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by Alistair Coombs
on Pohnpei island. (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Its people are vanished and its purpose spectacularly obscure.
Known traditionally as Soun Nan-leng ('Reef of Heaven'), Nan Madol is a megalithic complex made up of over 90 man-made islets built on coral fill and spread 200 acres over a lagoon edging Pohnpei's surrounding barrier reef.
Pohnpei (formerly Ponape) is the third-largest member of the Federated States of Micronesia, a spray of over 600 islands so-named after their minuscule size.
Pohnpei is a compound meaning 'upon an altar', in reference to a cloud-capped mountain at the island's center:
Nan Madol, popularly referred to as the 'Venice of the Pacific' perches upon the southeastern coastline of Pohnpei.
Nan Madol means 'spaces between'...
Map of Nan Madol. Federated States of Micronesia (Public Domain)
The four-to eight-sided columns of this dark, dense and smooth material formed millions of years ago.
Guarding Nan Madol from battering ocean tides are the ruins of breakwaters along its coast, while running around and in between the islets is a network of connecting waterways.
Today, the majority of crisscrossing canals are glutted with mangrove swamps, while thick tropical growth smothers nearly all of the islets.
If left unchecked, the invasion of jungle will devour the entire site - and initiatives to restrain it are not forthcoming. Pohnpei is a hotspot attracting divers and big fish anglers, but sadly not visitors to its megalithic ruins.
Many native Pohnpeians are also loath to visit
the site, especially at night, since they believe Nan Madol is
haunted by ancient spirits which should not be disturbed.
Modern scientific research of the complex began
in the 1960s and has largely been confined to topography and surface
inspection.
Pool at Nandauwas
(Image: © Alistair
Coombs)
Literary
References
The renowned author of cosmic horror, H.P. Lovecraft, apparently based his R'lyeh (a sunken city home to alien monsters from outer space) on Nan Madol.
One of Lovecraft's contemporaries, Abraham Merritt, featured the site in his The Moon Pool (1918) which became a popular novel in the 1920-30s.
Hidden within the undersea tunnels and caverns of Nan Madol, is a magma chamber, the threshold of a dreaded being known as the Dweller, and the appearance of unusual light phenomena:
Merritt's fantastic vision aside, placed in front of the seaward wall of a mortuary building named Nandauwas is a tunnel that is said to lead to the lair of a domesticated sea-sky monster in the form of a giant eel that bathes in a pool.
The purpose of Nan Madol is not the only conundrum.
Much remains obscure and unanswered about how such a colossal amount of basalt was quarried and transported to the site.
Some of the stones have been chemically traced to a quarry on Pohnpei's opposite coastline.
A cornerstone of the Nandauwas building is estimated to weigh 60 tons, while smaller slabs and shafts commence from about five tons.
The sheer quantity of material makes the above transport routes and methods appear bleak.
Constructed at a time when no more than 20,000
people inhabited the entire island, Nan Madol is an astounding
construction feat, the Pohnpeian equivalent of
the Giza pyramids.
Ruins at Nan Madol
(CC BY-SA 2.0)
Sunken Cities
The complex was not built with practical concerns in mind. With no access to fresh water, it was not for general living. Though picturesque, neither was it a seaside getaway.
The relatively shallow waterways, for example, which rise only waist deep at high tide, were perhaps not solely intended to allow skiffs between the islets, but for rituals of initiation and journeys of the soul.
Indeed, deeply embedded in the sacred vision of Nan Madol and its connection with water is the notion of a mirror image.
This not only implies afterlife realms but also
legacies of sunken cities beyond its shore. Effectually, Nan Madol
was built as a memorial to a drowned predecessor.
Katau may or may not specify another Micronesian island named Kosrae, itself home to megalithic ruins, situated 554 kilometers (344 miles) southeast of Pohnpei.
Since Katau is mentioned in reference to
Pohnpei's earlier settlers, its geographical ambiguity perhaps
indicates the degree to which locations on sea maps merged with
mythical places in the sky seen above them.
