The Ancients - Nan Madol: Venice of the Pacific

Episode Date: August 29, 2021

Nan Madol. It is one of the most awesome, enigmatic and unique ancient sites in the World, and yet most people have never heard the name. Labelled the ‘Venice of the Pacific’ by US aviators during the Second World War, this ancient Micronesian metropolis is not your usual city. Situated offshore, it was constructed on corals – ‘a floating citadel’. All across the site today, the remains of centuries-old monumental architecture can be seen, built on top of artificial islets. So what do we know about this stunning ancient site in the Pacific Ocean? When do we think it was constructed? How did the ancient population go about building this off shore citadel? In this episode we’re going to delve into what we know (and what we don’t know) about Nan Madol. From the earliest archaeology at the site to the structural layout of this enigmatic urban centre.Joining Tristan for this special podcast is Dr Felicia Beardsley, from the University of La Verne. A leading expert on Nan Madol and on the archaeology of many other ancient sites from across Micronesia, it was a real privilege to interview Felicia all about this extraordinary ‘lost city’.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like The Ancients ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's podcast, well, I think this podcast epitomises why I love doing this podcast so much and why I love ancient history. It's not an ancient Mediterranean or ancient Near East topic podcast. And as much as I love those subjects, one of the great gifts of doing this

is to once in a while shine a light on an ancient site, on ancient civilization, on some aspect of ancient history that is further afield somewhere else in the world. And we are today doing just that because we are going to Micronesia. We are going to an ancient city that until recently I had never even heard of. It's called Nan Madol and at its height it was this powerful centre of an empire that ruled over this area of Micronesia. It was a city built offshore, built on corals. It's incredibly unique and the archaeology that survives is stunning. And this led me to get in

contact with a wonderful, brilliant archaeologist who's been focusing on this area of the world for many, many years now. And that is Dr. Felicia Beardsley. Felicia, her passion for the archaeology at Namadol and for the archaeology in Micronesia is evident in the podcast that you're going to hear right now. She's a fantastic speaker and she really brings to life why this ancient city is a must-see for you when you go on any future vacations.

So without further ado, here's Felicia talking in depth about why Nan Madol, this Venice of the Pacific, is one of the most awesome ancient sites in the whole world. Felicia, it's wonderful to have you on the podcast. Well, thank you for inviting me to be here. I am so looking forward to this. I have been listening to your other podcasts and enjoying them immensely. So I'm glad I can be part of this. You are very, very kind indeed. And we had to get you on the show. I had to get you on the show because I looked at your research. I looked at this ancient site in the Pacific, in Micronesia, and it's absolutely stunning. It must be one of the most stunning ancient sites in the whole world

because Namadol, Felicia, this ancient floating citadel, this city built on corals, I've never heard of a site quite like this. You know, a lot of people haven't. And yet it is this incredibly massive site, right? So Nan Madal, well, it's been around for centuries, obviously. And we even have stories from World War II from the Pacific Theater and the air forces or airplanes that would pass by over these islands. And at one point, one of these pilots looked down and said, oh my God, is that Venice down there? So they called it the Venice of the Pacific because of the canals,

because of the small islets. But when people go there, outsiders, they are astounded by just the sheer monumentality of this site. You can call it an island, but it's multiple little islands all strung together by these intertidal canals. And it's phenomenal in the sense that it is this massive construction with megalithic basalt stones, right? Columnar basalts that have been carried to this particular place, transported to this particular place. These stones weigh tons. So to imagine how anybody could humanly possibly do this, transport these massive materials and create this incredibly beautiful kind of geometric level site is phenomenal.

And once you get there, you're overwhelmed by the sheer size. You are dwarfed by it in many ways. Felicia, you're absolutely right. It's incredible. And I've only looked at it from Google Maps and Google Images. And it does feel like a site like Pompeii, where they say you need to visit Pompeii to really get a sense of it. Namadol, Venice of the Pacific, seems like another one of those sites.

