Would I have been able to tell the end was coming? Would I know I was living in a world in decline? Did it all happen slowly, so slowly that it was barely noticeable, followed by a sudden rush for the exits, or just a steady slow descent?

These were questions that came into my mind as I went on a road trip to central Turkey, first travelling down the west coast, stopping in Izmir to see Ephesus.

Ephesus has a longer history than I could recount here but to get a flavour of its history; it was an important port settlement for thousands of years and occupied by both the Greeks and the Romans, amongst many others.

The once thriving port slowly died and fell into disrepair after the harbour silted up.

There's not much point to a port city when the harbour is filled with silt! So, the city had ceased to be a city many centuries ago and is now a popular tourist destination, for good reason; there is a well-preserved Greek amphitheatre, temple remains, and excavated terrace houses that once housed the very wealthy, adorned with marble columns, ornately painted walls, and floor mosaics.

It would have been impressively grand in its day.

As I did the tourist thing, I wondered what people living during the height of the city felt. I'm sure they would have looked at the port, the wealth, the ships coming and going, their new constructed terrace homes, and felt that everything around them was very permanent, secure. The city did last for well over 1,000 years, after all.

But at some point, there would have been a turn.

The point when the city passed its peak. I wondered what the signs would have been. Yes, there were big events, sackings, and earthquakes but those didn't signal the end, it happened over time and not in a single event.

Would anyone have noticed the peak had passed?

Did the last audience at the amphitheatre know they were the last audience, and no one would ever return?  

And how quickly did it go from city to small village, to back hills roamed by shepherds and goats? When did seem ok to pillage the first stone from the temple?

There would have been an actual day, maybe a Saturday, when someone swept a terrace room for the last time, without knowing it was the last time. From then on, a thin film of dirt on the tiles and mosaics started the slow burial, until one day it was so deep and consumed archaeologists would have to dig it out again to see what lay beneath.

Whenever that last day was, your mind is filled with wonder, stepping back in time and walking marble pavers, polished to a dangerous slipperiness by countless thousands of Greek and Roman steps over 2,000 years ago.

Later, in a town called Karain in Cappadocia, similar questions filled my mind. Although, Karain is no Ephesus. Never a port city, not close to the Aegean Sea and probably never very important, except to the people who called it home.

Karain is probably the last place people think to visit in Cappadocia, if at all.

Off the tourist routes and nowhere near the balloon rides, chimney spires, and underground cities of Cappadocia.

It’s a quiet, near-deserted village where abandoned homes jut out from the hills, built around underground rock storehouses, caves, and recesses carved out of the soft stone, all accessed by a network of now overgrown tracks and paths.

Many homes are quite stylish, with Ogee arches, ornate carvings and balconies, others are rudimentary brick boxes.

Some had grapevine covered courtyards or maybe a walled courtyard with a large pear tree in the centre.

What was it like when people filled every home, children eagerly ran along the tracks to find their friends, and produce filled the underground stores in preparation for the coming winter or markets?

Despite being historically unimportant in the way Ephesus is, Karain is much more haunting, moving, and wondrous because those people deserted their homes, just like in Ephesus, but much more recently.

Mounds of small, dried onions hint that one or two of the underground stores are still used, or maybe they were just another remain? Hard to know.

I only saw one human and he was chopping up branches for his fire with a meat clever.

We spoke briefly but I never got to the bottom of whether he was living rent-free in an abandoned house or a last-standing local.

All the questions of who were the last to leave seemed much stronger here as their remnants can still be found; shoes and other nick-nacks left in niches, suitcases left in old loungerooms, old electrical wiring dangling over doorways, discarded cushions and blankets, an old wooden chair.

The remains of the last humans; a room, a chair, cushions, and magazines.

Somebody sat in that chair not long ago, looked around the room and at the cushions stacked in front of them, got up, walked out, and never return returned.

Maybe the people who left behind the cushions also left behind the stray dog that followed me?

Instead of feeling that the bottom was reached many centuries ago, as is the case in Ephesus, Karain fell into decline not long ago, at least within my lifetime, and is now far down the lowest slope of its decline, a mere step or two from the absolute bottom.

The dirt is accumulating, and the burial has commenced...

Maybe one day in decades to come this town will have its own place in the minds of tourists, like the very ancient underground cities that form part of the regular Cappadocia experience, when they figure out this place has something to tell us about how people how used to live.

On this quiet and dim afternoon, however, it was mine to explore alone.

Like the last human walking through a forgotten world.