The Taurus mountains, which are technically part of the Alpine chain, in their creation 60 million years ago, caused the warping of the Anatolian plateau. The resulting volcanoes, including the spectacular Mount Erciyas and Mount Hasan, produced the tuff from which the unique landscape of Cappadocia is formed. It took millions of years for the ash from these volcanoes to form a layer of tuff, covered in places by a further layer of basalt lava. The basalt ultimately cracked and split under attack from the weather and rainwater seeped ... (more)