You mentioned it's in the Pacific, in Micronesia. But whereabouts is Namadol? Whereabouts in Micronesia are we talking now? Whereabouts is Namadol? Whereabouts in Micronesia are we talking now? Namadol is located in eastern Micronesia, which is kind of the east end of the Caroline Islands, which end up really in the center of the Pacific. So if you look at the map of the Pacific, all of these hundreds of islands in the Carolines are just like little pinpoints, little pinpricks on a map. You don't really even see it from space because it's that small. It's this tiny, tiny island in the big scope of the world. But yet it had this incredible civilization that existed on it. These guys were sea powers. They were, you know,

masters of the ocean. They understood the tides, the currents, and space, like spatial reckoning. If you think about the distribution of islands from the center of the Pacific, all the way over to, say, the Philippines, or to Asia. So it's that kind of span of movement that we're talking about. But it's in the center of the Pacific, almost smack dab in the center, just a little bit north of the equator. So the tropical zone. I love looking at this area of the world and its ancient history. I mean, you only need to mention the Polynesians and their voyaging. It's one of the great wonders of antiquity, how far they got, how they did it, and going to and fro from those islands. And Micronesia is similarly absolutely fascinating as we're going to delve into now. first of all, about our sources for the site of Nan Madol, because Felicia, it feels like we've got this mix of archaeology, but also oral histories that have been passed down for generations. A lot of what we know about the history and the prehistory of Micronesia comes first from oral

histories, from the stories that are passed down from one generation to the next, to the next, to the next. Every family would have their own historian, right? Their own person who is tasked with remembering the stories. And it's not just family stories. It's not just village stories. It's regional stories. It's the hero stories and the legendary stories, and then the stories of the before the before. So when we get to the before the before, we're talking about how places come to exist. And once they come to exist, how they become populated with the interaction of gods and people, and then finally, ultimately, just people who then appease their gods. So you've got this wonderful mix of stories, and they all get mixed up together, right? When we start thinking about

oral histories and timeframes in terms of sources for understanding Nan Madol, reckoning time is not like we do it in the West. It's not linear. We don't have these chronologies. Time is more spatial. It's reckoned by something happening before or after something else. And that before or after could include a whole mix of godly beings and humans and all kinds of other legendary supernatural kinds of beings. So it's great. It's wonderful. But that would be one source of our information about Namadol. And then the stories about who occupied the site, how it was built, like one of the technologies used was magic, presumably. But that comes from the oral histories. When you start asking, how did they move these

giant stones, these stones that weigh tons? Well, of course, one of the big technologies of the day would be magic, right? Because it's a kind of technology, not one that we call on on our everyday, but it's a kind of technology. So we have oral histories that give us kind of So we have oral histories that give us kind of piecemeal stories about Namadol, how it was built, how it came into existence, who lived there, and so on. started moving into the Pacific. And while they didn't really make landfall in this area, they would see some of these old overgrown sites, and they would periodically mention them in their logs. And then we have archaeology. And it's through archaeology, which really kind of in a systematic way started about the 1910s with some of the German expeditions into this part of the Pacific. And from that point, archaeology at the time was focused on mapping these sites. It was

focused on excavation, trying to find out a little bit more about the layout, about how they were built, about what could possibly be there. But their main thing was mapping the extent of these sites. And so some of the maps from this period are incredibly accurate. Even though we may remap the site using LIDAR, satellite imagery, and so on today, the German maps weren't that far off. These early maps were not that far off from the maps that we produce today. So our sources then are oral histories to get context, historical observations, just, you know, how frequently do these show up in logs from explorers, from merchants, and so on. And then archaeological sources, the archaeological excavations, which, as I said, start with understanding the nature of the site and now have moved on to what kinds of products were produced, who could have lived there,

what's an indication of who lived there? What are the sources of the stones? And of course, what are the dates of the site? We will get onto the dates very, very quickly, Felicia, because that is one of the big questions, as you've hinted at there. But first of all, just before monumental Nan Madol becomes a reality, what has the archaeology revealed about Nan Madol before Nanadol, this area, occupation in this area? What do we know about human activity here? So what we know is, if you think about the location of Namadol, it's in an offshore location in an intertidal zone, sort of built on a raised reef platform. And it's just off of a small Temwin island, which is off the southeastern coast of Pohnpei.

