I am beginning to understand why 6 million visitors choose to come to Cappadocia. Part of it is the weather\u2014at least in the 7 months of the year when it\u2019s not snow covered. We\u2019re at 4,000 feet, which makes evenings temperate (in the 50s), with warm days (in the 80s), and apparently it\u2019s like ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/files\/2013\/06\/cappa6-300x269.jpg\")
this until the snows come\u2014and it gets bitterly cold, our guide says, with lots of snow. Some of that is obvious when I look out my window at the volcano largely responsible for the eruptions that created Cappadocia\u2014it\u2019s over 4000 meters, or over 12,000 feet, still snowcapped, and betraying that volcano shape that hides the fact that the last eruption was 2 million years ago, and the guide assured me it was dormant.<\/p>\n
The second attraction may well be the scenery. As I mentioned, it\u2019s a combination of the Badlands, Wyoming, Zion-Bryce, and maybe the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park because it is pretty green in some places. The volcano created lava flows and a variety of rocks and minerals ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/files\/2013\/06\/cappa2-300x244.jpg\")
that have eroded in various ways; the scenery consists of \u201cfairy chimneys\u201d and rock formations that could be in the Great Sand Dunes, hoodoo type formations with balanced rocks on top; I think the description of one valley is \u201clike the moon,\u201d and another is called imagination valley, where our guide was able to point out formations that looked like \u201cNapoleon\u2019s Hat,\u201d etc.![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/files\/2013\/06\/cappa5-300x244.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Probably the third reason\u2014though not in my order of importance\u2014is the human history of the place. If I were to go to the museum in Kayseri, the main place, I\u2019d probably find evidence of settlement for at least 4000 years, Most of the ruins, however, date from the Roman\/Byzantine period\u2014from the 3rd century AD until the area was conquered in the 13th century by first the Seljuk Turks and then the Ottomans. During that period, for some reason, Christianity took root in Cappadocia, and most of what we looked at today was what remained from that period. Because the rock could be worked relatively easily, people made homes in the caves\u2014in I\u2019m glad to be one of the 6 million visitors this year, but I do hope they\u2019re not all 6 million will be here tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am beginning to understand why 6 million visitors choose to come to Cappadocia. Part of it is the weather\u2014at least in the 7 months of the year when it\u2019s not snow covered. We\u2019re at 4,000 feet, which makes evenings temperate (in the 50s), with warm days (in the 80s), and apparently it\u2019s like this … Continue reading “Cappadocia Means “Land of Well Bred Horses” in Persian”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-talking-turkey-2013-on-my-own"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1323"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9585,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1323\/revisions\/9585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/files\/2013\/06\/DSC08408-rotated.jpg\")
<\/a>including the Hittites (can the Sox get one to bat!), whose legacy is partly in the pottery the locals reproduce and sell to Scout leaders who are enjoying their first trip to Cappadocia. Then the Persians were through here, and we\u2019re far enough east to have the Persian armies tramp through here several times on their way to fight the Greeks or the Romans.<\/p>\nfact, the guest house where I\u2019m staying is a modified cave house. They created whole villages in the \u201cfairy chimneys,\u201d rather like the Puebloan in the Southwest\u2014except the homes were individual, and not communal, though we did see some communal kitchens. Like the native Americans at Chaco Canyon or Mesa Verde, the <\/a>Cappadocians could clamber up the staircases to their cave homes and wait out the invasion. The churches–bear in mind that people were illiterate–had to be decorated with scenes from the bible for education. The frescos were painted in natural ingredients, including pigeon white (I said they created dovecotes so they could get dove manure to fertilize the vineyards), and because the caves were covered (apparently, this area is not susceptible to earthquakes), many of the frescoes survived both time and the Muslim conquest; because Muslim art does not feature people (at least not in mosques), the Muslims tended to deface (literally) the frescoes, but there were still some magnificent churches, partly because of the importance of Cappadocia in church history. I had Eusebius as bishop of Caesarea, which he was\u2014in Palestine\u2014but there were three local Saints that were featured in the churches here.<\/p>\n