WELCOME TO THE FLINTSTONES OF CAPPADOKYA

 - Where experience is hypo-real and troglodytes are virtual!

In Goreme village at the heart of the Cappadokya region, a group of five local men are planning to open a new office called 'Bedrock Travel Agency'. When I asked why they will give this name to the new business, one of the men answered "Why not, Goreme is Bedrock, isn't it!".[1]

Tourist and tourism-related discourses generally convey an idea that there are two broadly opposing types of tourism: the vulgar, fun-loving type taking place in contrived sites, and the real, authenticity-seeking type occurring in real and natural settings. It is further assumed that today there is a general "shift from the natural and authentic to the artificial and contrived" tourist attractions and places, and together with this, "related changes in tastes and preferences of tourists" (Cohen, 1995:12). Dichotomies, or at best continuums, are constructed between such concepts as travellers and tourists, romantic and crass, authentic and contrived, real and fake.

In reality (if I may use that word), however, where ideas of place, otherness and ourselves are influenced by tourism in highly complex ways, simple dichotomies and continuums might not hold. It is by looking closely at one particular tourist site, the people who live there, and the tourists who visit, that I want to show that the continuum between authenticity and contrived might collapse, so that its two extremes are merged in identities and place.[2] In this paper, I discuss these issues in relation to a particular theme, that of a Flintstones Fantasy land, being played out in the construction of Goreme as a 'tourist site'. In doing so, it is necessary to place this theme in the context of a post-modern ethos working within tourism ideology, as well as to look at the processes whereby the lives and identities of the local people involved in tourism, have become reconstructed and somehow re-'contrived'.  MacCannell has said that tourism today is the business of creating fantasies. So I want to look at the process of fantasy-creation in Goreme, and to attempt to understand what is taking place, when a local Fred Flintstone tells me that Goreme is Bedrock, isn't it!

Experiencing the landscape as hypo-real

Of course, Goreme is not a theme park, a place created purely for tourists' entertainment and recreation. It is really quite 'real', even in the sense conveyed by MacCannell (1976,1992), Urry (1990), and Munt(1994), etc., when they discuss the real type of tourist who seeks to travel to real as opposed to contrived places in order to experience the authentic. The volcanic landscape with the giant rock cones which local people call 'fairy-chimneys', has been eroding and reforming for thousands, millions of years. The soft rock has been dug out for habitation for centuries, and "even today", to use a tourism advertisement's words, "many of these caves and grottoes serve as homes and store houses for peasant families. Whole villages of cave dwellers still exist".[3] Goreme is very 'real' and importantly perceived as such by tourists.

At the same time though, the weird landscape is perceived by tourists as being somehow "disneyesque". It is like a "huge adventure playground", a "fairy-land" where you can clamber in and out of caves, crawl through rock-cut tunnels and explore the valleys of giant fairy-chimneys. The region is a sort of "moon world", "like a different planet", "it's unique, visually stunning, weird, the most abstract place I've ever been to". As one tourist said as she stood looking at the weird rock shapes pitted with steps and doorways carved through centuries of real lives, "I'm having a hard time believing this is real. I guess I've been influenced too much by Disney World where they make things like this out of poured concrete". Such words clearly convey a post-modern stance or disposition from which tourists are ready "to reduce or suspend the saliency of the boundaries between different 'provinces of meaning', between fact and fiction, reality, reconstruction and fantasy".(Cohen, 1995:22).

The ethnographic study of tourism is said by Edward Bruner to be the study of global processes in local settings. The process being discussed here is that of a development of a global culture of tourism which effects and accepts anything or any place being produced and reproduced, moved and recontextualised in any place whatsoever. Usually regarded as post-modern, this process marks the proliferation and increased consumption of experiences generally characterised by "stylistic eclecticism, sign-play,...depthlessness, pastiche, simulation, hyper-reality, immediacy, a melange of fiction and strange values..[and]. the loss of a sense of the reality of history and tradition" (Featherstone,1995:76). Such experiences, are most intense in the sphere of tourism, and what Eco refers to as 'travels in hyper-reality' (1986). In an age of simulation and a world where one moves freely and easily between the real and contrived, there is instilled an absolute belief that the real thing is capable of being reproduced. Therefore, "the 'completely real' becomes identified with the 'completely fake'"(Eco, 1986:7), and the ability to distinguish between the two is lost.

