The Disinformation Guide to Ancient Aliens, Lost Civilizations, Astonishing Archaeology, and Hidden History by Preston Peet

Author:Preston Peet
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781609258672
Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser

NAN MADOL'S MYTHIC ORIGINS

Nan Madol's mythic origins began to surface during 1928, when unusual human skeletal remains were excavated by Japanese archaeologists near several prehistoric sites on Pohnpei. The bones had belonged to men far taller and more robust than the indigenous Pohnpeians. When the nature of the discovery was described to native elders, they exclaimed that the bones were those of the same Saudeleurs who had flown through the air the stones that went into the construction of Nan Madol. Similar stories are heard in various parts of the world far from Micronesia to explain the construction of other ancient megalithic wonders.

For example, a myth surrounding Britain's Stonehenge recounted that its 50-ton sarasen stones were floated into position by King Arthur's renowned advisor, Merlin, another “sorcerer.” If accounts of levitation such as these, widely separated as they are in distance and time by disparate peoples on opposite sides of the world, are not a universally shared human reaction to the survival of otherwise inexplicable ruins, they may be the genuine recollection of a lost technology preserved in legend. Though serious suggestions of ancient levitation may be dismissed as foolish fantasy by mainstream scholars, they are nevertheless unable to account for the lifting of 25-ton basalt at least 30 feet into the air and being precisely fitted into the imposing walls and towers of Nan Madol during prehistory.

Try as the experts did, they could not make their coconut rafts, even when lashed together in series, float a single ton. Repeated attempts demonstrated only a few hundred pounds could be carried, a far cry from the 20-ton columns and 60-ton blocks handled with evident ease by the prehistoric construction engineers of Nan Madol.

The largest modern crane in the entire Pacific can lift 35 tons. Today's building engineers, using the latest equipment, would be hard pressed to recreate the construction of 200 million metric tons of stone, not on solid ground, but upon a coral reef only a few feet above sea level. Efforts at duplicating what archaeologists insist must have been the sole means by which Nan Madol was built were attempted during the late Twentieth Century. Conventional theories were put to the test in a 1995 Discovery Channel documentary, when a one-ton column was tied with bamboo stays to rafts made with coconut shells.

Try as the experts did, they could not make their coconut rafts, even when lashed together in series, float a single ton. Repeated attempts demonstrated only a few hundred pounds could be carried, a far cry from the 20-ton columns and 60-ton blocks handled with evident ease by the prehistoric construction engineers of Nan Madol. Contributing to the scholars' embarrassment is their failure to explain how such prodigious basalt building materials were quarried, let alone transported. “Presumably,” Paul Brandt, a reporter for Archaeology, speculated, “the miners heated the cliff face with huge fires and then drenched the surface with cold water. The resultant expansion and contraction broke off the splinters desired for construction.”

Unfortunately, there is no evidence to show that so-called “spalling” was ever known at Pohnpei.

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