They also brought to Pohnpei the worship of a god of agriculture under a dynasty known as the Saudeleur. Over generations their dynasty became tyrannical and was eventually overthrown by an outsider named Isokelekel - another exile from Katau.
When Olishipa and Olosohpa arrived at Pohnpei, they surveyed the island looking for a suitable location to settle their kingdom along the coast.
They scaled a high mountain peak and from its vantage saw an underwater city beyond the tidal flats southeast of the island. They took this as a sign to build Nan Madol as the resurrection of the sunken 'city' of Khanimweiso.
Allegedly, there was also another sunken
inspiration behind the renaissance of Nan Madol, this time based on
another submerged city named Namkhet, further out to sea
beyond Khanimweiso.
Breakwater overlooking Nahkapw Harbor and the sunken city (Image: © Alistair Coombs)
A diving team led by Dr. Arthur Saxe of Ohio State University in 1978 confirmed some of these sightings following a series of manual surveys in Nahkapw Harbor, which is overlooked by the breakwaters of Nandauwas.
Saxe's team reported a number of coral-encrusted stone pillars, some of them in an upright position. Saxe developed a hypothesis known as 'Blue Hole' to explain how the structures sank.
It involves a limestone cavern, which forms beneath reefs, imploding when its roof gives way. Saxe had it that Khanimweiso was built on top of a cavern that later collapsed.
This would also account for the legends of
tunnels below Nan Madol, some of them linked to different islets,
since these caverns are characterized by interconnecting passages
and 'rooms'.
Following manual and multibeam sonar findings and informed by the research of a previous archaeological dive conducted by the University of Oregon in 1988-89, the team found one of the erect structures to be a natural formation rather than a coral-encrusted pillar.
The Japanese researchers also question Dr Saxe's 'Blue Hole' hypothesis as being unlikely, but concede that their findings do not rule out the possible existence of undersea heritage.
Their survey was also confined to the harbor not outside it. Nevertheless, Nan Madol's orientation lies in the southeast.
From an island-centered perspective, the limits of sight and awareness where sea and sky met and melted in sunlit azure or faded in waves of galactic expanse at night signposted the land of the dead.
The ancestor world on the horizon could also refer to impenetrable marine trenches far from land, where objects might rise to the surface. Things that came to shore from this beyond, such as driftwood or anomalous marine life, possessed portent and power - a view reinforced by tradition that ancestral founders had come from outside.
This horizon world would also send spirits back
across the sea to the land of the living and who were able to
communicate through bodies or things possessed.
The neighboring isles of Truk, Kosrae, Ngartik and the Marshall and Gilbert Islands were united by a basalt cult. Basalt shrines on mountain peaks were spirit places, and basalt monoliths the abodes of gods and ancestors.
In addition to housing spirits, these 'stone gods', literally blocks of basalt, marked the place of origin of clans and embodied their founders.
This widespread diffusion is naturally believed
to have originated from mountainous islands such as Kosrae
and Pohnpei, where basalt was quarried and then exported to
the lower lands and atolls of Ngartik and the Marshall and
Gilbert Islands.
Map of the Federated States of Micronesia.
(Public Domain)
Daukatau is believed to be a proto-Oceanic title:
The character of Daukatau is not far below the surface in the diffusion of this cult. In the Gilbert Islands, a thunder deity named Tabuariki - a chunk of basalt - was worshipped.
As basaltic rock was perceived as a medium of supernatural powers and for domesticating the thunder god Daukatau, it is relevant that Nan Madol is built from basalt: this explains, a little, the extraordinary measures behind the quarrying and transport of this heavy mineral.
Belief in the magical properties of basalt was
not confined to these shores; the material found home at other
places far distanced from these islands.
Basalt rocks at Gunung Padang
(Image: © Alistair
Coombs)
Built out of basalt, it is assembled upon a dormant volcano that rises sharply 2,900 feet (884 meters) above sea level. The outer layers of this pyramidal structure are stacked with columnar basalt joints.