Furthermore, according to Eco, "absolute unreality is offered as real presence" (Eco,1986:7), so that the simulation seems more real than the (really) real. This is the core point concerning theme parks, supposedly the essence of post-modern tourism, which not only are created worlds of fantasy, but are places of hyper-reality; latex crocodiles in the Amazon jungle are more lively than the real thing, for example, and two-dimensional pictures can come to life. My point is though, that if simulations are experienced within the post-modern ethos to be more real than the real, then what we have left is the real appearing to be more fake than the fake.

Some tourism then, may become travel in hypo-reality (or hyper-fakality), and that, I think, is what is happening in Goreme when tourists have trouble deciding whether the place they are in is 'real' or a Disney World created in poured concrete. This very historic and natural setting appears to become a "bizarre" and "out of this world" "fairy-land" within the post-modern tourist's imagination. One young American tourist I spoke to, who viewed his travel as an escape from the rat-race back home and his unethical job as a maker of videos and computer games, found himself keen to return to the US so that he could set about making a computer game of Cappadokya. The game would feature moonscape valleys and underground networks of caves and tunnels, and the player would enact an early group of Christians fighting off the attacking Hittite or Persian armies. The proliferation of simulations around us has led to a confusion regarding the boundaries between reality and fantasy, between the natural and the contrived, so that the absolute fake is experienced as really real, and the actual real, such as Goreme, can be imagined and  experienced as fake.

Of course, this experience of the fake might pose as a problem for many of the tourists staying in Goreme since it would detract from their apparent quest for authentication of experience, although it must be remembered that, as Sack states, authenticity is a negotiated term, and "stands [only] as an indication of our reactions to modern life", (1992:172). This search for authenticity can be connected with the growth of 'nostalgia', another element of the post-modern condition, and is said to stem from an experience of alienation in the modern world. Such tourism is about seeking authenticity in other times and other places in order to somehow restructure the fragmentation of contemporary life. As one tourist in Goreme told me, the images of the Goreme landscape found on tourism posters and guide books enticed to come to Goreme in order to "be transported to somewhere completely different - a sixth century village - to experience a different time and place". Another tourist told me that he had come to Goreme "to experience the simpler life that we've lost", since "here they know life, their enthusiasm, their culture, it really moves me - it's the pure life".

Such a touristic stance is said to have led to the growth in the new social movements such as environmentalism and cultural protection, which place importance on the 'preservation' of pristine nature, historical monuments, and ethnic cultures (Cohen, 1995, Munt, 1994, Urry, 1992). This preservation can serve a dual purpose, One is to serve tourism, in the form of a 'heritage industry', whereby archaeological and historical sites are restored, adapted, and possibly reconstructed for touristic visitation. On the other hand, preservation may be intended as a defence from tourism, since tourism is perceived to bring potential damage and automatic inauthenticity to a place. Indeed, many tourists perceive Goreme not to be the authentic cavey land of troglodytes, nor for that matter, the real 'Turkish village' they had hoped for. One tourist explicitly complained to me that the "new buildings and tourist sign-boards detract from the experience of visiting a sixth or seventh century place". As Sack states, "creating tourist places embeds the tensions of commodities into the landscape", those being the tensions between generality and specificity, uniqueness and universality, between authenticity and simulation, between the signs of things and the things themselves (1992:157). I will be returning to the issues surrounding preservation a little later.

It is clear, from my interviews with tourists in Goreme, that tourists there vary in the extent to which they notice or are concerned about perceived authenticity and inauthenticity. Whilst a few tourists do experience tension in the juxtaposition of new and old, real and contrived, most seem easily to be able to suspend the importance of such serious matters as long as they are having fun. This fun is often coupled with a sense of irony on the part of the tourists. They ironise about their useless attempts  at 'off-the-beaten-track' travel, and their obviously fruitless search for 'authentic experiences' in a place which is obviously not authentic at all.

This is where, in Goreme, we may see the collapsing of the supposed dichotomies between real tourism and contrived tourism, and between the 'real' type and the 'fun' type of tourist. The place itself, can be experienced in both the extremes of real and fake, authentic and contrived at the very same time. And the tourists are willing and able to indulge plentifully in authentic experiences with 'other' peoples, and at the same time, play with disneyesque experiences of fantasy and fun. There is no longer an either/or situation, but one it seems where the poles of the post-modern continuums are inextricably mixed. To only talk about simulations and how they are more real than the real, is to miss an important point in the actual processes of tourism taking place, for simulations are only simulations. For real places on the other hand, to be experienced as fictional and fake, is to bring the experience of real and fake into one.

