Micronesia City Pictures

They' called it the City of Spirits, and they think if they spend the night there, they'll just end up dead. It was the grave of the chieftains living there and the site of the most important spiritual rites, the center of ritual.

Ruins of Nan Madol - Micronesia

Ahead of the shore of a secluded micronesian isle were the remnants of a once large city of artificial rock isles, which drew inspiration from the city of R'lyeh in H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. This is an imposing ruin, representing the remnants of an unprecedented level of Mahalithic architectural heritage in Micronesia.

Synthetic islands were probably begun around the eighth and ninth centuries AD. Monolithic buildings were erected between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, however, at about the same timeframe as the rock structure of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris or Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Nan Madol is located on a row of man-made islands in the shallows of the east bank of the Pohnpei isle.

It covers an area of about 1.5 km long and 0.5 km broad and contains almost 100 man-made islands. It seems that Nan Madol was the home of the Saudeleur Dynasty's dominant elitist group. The Saudeleur clan had managed to unite the Pohnpei clan as a means of controlling their people.

Much of the ruling forces the village chiefs to move out of their home village and into the city, where their activity could be monitored more carefully. The majority of the islands were used as housing areas, but some of them were used for specific purposes, such as preparing foraging, producing or canoeing. The funeral industry, Madol Powe, comprises 58 islands in the north-eastern part of Nan Madol.

Nan Madol's total populace was probably more than 1000 at a point in history when the entire Pohnpei populace hardly made it to 25,000. At Nan Madol there are no freshwater springs or ways to cultivate foods, so all reserves had to come from the land. There were probably a large number of common employees in the city.

The largest centre of civilization, Nan Madol has bequeathed many other magalithic features on the neighbouring banks and on the Pohnpei islands; everything can be found on an area of about 18 sqm. It is said that the rocks used to build Nan Madol were brought to the site with the help of dark sorcery.

Archaeologists have localized several possible mining locations on the principal archaeological site, but the precise type of transport of building materials has not yet been known. Also the actual Pohnpei Islands is referred to in history. Madol had been deserted until the arrival of the first Europeans at the beginning of the nineteenth centuary, probably at the sinking of the Saudeleur dynasty around 1450.