as moths, flying beetles, and mosquitoes. How do bats manage to steer through the darkness of night and the total blackness of caves with such ease and accuracy? They use ultrasonic sound to locate insects. Bats send a high frequency sound that bounces off objects. They hear these echoes and locate, identify, and capture moving prey while flying through the dark. This process is called echolocation. Echolocation helps them navigate through the cave in total darkness. Have you ever noticed the large ears of bats? These large ears help them hear these echoes.

Back to More Than Skin Deep Index

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The Biology of Caves - Ozark National Scenic Riverways (U.S. National Park Service)

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Unlike the surface environment that is very changeable, cave environments are constant. It is a world of total darkness, constant temperature and high humidity. The animals that live in caves must not only adapt to these conditions, they must live in an environment where there is very little to eat.

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Cavemen drew animals realistically and were aware of their structure and how they moved.

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Predatory Animals Ruled The Prehistoric Caves Some 300,000 Years Ago

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Prehistoric predatory animals and early humans sought shelter in caves, as shown through fossil droppings on the ground.

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Ancient tribes had it rough some 300,000 years ago as they were forced to compete with carnivores for shelter in the famous Denisova Cave complex located in the Altai Mountains in Siberia.

Using modern geoarchaeological tools and techniques a team of Russian and Australian scientists led by Dr. Mike Morley, a Flinders University ARC Future Fellow, discovered new details about what daily life was like for ancient tribes living in what is now considered one of the most important sites to study human evolution.
RELATED: WE OWE OUR IMMUNITY BOOST TO EXTINCT HUMAN SPECIES AND A GENE VARIANT
Fossil animal droppings, bone fragments cover the grounds of the caves

The researchers found fossil animal droppings, charcoal from long-ago fires and bone fragments that cover the grounds of the caves. According to the scientists, which published their findings in journal Scientific Reports, large carnivores including hyena, wolves and bears and well as three of the early nomadic human groups including Denisovans, Neanderthals, and early Homo sapiens used the caves for shelter.

"These hominin groups and large carnivores such as hyenas and wolves left a wealth of microscopic traces that illuminate the use of the cave over the last three glacial-interglacial cycles,"said Morley in a press release announcing the research. "Our results complement previous work by some of our colleagues at the site that has identified ancient DNA in the same dirt, belonging to Neanderthals and a previously unknown human group, the Denisovans, as well as a wide range of other animals."

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Predatory Animals Ruled The Prehistoric Caves Some 300,000 Years Ago

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Ancient tribes had it rough some 300,000 years ago as they were forced to compete with carnivores for shelter in the famous Denisova Cave complex located in the Altai Mountains in Siberia.

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A sci-fi horror story centered around fantasy cave exploration deep in the sea.

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Read 2,602 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. A thrilling, atmospheric debut with the intensive drive of The Martian and Gravity and t...

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A series about Russians escaping radiation on the surface by sealing themselves in an underground metro. They live in tunnels and caves that’ve been undisturbed in years and find that they’re not as abandoned as they thought.

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Its very depressing, and quite different. Thats why I recomend it. You grow a little if you read it. Ofcoures I would recomend you read it when older Its very depressing, and quite different. Thats why I recomend it. You grow a little if you read it. Ofcoures I would recomend you read it when older to understand and follow it better, but even at younger ages it has its benefits. ...more (less)

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Its very depressing, and quite different. Thats why I recomend it. You grow a little if you read it. Ofcoures I would recomend you read it when older Its very depressing, and quite different. Thats why I recomend it. You grow a little if you read it.

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Inner Earth Is Teeming With Exotic Forms of Life

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Bacteria thousands of years old are able to survive far below Earth’s surface, and studying them might let us figure out more about other planets’ ecosystems, and even alien life.

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Ancient bacteria from nearly two miles below Earth's surface: that's what first drew Tullis Onstott to begin his search for life in the most unlikely of places. The geomicrobiologist had just attended a 1992 U.S. Department of Energy meeting about rocks estimated to be more than 200 million years old-older than most dinosaurs. These prehistoric rocks had been unearthed from a gas exploration well, and they turned out to be teeming with bacteria.

"That was pretty amazing to me," says Princeton University's Onstott. "The idea that these bacteria had been living in these Triassic rocks since they were deposited at a time prior to the age of the dinosaurs, that idea caught my fancy," he says.