Meeting Fred in the Flintstones theme park

Goreme village itself, a real village where people live their daily lives, is also being constructed and experienced through tourism as a world of fiction and fun. Within the post-modern tourist's imagination, Goreme becomes a fantasy land, a sort of disneyesque Flintstones world of caves and troglodytes. Whilst staying in the village it is even possible to pretend for a while that you yourself are a troglodyte, when you stay in a cave room in somewhere like 'Flintstones', 'Peri (Fairy)' and 'Rock Valley' Pansiyon. There are tours of the area entitled 'Mystic Tour', 'Fairy Tour', and 'Dream Tour', which can be chosen from cartoonified regional maps, and booked in the offices of the 'Stone Park Travel Agency', 'Magic Valley Tours', or soon to be 'Bedrock Travel Agency'. At night, there is the 'Flintstones Cave bar' or 'The Escape cave bar and disco', "set in gigantic medieval donkey stables", where you can watch a "traditional Turkish belly dance act", "dance to the latest in dance music", "join in traditional Turkish folk dance", and enter a "beer drinking competition". "Every night is an experience in real Turkish culture and great fun", in a get together with some of the local troglodytes, who might tell you about how they were born and brought up in a cave, how the fairy-chimneys come alive at night, and how you should call them Fred.

One particular Fred always introduces himself to newly arrived tourists as a local cave-man. He points to a cave and tells tourists that he was really born in a cave right here, he has called his new dog 'Dino', and he collects lots of Flintstones paraphernalia to decorate the office of his pansiyon. Fred, who is now in his mid-30's,  comes from a Goreme family, but he has spent a large portion of his working life based in Holland, and from there driving trucks up and down the length of Europe from Scandinavia to the Middle East. After several years of this work, and living mostly away from Goreme and his family, Fred returned and converted his family property, complete with fairy-chimney, caves and stone-built rooms, into a pansiyon. This business developed along with many similar tourism businesses in the village during the late 80's, and expanded to include a large cave bar, which he called 'Flintstones Bar', and a carpet shop which is rented to other local entrepreneurs. For some years, Fred continued to drive in Europe during the winter months, and returned to Goreme to run his pansiyon only during the busy summer period. Now, however, he has decided not to return to Europe and wants to concentrate totally on his tourism businesses in Goreme. Having built a prestigious newish house on the outskirts of a nearby town for his elderly parents and children (I have not managed to ascertain Fred's current marital status), Fred is left for the most part to run his pansiyon by himself and with the paid help of a local friend or two.

Like many of the young, mostly male, entrepreneurs working in tourism in Goreme, Fred has created a situation for himself in which he is relatively free from much of the usual rules and structure otherwise normally present in Turkish village life. His family are out of the way and, in particular his father has limited control of matters because of his general absence from the village. In any case, pansiyons are generally regarded as no-go areas for villagers not directly involved with tourism (such as women and the elderly), as they are seen as being the hubs of tourist and 'giaour' or infidel activity, which is consciously and purposefully kept separate from non-tourism-related village life. Pansiyons for the young Turkish men, have become enclaves of freedom from village life, representing a sort of liminal zone. Indeed, one local man told me that, "people have an easy life here. They don't have to do anything! Look at [Fred's] life - he just floats around, drinking, smoking, going with girls - he doesn't have to do anything".

So Fred has created for himself a little paradise (and that, after all, is the name of his pansiyon). One evening, when a tourist asked him if there were any cinemas in the region, Fred's answer was that "we don't need a movie theatre, our lives are already a movie. ...Yes, the tourists especially are a movie...its like a dreamland here". Another time Fred told some tourists "you're on holiday now, but we're always on holiday here". So there is a definite sense in which the local men who work in tourism are sharing in a mutual liminality with the tourists. This liminality aspect of the ritual process[4] has been viewed as depicting the experience in tourism whereby the usual order of things is removed and rules are reversed (see MacCannell, 1976 and Graburn, 1983 for example). What has not been so much discussed, however, is the idea that local people like Fred who are working in tourism are also experiencing a sort of suspension of 'normal' life, free to some extent from the usual rules, and able to join in with the 'play' of tourism. Moreover, the liminality in the touristic experience is always confounded by the temporary nature of the tourist's stay. The tourist's experience of a place and its people has a certain virtuality about it, because he or she never manages to achieve a sense of reaching the 'core' of the place. Tourists are forever on the edge, in a sort of liminal or virtual zone, and so that is where tourism workers must come to meet them.