Pohnpei is its main island. Temwin is a satellite island to Pohnpei. And then Namadol is built offshore of that, right on the reef in the intertidal zone. But what's interesting about intertidal zones generally, about islands across Micronesia, is that these become the first sites of occupation in the initial settlement phase, right? And it's lovely in the sense that these provide strategic locations. If you are going to start coming across an island that you've never come across before, you might be a gypsy wayfarer, you might be, you know, on an exploratory mission of some sort, and you come across an island that you've not heard about before, that may have been in the navigational stories and chants, but you don't know much about it or who

might be there. So the very first place you settle is in this intertidal offshore locations. So Tem1 hosts this beautiful sort of raised reef platform that is ideal for this kind of settlement. is ideal for this kind of settlement. So we see right in this area an occupation that dates back to at least 2,000 years ago, probably a little older than that, but at least 2,000 years. The initial settlements might have been raised pole structures in this area. And we know this because of, again, archaeological work predominantly that have recovered charcoal from measured contexts and excavations on these little sand islets that occur right in this intertidal zone, right on this reef. So not only do we have charcoal that dates back to like 500 AD, 2,000 years ago, and so on. We also have indications that the people who came here

made pottery. They used pottery. Now, this is unusual for eastern Micronesia, because eastern Micronesia is a place with maybe just a couple of volcanic islands. Most of the islands are low islands. Most of them are coral islands. And on coral islands, you don't have clay deposits where you can make pottery. So whoever settled and arrived on Phon Pei and then settled just off of Tempun Island brought with them the technology to make pottery and were able to identify and find a clay source to do so. So we see this early occupation and this early settlement, but it doesn't stop. It's continuous. So once they've settled off island, they've explored the area, the surroundings, the environment,

they start moving on island. One of the things that we start seeing on Temwen is modification of the landscape itself, of the island itself, to create sort of little occupation zones, little areas, little gardening areas in particular. And then from there, they start expanding further onto the island, the main island of Ponpe, and start occupying sort of all sectors of it, all of the river valleys and so on. So there were already people there. They knew what this area was like. And we're keeping on that then, Felicia. So we have this evidence for almost 2,000 years old settlement.

And then we get to Nan Madol, city proper this floating citadel and you raised it earlier you hinted at it earlier the big debate but when roughly and what's the whole story behind this debate when do we believe nan madol itself construction began so the actual construction of Namadol is the biggest question we have. Because oral histories, local histories, right? Local historians will say, you know, we've got a lot of archaeologists and scientists who come to our place. They all want to study Namadol. They all want to study our past. But Namadol is a special place.

She'll never give up her age. You'll never know as scientists the exact date when that first stone was laid in her tidal zone, when the first fill was put in. What we know so far is that there's a cluster of dates that suggest these are charcoal dates from excavations, and they indicate that we have a lot of activity from about the 12th century, and that that seems to be sort of a starting point, and that it ends sometime after the 15th, 16th, 17th century at most. It's a little bit vague. It's this 12th to 17th century, give or take,

a century or more. So problematic in terms of dating this particular site. Very problematic indeed. Several centuries there. But regardless, still, the fact that you've got so much of it remaining, it's so much to still talk about. The topography of Nand Madol, let's just focus on that. Let's really hammer home on this right now. You mentioned it's offshore. I mean, the topography of the site, describe it to us, Felicia, because it's artificial in so many ways and how it's not built on the island proper.

No. So one of the traditions in Micronesia is that people are associated with land. Your identity is tied to land. Your clan is tied to land. So land is important. And where you settle is also important. The points of settlement and the sequence of settlement equal deeper lineages. And if you have a deeper, longer lineage, you have greater prestige. So that means that somebody who settles in a very old place has more power, more prestige, more status over somebody who settles in a newer, younger place. But it's all tied to settlement on land. So if you think about the location of Namadol, it's offshore.

It's in a place where it's not land. It's not claimed by anyone. So in a sense, it's a no man's land. And if you have a no man's land, you have a place that has every opportunity to become one of the more powerful places ever. That is, you're answerable to no one at all. You can create your own rules. You can create your own lineages. So Namadol is in this beautiful offshore location. It's in the inner tidal zone. It's on top of a raised reef platform. So it's in effect protected a bit more from tidal surges. Easier place to build, easy to access. And access would have been by the sea, by the ocean side, right? There actually is a part of Namadol that's just touching Tamwon Island.

So there's this beautiful gradient from the island, from the shoreline, into the intertidal zone. And there's a, you know, a seawall around Namadol that helps protect it from the tides, that keeps it kind of unique intact and in place you start looking at just the general topography of course it's going to be nice and flat because it's on top of this reef so in that regard then felicia how did these ancient micronesians what is the archaeology telling us about how they went about constructing, how they began constructing, laying the foundations, etc., of Nan Madol? So if you think about the construction sequence, what would it take to build a place in an area that is inundated with water, with the tides?