These rocks were among the first substantial evidence that life existed miles underground, and they jumpstarted researchers' efforts to study life in the so-called deep subsurface. Over the past 20 years, Onstott and others have found that there is a greater variety of life in a lot more inhospitable places than anyone had imagined.

Deep life has been found all over the world and under a variety of conditions-in oil fields and gold mines, beneath ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica and in sediments and rocks below the ocean floor. These places can be extremely hostile environments, with pressures 10 to 100 times that at the surface. Temperatures can range from near freezing to more than 140 degrees Fahrenheit.

A mile or more below the surface there's no sunlight and very little oxygen. In these austere environments, creatures have to scratch out a living on whatever energy they can muster from their surroundings. This means that the pace of life down there can sometimes be incredibly slow. These microbes can be a thousand- or million-fold less abundant than their brethren above ground. And some may have been around for hundreds, thousands or even millions of years-real microscopic Methuselahs.

These creatures of the deep are diverse, consisting of bacteria and other single-celled organisms called archaea. There are even multicellular animals miles below the surface, including tiny worms called nematodes.

"What has been surprising as we continue exploring this deep hidden universe, is that it's more complex down there than we could have possibly imagined when we started looking at Triassic samples back in the '90s," says Onstott.

That complexity has opened up a world of possibilities for researchers, from cleaning up toxic waste to the search for extraterrestrial life. Some of these deep organisms feed directly on metals and minerals, and can affect groundwater by increasing or decreasing levels of arsenic, uranium and toxic metals. Scientists hope that these bacteria can soon be adapted to trap or remove such harmful substances from things like the wastewater leaking from a mine.

But perhaps most tantalizing is the idea that the conditions deep underground are so alien they may give researchers clues about where to find extraterrestrial life-and what that life might look like.

"It directly relates to whether life could be existing below the surface of Mars," says Onstott. "That's really what drew me into this field from the get-go, and still is a driver for me."

Between the extreme environments and the relative scarcity of organisms, researchers go to great lengths-and depths-to study these microbes. They venture into mines and caverns or use drills to extract samples from below terrestrial sites or the ocean floor. In some areas it can take several days to get even a single sample. "Going to the ends of the earth and drilling, or going to the Arctic and going underground a mile to get a sample, it's not easy," says Onstott.
Probing the Hellish Depths
Almost a mile below Earth's surface, deep within South Africa's Beatrix Gold Mine, Maggie Lau looks for life. It's hot and humid, and only headlamps breach the darkness as Lau, a geomicrobiologist in Onstott's group at Princeton University, collects water from boreholes. These are holes drilled into the rock by geologists looking for gas and water pockets in advance of mining operations. Lau fills an assortment of vials with gas and water samples ranging in volume from less than a teaspoon's worth to just over two pints.

The gas that Lau collects can reveal how ancient the water is. "The samples I am studying are around 40,000 to 80,000 years old," she says. The water may have originated at the surface and trickled down through cracks over thousands or even millions of years, bringing microorganisms either from the surface or from shallower regions of the subsurface down with it.

Unlike the water, Lau takes a quicker and more dramatic route to the research site. She heads down a mine shaft in a lift-cage-which drops almost a mile in less than a minute-and then walks a mile or more with a loaded backpack. Some tunnels require researchers to crawl, dragging their packs behind them, or wade through knee- or thigh-high water in flooded sections. Occasionally the lift-cage isn't available after a hard day's work, and Lau and Onstott have to take the stairs back up. "We were joking that this was like a stairway to heaven," she says.

In the hellish depths, where the water can reach 130 degrees Fahrenheit and the rocks themselves are often warm to the touch, there's not a lot of life to be found. To gather as many living cells as possible for her analysis, Lau leaves some of her vials to filter hundreds to thousands of gallons of water over several weeks to a few months.

About a mile below the surface, Lau can usually find 1,000 to 10,000 cells in less than a teaspoonful of water. That might seem like a lot, but a pinch of soil from your backyard can contain 100,000 to a million times as many cells. At sites more than a mile underground, there might only be 500 cells per teaspoon of water. Lau estimates that she'd have to filter water continuously for 200 days to get enough DNA and RNA for her analysis.

