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Matmata

Matmata

Wikipedia

Search complete. 8 mentions across 3 episodes found for "Matmata".

Nov 2, 2026

JT's Mix Tape

JT's Mix Tape

Flying Teslas, Artificial Suns & the Hidden Technology of the Ancient World

Nov 2 · 1 Mention

Top 30%
speaker_21NARRATOR
60:42
Each one hides a home and one is famous.
speaker_21NARRATOR
60:47
From the road, Matmata in southern Tunisia looks almost empty.
speaker_21NARRATOR
60:52
Where is everyone? They live down there, around pits dug up to 30 feet into the ground.
speaker_21NARRATOR
61:00
Rooms are carved into the walls, some on two floors with tunnels between pits.

Unknown podcast

The 4,000-Year-Old Village Buried Alive Underground: 3,000 People Vanish From the Surface of China | Science

Nov 2 · 1 Mention

speaker_0NARRATOR
75:05
where travelers today sleep in luxurious cave hotels.
speaker_0NARRATOR
75:09
In Tunisia, the village of Matmata, with pit dug houses almost identical to Dike Nguyen, was once known to the whole world through cinema, and today survives mostly on tourism.
speaker_0NARRATOR
75:21
In Australia, the opal mining town of Coober Pedy keeps an entire community living in underground homes to escape the desert heat.
speaker_0NARRATOR
75:30
complete with an underground church underground hotels even an underground golf course in the mountains of northern iran and the hillside cave dwellings of china's own shanksy distant cousins of the same idea flicker here and there but among all those names the underground village of hanen holds a position none of the others can claim continuity kapadocha stood abandoned for generations before tourism reawakened it matmata slipped into oblivion and lived again only through a handful of films Coober Pedy is a child of the 20th century, born together with the digging machine and the mining industry.
The Ancient Origins News Desk

The Ancient Origins News Desk

Matmata's Pit Houses: Ancient Wonder or a Younger Amazigh Achievement? | Ancient Origins

Oct 25 · 6 Mentions

Gary MannersHOST
0:10
The online heritage archive xor.org calls this way of building ancient, and many visitors leave believing the homes were carved out thousands of years ago.
Gary MannersHOST
0:18
The pit houses of Matmata are one of the most distinctive forms of home building in North Africa, dug down into the earth instead of raised up from it.
Gary MannersHOST
0:26
Each is a wide open pit with bedrooms, kitchens and storerooms cut sideways into its walls.
Gary MannersHOST
0:31
But are they really that old? The Amazigh of the Southern Mountains.
Gary MannersHOST
0:35
Matmata is the name of a village and of an Amazigh, Berber, tribe long settled in this corner of southern Tunisia.
Gary MannersHOST
0:41
Racha Ben Abdelialil of the Faculty of Humanities and Arts of Sousa places the village about 40 kilometers, 25 miles, from the coastal city of Gabas, in a region where summer heat can pass 50 degrees Celsius, 122 degrees Fahrenheit.
Gary MannersHOST
0:56
The UNESCO World Heritage Center describes the Amazigh of southern Tunisia as descendants of the country's indigenous communities, whose history was long obscured and whose culture was pushed to the margins.
Gary MannersHOST
1:17
It is disputable as to when nomadic tribes decided to settle here, said Habib Beledi, a dentist, specialist in the region's past and advocate for Amazigh culture, to Ignat magazine.

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