So the very first thing that they had to have done was to build the seawall, the perimeter seawall around the site itself. And it is a pretty hefty feature overall. It is fairly high. There are one, two, three openings to allow the tides to kind of pass through the area. three openings to allow the tides to kind of pass through the area. But the seawalls themselves start protecting the area from the tides. So you have to be able to create the protected zone first. And from that protected zone, then you start building inside the zone. So the seawall comes first. The seawall is anchored by these two massive corners. One is the islet of Ponwi. The other is the islet of Nandaues. And these are the two kind of anchor points on the outer corners of Namadol. Once these are in place, the next islands to be built were these kind of administrative places,

where the places that you're going to dictate the construction of everything else. So you put your administrative island, you create your administrative islands first, and then you begin building, you know, the islands as you need them, as necessity dictates. And there's some question about the materials that were used in order to build them. So one of the things that we see is it is divided into two sectors. There's upper Namadol and lower Namadol. Lower Namadol is the administrative area. This is Madalpa. So it's just the administrative sector. This tends to have a lot of the larger islets in it. They are separated a little bit more. There's some indication that they are earlier islets, whereas the upper Namadal, Madala, has a lot of smaller islets and they're closer together. So there's

some indication that these came later in terms of construction sequences. So if you're going to put together a site like this, you first have to stem the tide and create an environment where you can actually start building these islets. And these islets are built with sort of mounted coral that are then encapsulated in both coral and basalt walls. They are paved. I mean, there's these beautiful square features, right? Each one's separated. They're distinct, they're unique, they're discrete locations. And they're separated yet connected by intertidal canals that are just big enough to get canoes or rafts through. to ask about how these islets were connected but you took the answer already these canals as you say this venice of the pacific it sounds awesome and remarkable and it was on top of these artificially made islets enclosed by this huge sea wall that we do start to see these monumental buildings this monumental architecture being constructed that That's exactly so. Now think about it,

this massive seawall, the two corner anchors, Bonwi and Nandawis, both have walls that are at least 10 meters high, 8 to 10 meters high, right? Whereas every wall inside Namadol and the islets and the buildings that were built inside Namadol would not have been that tall or that high. These islets themselves would have had structures on top of them built with basalt boulders. They would have had columnar basalt that had been raised further on top of the basalt boulders. And probably above those would have been wooden pole and thatch structures of some sort, so these superstructures over those. The islets themselves, they would have been paved

with first coral slabs like reef rock, and then coral gravel on top of those, and then likely sand or dirt on top of that. If you think about just trying to walk across these islets today, when there is the coral gravel, the soil, it's kind of sifted itself down through the larger coral rubble. So when you look at these islets, they are coral rubble fill. You look at the walls, like the sea walls in particular, the walls of Panhui, the walls of Nandaoas, some of the existing foundation walls on the islets themselves, they're built with what we call a core filled or rubble core filled walls that is you have two walls that are built kind of parallel and in between those you pack rubble core which are very sturdy and stable felicia yes keeping on the walls just a bit longer because i had a look at a few of the images of nan

madol online and the walls i think of all these places, they are so striking in how they are constructed. Very monumental, very megalithic, perhaps you could say. And is this what you just described there? Is this what we call, and please clarify if I'm wrong, but is this the header-stretcher arrangement pattern? Yeah. So in order to build these walls, the wall foundations are boulders, giant boulders. They weigh tons, 25, 60 tons, right? So they're massive, usually a meter or more in diameter. But those usually make the lower course of these walls, the lower rows of these walls. And then on top of those

come these walls that we describe as header stretcher pattern, which are made from columnar basalt. Now columnar basalt looks like logs, and they're usually one and a half to two meters long. And so one course would be the log kind of laid parallel to the wall. The next course, the next row would be pieces, not the entire length of the columnar basalt, but pieces that are laid perpendicular. So you only see the ends laid side by side on top of these long lengths of rock logs. And then the next course above them would be the stretcher part, the long length, right? And then above that, right? So it looks like a log cabin in some respects, if you think about