It can be difficult to grow bacterial species in the lab without knowing the specific food they eat or the precise conditions under which they thrive. Scientists have only been able to grow about one percent of the bacteria they find at their deep field sites. As a result, most species are only known from their unique molecular signatures-and DNA or RNA sequencing has revealed a plethora of previously unidentified bacteria in the samples scientists have collected down there.

Most recently, Lau is going a step beyond finding out what lives down there-she wants to know what they do for a living. Without sunlight and plants to trap the sun's energy through photosynthesis, these deep-living bacteria have to survive on energy from the chemical reactions between rocks and water. These reactions can produce hydrogen, methane and sulfates, and scientists thought that those three chemicals would fuel the majority of bacteria living in these deep environments.

To her surprise, Lau found that this wasn't the case. Instead, the chemicals sustain only a minority of the bacteria, which then produce sulfur and nitrates. Bacteria that fed on these secondary chemicals dominated in these environments.

This means that when searching for deep life either on Earth or on other worlds, scientists should look for a broader range of metabolic reactions. "Don't just focus on the few major processes. We should be more open-minded to look at the full and complete metabolic landscape," says Lau.

"Being able to actually see what they're all doing down there now is absolutely the most exciting thing, something that we've been always wanting to do and trying to figure out how to do for the last 20 years, and now we can finally do it," says Onstott.

"[Lau's] first snapshot, it's like getting the first image back from Mars or something, it's incredible," he adds.
A Veritable Zoo
Where there's prey, there are usually predators. And bacteria make a tasty meal for a lot of creatures.

When Gaetan Borgonie heard about these deep bacteria, he wondered if he could find worms called nematodes-which feed on bacteria-in the same subterranean places. Borgonie, a zoologist at Extreme Life Isyensya in Gentbrugge, Belgium, had worked on these worms for 20 years. He knew that nematodes could survive a wide range of conditions at the surface, including extremely hot or cold temperatures and very low oxygen levels, so in theory, they were well suited to conditions deep underground.

Borgonie called up Onstott, who invited him to come explore the mines in South Africa. But finding these worms wasn't easy. Although they are highly abundant on the surface, in the mines Borgonie had to sample more than 2,500 gallons of water to find a single nematode. "You really need to change your mindset and leave what you know from the surface, because underground is a different planet," he says.

Borgonie discovered a large number of nematodes living in the mines in 3,000- to 12,000-year-old water from boreholes, as well as in stalactites hanging from the mine's tunnels. These included one new species found nearly a mile below the surface, and another unidentified worm living more than two miles down. These animals were the first evidence of multicellular, eukaryotic life this deep, Borgonie says.

Unlike the unique bacteria found at these depths, the vast majority of the worms belonged to species found on the surface. "These animals are already used to stress, and those that are opportunistic at the surface do very well underground," says Borgonie.

Deep environments might actually offer some benefits, given the stable conditions and the lack of predators for the worms. "For them it's like a holiday," Borgonie says.

Convinced that there must be more such creatures living in the mines, Borgonie left his sampling equipment in South Africa's Driefontein gold mine for two years to filter more than three million gallons of water-enough to fill almost five Olympic-size swimming pools.

"That's when we found the entire zoo," Borgonie says. He identified several other multicellular organisms, including flatworms and segmented worms, as well as what appeared to be a crustacean. Nearly all of these species survived by eating bacteria.

The discovery of these organisms is encouraging for scientists looking for extraterrestrial life, Borgonie says. "I think it's very good that we find such a huge ecosystem underground," he says. "If we can prove that they can survive indefinitely underground, then it might be very good news for people searching for life on Mars."

"I would really love [to be doing] this work on the planet Mars," he says. "That's why I always say, if they ever give me a one-way ticket to Mars, I'm gone."
The Alien Deep
Borgonie may not have his ticket just yet, but upcoming space exploration missions could give us a better idea of whether other parts of the solar system could support life.

"One of the things that has given people a sense of optimism where astrobiology is concerned is the finding that there are organisms that can persist in what we would consider very extreme conditions," says Tori Hoehler, an astrobiologist at the NASA Ames Research Center. Hoehler is a member of the NASA Astrobiology Institute's Rock-Powered Life team, which studies how reactions between different kinds of rocks and water can generate enough energy to support life.

"One of the most prevalent habitats that is available out there is the one defined by rock and water," says Hoehler. You can imagine aquifers sitting deep under Mars' surface or the oceans sloshing above the rocky crust of Jupiter's moon Europa or Saturn's moon Enceladus, he says.

