The Gate of Pluto or Ploutonion has long been believed to be the gateway to hell in ancient Greek culture. To this day, this gate still spews natural poisonous gas from the ground.
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In Roman and Greek mythology, earth and hell are connected by a cave. The Greeks called this cave Ploutonion, and in Latin America it was called Plutonium. The media used to call it Pluto.
In 2013, while tracking a H๏τ spring, an archaeological team, led by professor Francesco D’Andria of the University of Salento (Italy) rediscovered this hell gate now located in Turkey, with the entrance A stone entrance leads to a small cave.
Hierapolis was founded by the Attalid dynasty in the late 2nd century BC, about 300 years after the city was conquered by the Romans. Originally, Hierapolis was a famous resort with beautiful natural scenery and especially healing mineral springs.
However, over time, a special phenomenon occurred, leading to Plutonium being nicknamed “hell’s gate” when birds that flew too close to the ground were suffocated to death.
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Today, most tourists visiting Ploutonion think that this is a myth that adds to the mystery of the ancient city. “When I got to Ploutonion, I couldn’t understand how this could be a place of death,” said Sarah Yeomans, an archaeologist at the University of Southern California (USA).
In 2013, Hardy Pfanz, a geologist at the University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany) went to Hierapolis to test the hypothesis that the “gate to hell” is a volcanic vent. When he witnessed with his own eyes the corpses of many creatures around the entrance to the temple such as rats, sparrows, beetles, wasps, Hardy affirmed that “the stories related to Ploutonion are true”.
The truth about the ᴅᴇᴀᴅly legends of “hell’s gate” has finally been revealed. When Hardy Pfanz tested the air with a portable gas analyzer, he found that the CO2 concentration around the temple was as high as 80 percent, while just 10 percent CO2 can be ᴅᴇᴀᴅly.
Geographic location is the main factor that makes this interesting feature. Accordingly, Hierapolis was built on the Pamukkale fault, an active fault 35 km long, creating cracks in the Earth’s crust, causing mineral-rich water and toxic gases to escape to the surface at the temple area of Ploutonion. . However, the fault of geological activity caused earthquakes that leveled Hierapolis. Eventually, the city quickly declined and fell into oblivion.
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Hierapolis was famous throughout Rome for being said to be the “gateway to hell”, leading to the world of Pluto and the mythical three-headed hound Cerberus. People from all over have to make pilgrimages here, sacrifice creatures to the god who rules the hell in the temple of Ploutonion. Now, the writer Pliny the Elder and the geographer Strabo described the sacrifice as a chilling sight. “I threw the sparrows into the temple and they fell, instantly ᴅᴇᴀᴅ,” Strabo writes in book 13 of the “Geography” series.
To explain why the monks in the temple did not die during the sacrifice process, in 2018, Hardy returned to Hierapolis and studied the air concentration at different times of the day. He noticed that CO2 dissipates quickly during the day when it is warm and sunny. At night, CO2 heavier than air will condense on the temple floor creating a toxic gas lake. “Animals suffocate because their noses are close to the ground, while the taller monks breathe less CO2 so they can survive,” concludes Hardy.
Today’s Ploutonion is a rectangular area filled with transparent water with gently flowing mineral foam, above which is a seat for pilgrims and a statue of the god Pluto with a gentle gaze.
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