The five grading terraces at its summit are lightly picketed by the same columns. Unlike Nan Madol, the columns at Gunung Padang are staked in the ground quite randomly and appear like eldritch tombstones.
Significantly, the basalt columns were similarly
connected to a thunder god who took the form of a dragon and was
believed to have influence over baleful meteorological phenomena
accordingly.
It was named Ma'ea Matariki, Ma'ea meaning stone and Matariki referencing both the ancestors and their home star cluster (the Pleiades).
As living images or mediums of this energy, the statues were said to come alive twice a year when the dead would visit the living. The construction of Nan Madol, Gunung Padang and the Moai of Easter Island are wrapped in analogous auras of mystery.
Nan Madol was built by a magic known as Mana-man, while the Moai were said to have been levitated by a force known as Mana (the source of which was the Pleiades).
Gunung Padang is likewise said to have been built
paranormally in just one night.
(Image: ©
Alistair Coombs)
Nandauwas
Gateway Of The Dead
Nandauwas is majestic yet austere, enigmatic and elusively forbidding.
Along its blackened seaward-facing stretch it can
appear ominous, an impression cast by its precipitous rise and
unfamiliar outline which captures the fear the local population have
of the place.
Image of a ship on one of the Maoi's on Easter Island
(Image: © Alistair
Coombs)
Set back from the water-immersed perimeter base of Nandauwas, towering piles of lava slabs form a wall up to 25 feet (7.6 meters) high, its corners finished in upswept peaks as if to mimic a boat or sea-going vessel.
As on Easter Island, spirit ships or soul boats were sacred items connected with ancestor worship, commemorating how the forefathers had arrived at these shores from their sinking homelands.
They also enabled travel to the realm of the afterlife on the horizon.
On some islands, setting an embalmed body adrift in a boat-shaped coffin was practiced. Similar to ancient Egyptian barges of the dead, boat tombs and burials have been found over the Pacific.
Thus, a spirit ship may have been a prominent
concept in the design of Nandauwas.
The Tomb
(Image: © Alistair
Coombs)
Beneath an emerald glaze of jungle are other crypts, tunnels and courtyards and a ledge coursing along the interior of the outer walls, its purpose unspecified.
Sited behind the ruins of its massive breakwater that reaches out to the harbor's edge, Nandauwas was built on an east-west axis and is noticeably offset more east than the rest of Nan Madol.
There are good reasons for this irregular
orientation.
Nandauwas
(Image: © Alistair
Coombs)
Aligned with
Pleiades
In fact, the attention given to this relatively unassuming cluster is quite astounding given the unpolluted vistas of the sky at night, especially observed from isolated isles.
Both the equinoxes and the June solstice are visible from the east-facing seaward wall of Nandauwas. Perhaps more significant, marked between these solar stations at the time of Nan Madol's use was the rising of the Pleiades.
Significantly, from the seaward wall of Nandauwas they would suggestively appear to rise from the realm of the dead and sunken homeland on the southeastern horizon, providing a reason for why Nandauwas, offset from the rest of Nan Madol, would interlock with them.
Moreover, the eastern wall of Nandauwas looks seaward over the harbor in a direction that not only targets Nan Madol's legendary Khanimweiso and Namkhet sunken archetypes but also the vanished motherland of Katau, whether Katau be identified with Kosrae or not.
One is also inclined to think of the seven founding ancestor voyages responsible for settling Pohnpei, which arrived on the island from this direction, reinforcing the Pleiades connection further.
As with the Moai of Easter Island,
Perhaps like the ancestral horizon world which it
faces, Nan Madol's meaning of 'spaces between' might also notion the
spaces between the seen and the unseen, in reference to the
spirits which it periodically harbors.
(Image: ©
Alistair Coombs)
For an island inviolate by marauding contact for millennia,
References
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