The cave is still there.

It is still the world’s longest known cave system.

It will be longer still when the current generation of survey teams finishes pushing into the passages where the ancient miners’ torch fragments and footprints have not yet been examined by modern researchers.

The ancient mining evidence is still there too — preserved in the dry upper passages in conditions that have not changed materially since the mining stopped around 200 BCE.

The gypsum formations are still crystallizing on the walls in the same slow deposition process that produced the mineral crusts the ancient miners scraped.