Transcript (en)

Craters cover this desert. Each one hides a home, and one is famous. From the road, Matmata in southern Tunisia looks almost empty. Where is everyone? They live down there, around pits dug up to 30 feet into the ground. Rooms are carved into the walls, some on two floors with tunnels between pits. In summer, the desert above can pass 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Down in these rooms, it can be 27 degrees cooler with no machines. Even the paths run over these rooms. You can walk across a home without seeing it. Then, in the late 60s, heavy rain flooded the pits and many homes collapsed. Still, some families stayed underground, even with new houses on the surface. Years later, one of these homes became Luke Skywalker's house in Star Wars. Yet no record shows when the first pit was dug or who first chose to live underground. Would you trade your house for a home 30 feet below the desert?