Is a fascination with what lies underground a universal preoccupation? A positive answer to this question is the underlying message from Will Hunt’s recent book, Underground (Simon and Schuster, 2019) which argues that our relationship with what lies beneath  is so tied into our evolution that it has become unconscious and instinctual.

From the oldest of legends and folktales, through millennia of spiritual practices and stories from religions around the world to the evolutionary theories, which some micro-biologists are suggesting today, the nature of the subterranean world and its inhabitants has provided us with some of our longest-lasting mysteries.

The physical world, of natural caves, caverns, tunnels or constructed spaces underground, has often become a sanctuary in times of trouble, a place of safety for the living as well as the dead. Even though caves might be full of traps and dangers, they provided early peoples with shelter. They…