NASA's Europa Multiple Flyby Mission, expected to launch in the next five to ten years, will give scientists a better idea of whether Jupiter's icy moon has any environments that could support life. As for Mars, researchers have gone from asking whether they can find habitable environments to actually looking for evidence of life itself, says Hoehler.

Even though conditions on the Martian surface are currently extremely inhospitable to life, the planet appears to have had an atmosphere and surface water at some time in its past. If life had evolved then, it could have spread to the Martian subsurface, where the environment stayed stable even as the surface turned hostile. It's possible that life still persists deep underground, waiting for us to dig it out.

We won't have to wait too long to get our first peek beneath the Martian surface. The European Space Agency's 2018 ExoMars Mission will drill about six feet below the Martian surface to look for signs of life. That may not be deep enough to find living organisms, but it should be far enough below the surface that we could find evidence of life.

More than 20 years since ancient bacteria first gave him a glimpse into Earth's deep life, Onstott can't wait to see what we find on Mars, especially once scientists can dig a little deeper.

"If there's a sweet spot on Mars, someplace where you just get the right balance of temperature and water, then there might be organisms surviving under those conditions."
Learn about this research and more at the Deep Carbon Observatory.

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Inner Earth Is Teeming With Exotic Forms of Life

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Ancient bacteria from nearly two miles below Earth's surface: that's what first drew Tullis Onstott to begin his search for life in the most unlikely of places. The geomicrobiologist had just attended a 1992 U.S. Department of Energy meeting about rocks estimated to be more than 200 million years old-older than most dinosaurs.

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Gates of Hell on Earth: The Underworld and its Entrances - MozartCultures

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An article showing that Cape Matapan is the entrance that Hercules used to reach the Underworld in Greek mythology.

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The Ancient Greeks and Romans had a strong perception of life and death. Gods manifested in almost every aspect of their lives, through myths and their oral tradition. The Pantheon acted as a foundation for their cosmology. But as much as they developed divine concepts for every aspect of life, they also did with death and the afterlife. Two of the most famous masterpieces of Ancient Literature, the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid, allow us to grasp a few concepts related to this and the underworld and its entrances.

From Literature

The Homeric poets were unaware of the notion of Elysian fields, a place for the blessed is never mentioned. According to the passage from the Iliad XX verse 67, Hades is described as a shadowy, humid area with a landscape of burial mounds. A dark beach next to the river of woe, Acheron, which can only be crossed by the boat of Charon. The area is also guarded by a monstrous three-headed hound, Cerberus.

From the beginning, we can see elements that are repeated in the realm of the dead: a monstrous creature acting as a gatekeeper, and the persistent idea of water and darkness, but it is not exactly 'underground', instead it is the place where the light of Helios never shines.

The Odyssey Book X verse 487, describes the kingdom of Hades, the Underworld, in greater detail, giving it a geographical location within the earth, on a distant shore of the Ocean, farther than the abode of the sun and the world of dreams.

Hesiod in the Theogony recovers this idea of territory in the confines of the flat earth, beyond the Ocean that surrounded the world and the Garden of the Hesperides. This was his vision of the "Underworld".

Hercules Gets Cerberus from the Underworld, Charon, the Ferryman of the Styx, Jacob van Campen, 1645 - 1650

It is Hesiod who incorporates Tartarus as part of Hades. Also, his Works and Days mentions for the first time the Fortunate Isles as part of the idyll of the Elysian Fields, a paradise reserved for the greatest heroes of myths. But there is also a place for those who were not renowned for their deeds, a place for the commoners, the old, the young, and the weak. It is a place secluded from life for the dead. A dark world that resembles Helheim, for all those who were not considered heroes in life.

The dominions of Hades in the Homeric texts are described in a similar way to the domain of Hel: a ruler who rules a palace with gardens, fields, servants, cattle. Here the emphasis is placed on the term itself and the epithets that accompany the name "Hades", the invisible one, that of invisible domains. The dead are sometimes described wandering these domains which they call "gray asphodel meadows" in reference to these pale plants. These are described as shadows without their consciousness, in a warning to Odysseus in Odyssey XI, verse 576.

The afterlife world is observed throughout the emblematic works that shaped them, those texts which captured the views and concerns of the men and women of their era.