The men also meet the tourists in their performances of themselves and the 'site', which clearly play to the tourist's imagination that Goreme is a cavey adventure world of fairy-chimneys and troglodytes. The men's Flintstones characterisation brings themselves into the foreground, acknowledging a troglodyte identity and the role that this particular identity plays in Goreme's tourism. These men are playing to the realisation that tourists do not come just for the historic rocks and the Byzantine churches encased in the Goreme Open-Air museum, but because "whole villages of cave dwellers still exist" (Explore Video). Tourism has given the Goreme community this 'troglodyte' identity more than anything else. One day, sitting high up on a ridge overlooking the cavey valleys below one day, Fred told me that when he was a child, they thought that everyone in the world lived like this, in caves. Of course, Fred learned this was not the case as soon as he travelled away from Cappadokya, but it is through tourism especially that Fred's cavey 'otherness' is reaffirmed, since tourism celebrates otherness where ever it goes and continuously constructs signs of otherness in its path.

Resisting the 'primitive' in a troglodyte identity

Fred's and many other local men's' performance of this troglodyte identity for tourism is extremely playful, even fictional. They are clearly re-contriving an identity for themselves in response to tourists' post-modern imaginations and expectations. Perhaps also, however, the construction of a playful troglodyte identity is a response and a strategy to resist an undesirable self-representation of a 'primitive' troglodyte identity.

Fred is very aware, as most of Goreme's residents are, of the hold that tourism ideology is taking on the village (although, they do not usually see it in those same terms). Men like him are just as likely as I am (in my research) to get into conversation with visiting tourists, and be told that the people here seem "much happier in their cave houses and with their simple life". That whilst of course "they have a right to fresh water, good housing and medical services, they don't need these three-storey houses that they are building for themselves". Similar ideas can now be heard coming from many local people. As one villager in his mid forties told me as we sat looking out over the village, "Look at all the new buildings, ..the red roofs...Goreme's ruined. In old times, it was all blending in with the rock and the caves. It looked much nicer. They'll continue to build new buildings, and then tourists won't like Goreme anymore. Then tourism will finish, and we'll all have to work in the fields again". Another day in the village, when a woman was complaining to me about the impracticality of her family's cave house, her six year old son contested "but the tourist like it - that's why they come here". Tourism ideology places an importance upon the 'uniqueness' and 'naturalness' of the village, and the villagers themselves now realise the value of their 'traditional lives' in their old houses as tourism assets.

   As well as working on the village through direct interactions between tourists and villagers, tourism ideology may be filtered and sometimes contorted by official rhetoric concerning the site. Goreme has been a National Park area since the late 60's, as well as a World Heritage Site under UNESCO since 1985. As well as preserving the caved Byzantine Churches in the valleys, and maintaining the frescoes within them, National Park policy expresses an interest in protecting the general landscape, including the 'fairy chimneys' and all caved areas and cave houses. The local people, who live in cave structures, therefore became objects, and perhaps puppets in this preservation process. As a leaflet for the park prepared by the National Park group in the mid 80's reads:

The Goreme Historical National Park, shall be protected and developed, so that the present and future generation can benefit from the scientific and aesthetic nature, as well as the natural and cultural values.

The picturesque village life, the activities of the villagers, the small volcanic farming areas and the farming methods and the crops have changed much to their historical resemblances. All these peculiarities, the tufa rocks and fairy chimneys as they are in traditional relations, are adding to a moving and vivid view...The preservation of this traditional view is the main theme of the administration, protection, presentation, and the development of this historical National Park. At the application of the National Park, the main policy has been adopted that the population living within the boundaries of the park, should be one of the main important elements, as well as giving support to the resources.

