'Fox hole' opens passage to Neolithic past, possibly Hades

Field Museum curator and archaeologists excavate cave in Southern Greece

October 18, 2012

Cassidy Herrington


And it has a surprising Chicago tie. 














Greeks have gravitated toward financial opportunities in big cities, like Athens.

Some, like 74-year-old Paul Kondraros, moved to Chicago. In 1953, Kondraros left Diros, the closest village to Alepotrypa and his hometown, “to make more money” as an electrical engineer.

Kondraros has a startling connection to Alepotrypa. He claims his uncle discovered the cave and is responsible for the name, which means “fox hole” in Greek.  

Kondraros said his uncle was out hunting with his dog in the late 1950s, when the dog took off in pursuit of a fox and darted into a small hole.

“After two hours or so, the dog never came out,” Kondraros said. He said his uncle widened the hole and ventured inside. That hole, he said, was the opening to Alepotrypa Cave.              

Anastasia Papathanasiou, a Diros Project archaeologist who works for the Greek Ministry of Culture, said the story “might be true,” but adds that there are several different tales of discovery circulating in the village.

An even greater legend, from Greek mythology, might be linked to Alepotrypa.

The first archaeologist to dig inside Alepotrypa was 90-year-old Greek Archaeologist Giorgos Papathanassopoulos, in 1970. He’s spent 40 years studying the relics of the cave’s Neolithic people and describes feeling a sense of awe when he imagines what their lives might have been like.

“To this day, the richness and variety of the findings never cease to amaze me,” Papathanassopoulos said in an e-mail. “There is abundant scientific work for at least three more generations.”

His initial findings included kilos of painted funeral vases and the remnants of blazing funeral rituals, Papathanassopoulos said. During the ceremonies, people intentionally broke pottery and set the cave walls on fire.

These rituals “combined with the impressive, enormous hall,” lead Papathanassopolos to an intriguing theory. He posited that the Neolithic people believed the cave was Hades.

“You can easily see why Giorgos would make that hypothesis,”Diros Colleague Michael Galaty said. “The cave really does recall the underworld, Hades and the River Styx.”

Colleague Anastasia Papathanasiou said she’s hesitant to endorse her colleague’s theory because “it’s just a scenario” that obviously cannot be proven.

“It might be, it might not be,” she said.

She and the other team members have their sights set on big sociological questions: What was it about this cave that attracted people from all over the region? And why did they leave?

The reason for the exodus might help us understand why modern people migrate, The Field’s Parkinson said. The source that brought people to the region was cut off, and the settlers outside the cave fled. Parkinson said they also may have abandoned the village due to the stresses of urban life like crime and disease.

“People had never lived in groups this big before, and then they decide ‘This isn’t working,’” Parkinson said. “Rather than dealing with the social stresses of having to live with your neighbor or on top of your neighbor, people just choose to establish settlements elsewhere.”

Kind of like Chicagoans fleeing for the suburbs, Parkinson said.

The diversity of urban life could have been what made Alepotrypa so attractive to Neolithic settlers, much like downtown Chicago in recent decades.

“Now it’s bustling, there are restaurants, we’re seeing more people living downtown,” Parkinson said. “It’s exactly those similar kinds of processes that were going on several thousand years ago.”