Evidence of the Gods (2 page)

Nan Madol is a mighty complex consisting of canals, ditches, tunnels, staircases, earthworks, and walls. (
Images 6
–13) The rectangular main district is stepped in terraces and surrounded by more than 80 smaller sub-districts. I took the trouble to count the basalt blocks on one side of a building. There were 1,082 columns.

The complex is square, which means that the four walls are made up of 4,328 columns. Then there is the floor, also made of basalt, the staircases, and terraces. In total, there are about 10,000 blocks for a single structure. An estimate for the total Nan Madol complex produces about 180,000 blocks—not including the substructure lying under water.

Nan Madol is not a “beautiful” city, although today it is described as “the Venice of the South Pacific.” There are no reliefs, no sculptures, no statutes, and no paintings. The architecture is cold, forbidding, in some ways raw and threatening—not something we associate with a royal palace. Was the whole thing a defensive complex? Why, then, do broad staircases send out exactly the opposite message? Welcome! At the center of the complex, there is a “well,” which isn’t one. A well in this location, surrounded by salt water, does not make any sense at all, because it could only supply salt water. The native inhabitants describe the “well” as an entrance to the start or end of a tunnel. Today the opening lies almost 2 meters under water, even at low tide. Where is this tunnel supposed to have gone? How were the native peoples supposed to have built it under water? Everything in Nan Madol is a contradiction.

I read in Herbert Rittlinger’s book,
Der maßlose Ozean
, that, thousands of years ago, Nan Madol formed the center of a glorious empire. The reports of fabulous treasure had attracted pearl fishers and Chinese traders to explore the ocean floor secretly. The divers had returned from the depths with incredible tales of “streets and stone arches, monoliths and the remains of houses.”
¹

In 1908, a German expedition explored Pohnpei and Nan Madol. Dr. Paul Hambruch focused his work particularly on Nan Madol and the indigenous sagas and myths.
²
According to Hambruch, two young magicians once wanted to build a large cultural center for gods and spirits. They tried at various sites on the coast, but each time the wind and waves destroyed their work.

Finally, they found the right place on Temwen. In response to a magic incantation, the basalt columns flew by themselves from the island of Jokaz to Temwen and put themselves in the right order without any human intervention. That was how Nan Madol was created. (
Images 14
–
21
)

Originally, the German ethnologist Paul Hambruch writes in the second volume of his
Ergebnisse der Südsee-Expedition
,
³
a fire-breathing dragon had been the symbol of Nan Madol. The mother of the dragon had scooped out the canals with her mighty snorting. A magician had ridden on the dragon. When he spoke a particular incantation in verse form, the basalt columns from the neighboring island had flown there by themselves and had formed themselves into the walls.

Dragons? Fire-breathing? Magic incantations? Total nonsense at first sight. But how were Stone Age peoples supposed to have imagined a noisy monster, as excellently demonstrated in the science fiction film
Avatar
? A technical monster for which their language had no words? Incidentally, the dragon motif is a global element of many myths. The most ancient sagas of the Chinese refer to fire-breathing dragons, as do the Maya in Central America, the pre-Inca tribes in Bolivia, the Tibetans in their highlands, and even the Swiss in the Bernese Oberland. Excuse me?

I live in a small village, Beatenberg, a delightful place in the mountains above Lake Thun. There is a limestone cave below me in the rock: the dwelling of the former dragon. So an artificial dragon was put at the end of the cave, with dramatic lighting for the tourists. And the emblem of my village shows a picture of the dragon.
⁴
Other legends about Nan Madol say that the ruins were the remains of the fabled kingdom of Lemuria.
⁵