In the 1960's, concurrent with the application of National Park policy in Goreme, sections of the village came under the control of the government as 'disaster zones'. Deemed too dangerous for habitation due to severe erosion and in some cases collapse, many cave and 'chimney' houses were evacuated, and their residents re-homed in government-built houses at the lower flatter end of the village. When tourism really got under way during the late eighties however, many of these residents reclaimed and restored their old homes for the purpose of making pansiyon businesses. It is estimated that around eight or ten pansiyons are built in such property, and that, although all evacuated houses officially belong to the state treasury, this kind of activity is tolerated because it has meant that such old properties are restored and maintained. This tolerance is mainly due though to the recent removal by the Department of Infrastructure of the 'disaster zones', and indicates an increasingly powerful interest in the preservation of the old village.

However, the policy of the Disaster Directorate to re-house villagers away from their crumbling cave homes, did instigate a more general move towards 'prestigious' newer housing. Importantly for villagers also, it is usually cheaper and easier to build and move into the new area at the lower end of the village, because it is a lengthy and difficult process for residents of the old sector of the village to obtain permission from the Preservations Committee in the regional town before they can make any alteration to their homes. Such legislation poses a sense of a loss of choice and control, conveyed for example, in an awareness that all the 'fairy-chimneys' belong to the government, and when I commented on the darkness of a young woman's cave kitchen, she said, "Yes, but we are forbidden to make new windows or shelves or anything in the rock. Before it wasn't forbidden, but when tourists came here it became forbidden". The complexities in the preservation rhetorics surrounding Goreme convey the tensions created by the conflicting sets of values regarding Goreme local identity and place.

This interest in preservation is most officially conveyed by the Directorate for the Preservation of Natural Heritage, or the Department of Monuments (under the Ministry of Culture) and the National Parks Directorate. The Goreme municipality is responsible for local planning, and so the local Mayor is also a powerful authority in these matters, and partakes in the tensions between the different groups. Today though, Goreme's Mayor feels that the authorities of the National Parks and the Culture Ministry are very much a constrain rather than a help: "The Culture Ministry staff make decisions from their desks", he told me, "without even seeing Goreme...they give building permission to those who have the right 'contacts' and those who give bribes...so according to me, the Culture Ministry doesn't help us at all".

Many local residents experience a severe limitation on their practical lives brought about by the preservation policies. I was told that there are 64 court cases to date, brought by the Department of Monuments against villagers for their over-looking or defying preservation laws. One man, who for many years has made a meagre living from serving tea in natural settings just outside Goreme village, complains bitterly that the "fucking government" will not give him a licence to run a pansiyon business in the valley. He articulates a particular grudge against the National Parks authority for not granting him permission "to build a small 'natural' pansiyon here, but then they let the Beledye/ municipality build that ugly 'Tourist Hotel'". "I", he said, "want everything to remain 'natural' too but I won't pay under the table". Such men, the ones who have been making tourism business in Goreme since its start in the 60's, seem to convey the strongest hopelessness created by the multiple voices of authority each asserting their values of preservation over Goreme.

Another man of the same 'era' in Goreme's tourism development, narrated a particular hopelessness about his and other villagers' lives in Goreme. I asked him what he thinks can be done. "I don't know", he answered, "maybe a change in politics so that the Mayor will help us rather than helping others, and so that the Ministry of tourism etc. will help. If they gave us money so that we could build up our businesses it would be better. At the moment we have to give too much money to the Mayor and, for example, to UNESCO in taxes, but they don't do anything for us. All they care about is the fairy chimneys and the churches and make everything forbidden for us. Through the museum, the Tourism Ministry gets a lot of money from tourists, so tourism is helping the government, but while tourists are here they just trample all over my garden and steal my fruit. In some ways we are lucky because tourism has brought work and money, but there are also many forbidden things, and expensive things - we can't do anything, we need permission for everything, even on little alterations to our houses, we must use the right stone and so on, we can't build new caves for the animals". Like many others, he also told me of his poor education. "I've only been to school for 5 years, so what can I do?. We don't know tourism, we haven't got a chance".