The most distinctive and common to all of them is the sunless location of the world of the dead. It always refers to a realm of darkness, cold, and mist, located at the ends of the world and opposite to the place where the gods dwell. They are closed territories from which it is not possible to get out, not even for the gods themselves. It is a land protected by a gigantic beast, and it has a custodial entity that interrogates or demands something from the passerby; a place where corpses "exist" and remain for all eternity, without any awareness of their existence, without reason or feelings.

With these ideas, we can think of the vision of the afterlife that very different ancient cultures possessed, always agreeing that the dead were in a separate and divided place from the world of the living. A place that did not necessarily contemplate the possibility of return or a resurrection. And more importantly, the idea of punishment and torment for the deceased.

The ideas of death, torment, and punishment are later and eminently linked to Christianity.

To Real Locations

The river Acheron actually exists and it is located northwest of Greece and belongs to the Epirus region. In the Odyssey Book X, Odysseus used this river to enter the Underworld. These were the directions given by the witch Circe to Odysseus and his crew.

"So I spoke, and the beautiful goddess straightway made answer: 'Son of Laertes, sprung from Zeus, Odysseus of many devices, [505] let there be in thy mind no concern for a pilot to guide thy ship, but set up thy mast, and spread the white sail, and sit thee down; and the breath of the North Wind will bear her onward. But when in thy ship thou hast now crossed the stream of Oceanus, where is a level shore and the groves of Persephone- [510] tall poplars, and willows that shed their fruit-there do thou beach thy ship by the deep eddying Oceanus, but go thyself to the dank house of Hades. There into Acheron flow Periphlegethon and Cocytus, which is a branch of the water of the Styx; [515] and there is a rock, and the meeting place of the two roaring rivers. Thither, prince, do thou draw nigh, as I bid thee, and dig a pit of a cubit's length this way and that, and around it pour a libation to all the dead, first with milk and honey, thereafter with sweet wine, [520] and in the third place with water, and sprinkle thereon white barley meal."

Cape Matapan, also known as Taenarum or Cape Tenaron, is the geographical location in the tip of the Peloponnese, by the edge of Lake Avernus. The legendary hero Hercules (Herakles) and Aeneas used this entrance to reach the Underworld. The myth of Orpheus also mentions this location related to the underworld, offering the path to the tragic figure who attempted to recover his wife from the Realm of the Dead. The Aeneid, book VI reads:

What else the Sibyl said. Straightway they find
A cave profound, of entrance gaping wide,
O'erhung with rock, in gloom of sheltering grove,
Near the dark waters of a lake, whereby
No bird might ever pass with scathless wing,
So dire an exhalation is breathed out
From that dark deep of death to upper air :-
Hence, in the Grecian tongue, Aornos called. (...)

An altar dark, and piled upon the flames
The ponderous entrails of the bulls, and poured
Free o'er the burning flesh the goodly oil.
Then lo! at dawn's dim, earliest beam began
Beneath their feet a groaning of the ground :
The wooded hill-tops shook, and, as it seemed,
She-hounds of hell howled viewless through the shade ,
To hail their Queen. "Away, 0 souls profane!
Stand far away!" the priestess shrieked, "nor dare
Unto this grove come near! Aeneas, on!
Begin thy journey! Draw thy sheathed blade!
Now, all thy courage! now, th' unshaken soul!"
She spoke, and burst into the yawning cave
With frenzied step; he follows where she leads,
And strides with feet unfaltering at her side.

Sources

Hesiod. Works and Days.

Homer. The Iliad. The Odyssey.

Longenecker, Richard N. (2003). "Cosmology". In Gowan, Donald E. The Westminster

Theological Wordbook of the Bible. Westminster John Knox Press.

Virgilius. The Aeneid

West, M. L. , European Poetry and Myth, OUP Oxford, 2007

Featured image: Jan Brueghel the Elder - Aeneas and the Cumaean Sibyl in the Underworld

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Gates of Hell on Earth: The Underworld and its Entrances - MozartCultures

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Ancient Greeks and Romans had a strong perception of life and death. Gods manifested in almost every aspect of their lives, through myths and their oral tradition. The Pantheon acted as a foundation for their cosmology. But as much as they developed divine concepts for every aspect of life, they also did with death and the afterlife.