 Nan Madol / Pohnpeian man |
 by Philip Game
Megalithic temples are not normally associated with tiny islands in the Pacific Ocean. Yet on Pohnpei (formerly Ponape) not only are there tangible remains of four distinct episodes of colonisation but the monumental ruins found on Pohnpei, a rain-drenched Micronesian island whose tropical forests and coastal mangroves partly conceal the ruined city of Nan Madol, a veritable Venice of the Pacific.
Before the colonists – German, Spanish, Japanese and American – arrived, the semi-mythical Saudeleurs were lords of all they surveyed. Legends tell how they built Nan Madol, the Places in Between, to rise up out of the seas from Sounahleng, the reef of heaven. More prosaic analyses confirm that the 92 man-made islets were occupied as early as 200 BC by a regal elite, but shed little light on the means by which the twenty-ton basalt slabs were shifted into place.
Pohnpeians are often loath to visit this haunted place where stark dead tree trunks, sinuous palms and papaya push aside the black stones...
More images
|