Moving back to Fred, many younger men, who have had better education perhaps, and who are able to enjoy the touristic fun, also experience the tensions created by tourism. Last year Fred got involved with an old friend from Holland, a regular visitor to Goreme, in the setting up of a 'foundation' which aims very broadly to save Goreme from further destructive change. The main concern of the Dutch man was that the physical landscape in and around Goreme "is being destroyed"; that there is too much "visual degradation" and "garbage in the valleys". Fred, on the other hand, expressed more of an interest in social matters, stating that he wanted to "help the old people to stay in their houses, to live and to die there". He wanted to create a fund so that when villagers cannot afford to restore their old houses, they can be helped. He also wanted to improve medical services in the village, so as to have free care for all of the villagers who need it. There is a discrepancy conveyed here in tourist and local interest, arising from their different valuing and constructions of Goreme, which in turn, are embedded in the fact that tourists are on holiday, whereas Goreme is Fred's home.

One morning, Fred and I, together with the young man working in his pansiyon, were sitting up on the roof of 'Paradise' looking down onto the main street and the tourists below. We all watched silently for a while and then Fred said "how nice it would be if we won lots of money and wouldn't have to open to tourists anymore. Then we could sit around like this all day and tell the tourists to fuck off". Fred's friend replied, "No, we could let some in. I'll make a big gate up on the hill at the entrance of Goreme and check if tourists are nice or not...and only the nice ones can come in". Fred then continued "yes, we could charge them 500,000tl (about US$5), and let them look around for the day, then they would have to get out in the evening so that we wouldn't have to put up with them in the pansiyons and bars". Whilst conjuring up ideas of Goreme becoming a living museum or a theme park, this conversation also conveys a weariness and contempt concerning the continuous presence of tourists in the village.

Fred always has a lot of stories to tell, to friends and visiting tourists. He tells of the way some tourists who have stayed there in the past behaved rudely and arrogantly towards him, thinking that he would not understand because he would not be able to speak German or Dutch. "People think I'm stupid because I was born in a cave!", he said, "..they don't believe I know anything about Europe, about where they come from, but I do, I know very well. I've lived in Holland for 29 years and I know Europe very well". He was proud that he had been able to tell one such tourist exactly how to drive to his address in Denmark. Refusing the beer that he had won in the bet, Fred told him, "Look, don't put us down, you must never put people down. You must never think of yourself as above others". All of Fred's stories have the same theme, that of how he came out as the righteous hero by successfully contesting attempts by European people, be they customs officers, immigration police, or tourists, to put him down for being a Turk, and what is more, a Turk born in a cave.

Men like Fred are well aware of the derogatory connotations which might accompany the identity of a cave-man from Cappadokya. Yet they are also aware of the role that this identity plays in Goreme's tourism business, and for this reason, they accept and continuously perform this 'other' identity to tourists. Not being prepared however, to accept an identity which merges with a sense of stupidity and unmoving tradition, they choose to represent themselves through their performance to tourists, through an idiom of a sort of comic fiction. It is precisely through their interaction with and performances to tourists that these men manage to negotiate a more positive identity for themselves, and this is done, I think, through their strong sense of irony. Together with the tourists, the men constantly make fun of the Flintstonesy place that they are all in, and there seems to be an open awareness and acknowledgement of this big game they are all playing. That game being one of tourists and troglodytes together in Goreme, or should I say, Bedrock?

A (too) brief conclusion

I would like to finish by highlighting what I see as the main points which arise from this discussion of the Flintstones theme played out in Goreme. Although the Flintstones characterisation works to convey the 'other' identity which is expected from tourists and the various authorities asserting tourism ideology, it does so through an idiom of irony which attempts to resist the 'traditional' and stupid identity being imposed upon them. It is an assertion by the men to re-empower themselves in the face of the potential limitations and hopelessness, by creating their own self-representation which defies or diverts the representation placed upon them by a complex multiplicity of authorities. Moreover, this characterisation reforms a sense of equality in the men's actual interactions with the tourists they meet, as it openly acknowledges an awareness of representations of themselves and Goreme, and brings them together in a sort of communitas of irony with tourists.

Finally, the playing and fantasising about Goreme cave-life works within a post-modern ethos and meets the tourist's desire to be in a place which is both real and yet fantastic at the same time, and to encounter people who are also both 'authentically other' yet fun and fictional at the same time. A last point here though is that the post-modern tourist's liminal experience of fun in this disneyesque fairy-land is only temporary. The tourist can enjoy moving in and out of and playing with the realms of real and fictional, because at the end, the tourist always goes home. For the local men on the other hand, this fantasy land is home, and so if Goreme is becoming Bedrock, then where is their reality?