Yes i believe in underground civilizations. I worked at the Grand Canyon last summer and, there are stories of a cave full of ruins deep inside the canyon.

if there are so many undrground tunnels, where are all the people going to find them? i think if there where they would have been discovered by now.
theres a lot of questions that run through my head about things like this. like,
what would they eat?
how could they grow crops?
wouldnt being out of the sun for so long have made them develop into something that dosent or only barrely resemble a human?
what would they use for materials such as clothes, houses.(although they probably wouldnt wear clothes due to the fact they live underground and in an ancient civilization that dosent and hasent worn clothes for years.
how would they light their world? if they used fire what would they use to keep the fire going? where would all the smoke go? thousands of years of smoke would have to go somewhere. right? unless of course they developed night vision. in which case all these questions could be answered by saying they only come out at night to hunt and gather materials.
any answers to any of these question and although i already do believe this story i find this farther to believe than elvis still being alive.

Perhaps some thing is inside this world - but i just wait for evidence

possible, but not very probable. Unless the areas were used for only certain parts of the year, such as winter time.

has any one here read the david eddings series "the Belgariad" in this they have a civilisation that were pushed out of there homeland by large creatures and they lived under ground in huge complex tunnles and structures and came out at night to hunt i know it's a load of bull as its a fictional book but it's a great story
plus when it comes to fire they could use chemical when some chemicals are burned they produce oxygen

A humonoid society living beneath the earth is even far fetched for me. There is absolutely no evidence of one existing. Anything could be, but without fact i'm affraid one can not find truth.

Yes, surface dwellers are stumbling into these all the time. Sometimes they manage to stumble back out.

I think this is the case,

Yes, surface dwellers are stumbling into these all the time. Sometimes they manage to stumble back out.

It is just a matter of time...

Yeh but if you had a subterrainian society and dident want to be found you would only have a few entrances and they think there is some in the poles where its always cold and sometimes they ban people from going there.

As for the light part, I saw in a comic book about people livng underground in caves, that the ceiling was covered with light-emitting bacteria and they could grow crops and stuff. I know it's only a comic but hey, it is likely.

In Hopi tradition, the Hopi Indians lived in a great underground complex when the world was flooded. If the Hebrews and Aztec can have an Ark, why not live underground?
Why would they need a light source? Many creatures today that live within caves don't even rely on sight... bio-waves, sonar... if such a race developed underneath, they wouldn't need eyes.
As a food source... that would be a hard one... they very well couldn't be burrowing to the surface like moles and eat our garden's roots. Fungus and algea can only last so long... expected underground creatures are not nearly large enough for harvest; this may lead to an idea that they can absorb needed minerals through the rocks and soil, like a worm.
As far as an "atmosphere" is concerned, volcanoes and earthquakes replenish gases into the air. Surely an underground spring or fissure would meet the demands. Then again, why oxygen? Octupi are not carbon based.
Given the habitat, harvest/ hunting grounds, tools would not seem nessessary; why create a spear for hunting cave salamanders?
The seasons would be mild, on the average... basements are warm in the winter, cool in the summer. Why would they build houses underground if the climate wouldn't be cost-effective?
I would propose the C.H.U.D. (anyone remember that movie?) would be small of stature, no more than 2-3 feet tall, eyeless, with pronounced ears (or at least pronounced forehead... where the senses are located)... they would have to be omnivours, small chested (air levels)... no thumbs.
I don't think there are underground people, but then again, isn't there an Asian myth about such creatures?

Originally posted by Teknoman
As for the light part, I saw in a comic book about people livng underground in caves, that the ceiling was covered with light-emitting bacteria and they could grow crops and stuff. I know it's only a comic but hey, it is likely.

I think I read the same comic. Plus, this idea isn't so far fetched. there are alot of bioluminesent species that live in caves. Over several generations of living underground, people could haved learned to use light producing organisms to their advantage.

Man if there is such a system of underground cities, I know several geologists who would give thier left nut to go exploring.

As one who has crawled and slithered through a number of karst caves, I have to say that it wuold be exceedingly difficult if not impossible to keep a complete ecosystem running in a completely underground enclosure without some kind of artificial energy source. When I have been cavinig (and granted this has been many years ago) you never saw anything living, not even bugs, past a few hundred feet into the cave. I find it nearly impossible to imagine an underground ecosystem that could support any kind of complex life forms, much less anything that could reach a level of intelligence.

yes but what if its not humans living underground at its run by the nwo they'd have the man power to run it

an underground civilazation, not too far fetched. Though I think that they would have no sight. They would probably use a crude version of sonar. As for food, they could grow crops. For the crops they would only need an energy source. Hydroelectric being the most obvious choice, because they could have huge underground lake facilities and they could use the power to move the water back into the resevoir behind the dam so that it could be recycled. With me so far. And like other people say, they wouldnt need clothes. They also could do without houses. Though they could make these out of rock. Even if they had to filter out pollution of some sort, they could use things like geysers. Hey, that's why old faithful is so faithful, there are people underground letting steam come up to the surface.

Mmmmm, I've heard stories like this before and I definitely believe there are subterrainian cities going on. But I think it's a human thing and it's being done as a pretty huge scale safeguard against the possibility of a global disaster.

I mean, it's true we don't know much about the layers of the Earth - they even thought it had a big hole down the centre of it at one stage - but I just reckon this human project is going on and that's where these stories stem from. I find it far more likely that we at our stage can live without direct sunlight because maybe it's being harnessed on ground level and being used underground to power synthetic lights and electricity etc.

So yeah, I think it's pretty likely - rumour is these cities are growing all the time and once you're in, you need never come out again. Sounds like a bleak existence but then I guess you need never worry about the 100s of madmen who have access to the end of the world buttons. oh it's funny because it's true.

Originally posted by NotTooHappy
Yes i believe in underground civilizations. I worked at the Grand Canyon last summer and, there are stories of a cave full of ruins deep inside the canyon.

I read about this a year ago. I wonder why some areas of the Grand Canyon are off limits, even to the most experienced of hikers or rock climbers?
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As many caves as there are in the world, some of them have to link up. It's a very plausible idea. The first people took shelter and explored ever deeper until they didn't want or need to come back to the surface.