Vol. XXXV, No. 4 



WASHINGTON 



April, 1919 



THE 



ATDONAL 



OGffSAPfflG 



COPYRIGHT, 1919. BY NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY. WASHINGTON, D. C. 



THE CONE-DWELLERS OF ASIA MINOR" 



A Primitive People Who Live in Nature-Made Apart- 



ment Houses, Fashioned by Volcanic Violence 



and Trickling Streams 



By J. R. Sitlington Sterrett 



The author of the following account of the Troglodytes of Cappadocia stood 

 at the head of American geographers whose researches in Asia Minor have 

 revealed to modern man many pages in the absorbing history of the hitman race. 

 His death occurred at a time when he was completing arrangements for another 

 expedition of greater magnitude than any he had previously undertaken. Dr. 

 Sterretfs photographs illustrating this article afford the only comprehensive idea 

 of the cone-dwellings — formed by the forces of nature, but excavated by the Trog- 

 lodytes — yet given to the Western World. 



IT IS a curious paradox in the history 

 of human migrations and human de- 

 velopment that in that very land 

 which historians and geographers char- 

 acterize as "the cradle of civilization" 

 there is to be found today a people whose 

 mode of living is, in one of its basic prin- 

 ciples, more primitive than that of the 

 most benighted tribes of Africa or the 

 South Pacific, remote from the warming 

 and enlightening influence of modern 

 thought and progress. 



Residing within a stone's throw, meta- 

 phorically speaking, of the wonderful 

 civilization which flourished on the banks 

 of the Nile 6,000 years ago ; of the 

 mighty kingdoms of Assyria and Baby- 

 lonia which arose in the valleys of the 



* See also, in the National Geographic 

 Magazine, "The Mole Men : An Account of 

 the Troglodytes of Southern Tunisia," Septem- 

 ber, 191 1, and "China's Treasures," including 

 a description of the cliff temples of Lung-Men, 

 October, 1912. 



Euphrates and the Tigris, their power 

 and splendor dazzling the world 2,000 

 years before the Christian era ; and at 

 the very threshold of ancient Greece, 

 with its unrivaled culture and political 

 advancement, the Troglodytes of Cappa- 

 docia still retain toward their fellow-men 

 an attitude of mind akin to that which 

 obtained in the Stone Age, when there 

 was no such thing as human society, but 

 every man was his own law and the mor- 

 tal enemy of his neighbor. 



The only difference between the so- 

 ciety of these Troglodytes and that of 

 primitive man consists in this, that primi- 

 tive man did not brook the presence of 

 any other man, while here the isolation 

 of the clan takes the place of the isola- 

 tion of the individual. 



CONES CLUSTER AROUND EXTINCT 

 VOLCANO 



The caves, cones, and cliff dwellings 

 of the Cappadocian Troglodytes of both 



