Your title is a bit misleading. It’s not one tunnel or an interconnected tunnel network. And most of the tunnels are pretty short. No more than 50 meters most of the time.
My kid is obsessed with Henry Danger. It’s corny as all get out, but can be pretty funny. This is one of the better scenes and entirely related: https://youtu.be/a3q4IXx7zeY?feature=shared&t=117
I hated that show with a passion when my kid first started watching it. Then one night after he went to bed, he left it on TV and I got stoned and just couldn’t be bothered to change it while I played on my phone. Then I got to where I put my phone down and was just legit watching it and laughing my ass off. After that, I found myself sitting there watching it with him and enjoying it totally sober.
Ice storage?
The most common explanation is that they served some religious purpose, but many archaeologists are very happy to label all kinds of things religious and ceremonial when they don’t know what else to call it, so who knows? There have been very few artifacts found in them. We’ll probably never find out.
(“Ceremonial” is often archaeology speak for “we have no idea what the fuck this was for.”)
The equivalent to this I know of are located outside of central europe, specifically Ireland. Located in and under church grounds and graveyards they were used to hide/store valuables during raids, if not the congregation in like the 6th century.
This was according to the local priest in deep rural donegal, mind you.
My favorite thing is when archaeologists dig up female statues with big breasts and wide hips and call them evidence for a “cult of fertility”. I guess that sounds more sciencey than “porn”.
I actually heard a very interesting hypothesis about those statues, which I find compelling- pregnant women carved them as self-portraits, done by looking downward at their bodies, hence the odd proportions.
But sure, maybe porn. I can accept that too. We will probably never know.
Dark meditation retreats are common in Tibetan Buddhism. The birthing canal metaphor is also extremely common in ritual ceremonies.
It’s probably just some kids messing around:
No one read the article, but every suggestion in the comments are already dismissed by more educated experts.
My guess is that since it typically had a bench at the end, it was used by people to consume drugs/mushrooms in a ritualistic event and exit as a form of rebirth while still high as fuck.
You’d expect any kind of ritualistic practice that widespread to have some sort of historical record related to the practice
You seriously underestimate how poorly documented the non-Christian religions were.
Titlegore tbh