building a log cabin, right? Only you're doing it with stone. So it's unique in that respect. But what's really interesting is that when you get to the corners, the corners are always kind of this upturned corner. Again, one of the aspects of doing exactly that is that it adds a little more stability to the overall wall. So you have these upturned corners that almost look like the prows of a canoe and that's how they're frequently described. But their function is more structural than anything else, even though there's an aesthetic component to it as well. Imagine a millennium that laid the foundations for the modern world as we know it today,

when kingdoms were forged, languages shaped, cultures created. I'm Dr Kat Jarman, and on Gone Medieval, my co-host Matt Lewis and I will tell you just why the so-called Dark Ages really weren't that dark after all. Subscribe to Gone Medieval by History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. i can imagine as you say the first thing that they would have to do is to construct these sea walls if they are building this city, this capital offshore. And if we then now let's focus in on these two areas of Nan Madol, central Nan Madol, proper Upper Nan Madol and Lower Man Madol. If we go to Upper Nan Madol first, what do we think was the function, was the purpose of this area of the site, which, as you said earlier, might have been constructed slightly later? So Upper Namadol, Madalpoe, is, according to oral histories, this is the sacred part of the city.

This is the part for rituals. This is the part for burials. And in fact, one of the key islets here for burials is Nandaos, one of the corner anchors. This was the place with a massive tomb structure on it. It had not just one, but three tombs, but one in particular. It's the showpiece. It is the piece when the Japanese had occupied Micronesia on the onset of World War II. The crown prince had come to visit the territories. So in order to prepare the grounds for him to prepare a tour of Nandawas in particular, it was cleaned up, swept up, vegetation was cut, and white coral pathways were placed around the central tomb. Well,

those still exist today. But the central tomb itself is a large structure built with a header stretcher pattern, right? It has an entryway, and it's essentially a crypt where the paramount chiefs would have been laid to rest along with their grave goods. But other islets in this particular sector were said to have served the funerary rites and rituals of Nandaos, right, of the main tomb for the paramount chiefs. So we have islets where the guards of the tomb would have lived. We have islets where turtles would have been sacrificed because turtles was a high status animal. We have islets that also have additional tombs, but on a much smaller scale, where priests would have been laid to rest. And so all the

islets in this particular sector seem to have some kind of relationship with the production of materials associated with ritual or with the rituals themselves that had some aspect of not just funerary rites, but probably rites of renewal, probably other kinds of rites related to the calendar and the changes of season or changes of fish patterns or something like that. So this was a place that is considered special, sacred. You don't go there unless you have permission to go there. Because if you don't have permission and you're there, something could happen to you. And it would be your fault because you didn't ask permission. something could happen to you. And it would be your fault because you didn't ask permission. Going on from that and keeping on this area of Nan Madol, which seems to also, I guess, emphasize the significance, the importance of this area. And I love this area of ancient history. It's looking at where certain materials come from and where you see in certain ancient sites, whether that's Stonehenge or the Acropolis or wherever, where you sometimes see these monumental buildings, these very important buildings, getting in materials from very far away or further away than other materials.

And if we focus in on the tomb on the Islet of Nandawas, Felicia, tell us where the material for this tomb came from, because I think this story is perhaps one of the most astonishing of them all. One of the things that we've always asked ourselves as archaeologists is, where do the materials come from? Where do these building materials come from? So the corals are Holocene era, so they would have come from reef of Holocene age, possibly the same reef that the Namadol is built on, because some of the reef rock seems to be from there. And that makes sense, because it's in an intertidal zone. But the basalts are massive. There is no massive basalt outcrop on Tamlin. So where did these come

from? And then you get the columnar basalt, and columnar basalts are a very special kind of basalt in terms of its formation and cooling and so on. So since Nandaos is one of the most spectacular of all of the islets, there's a lot of archaeological focus mainly on that, and in particular, trying to understand where the columnar basalts in particular derived from. And in testing them, looking at chemical analyses of these basalt logs, the best, most likely source, and oral histories also tell us this, is another kind of plug, a volcanic plug, that is on the opposite side of the island. So Nemadol is on the southeast portion of Pohnpei. This other volcanic plug, Pisanmalit, is actually

on the northwest part of Pohnpei. So totally opposite side of the island. And yet chemical analysis of Pisan Malat suggests that this is a source of the columnar basalts in Nandawis and likely other islets in Namadol. So this is a long way away. And you're talking about volcanic terrain that is jungled, right? talking about volcanic terrain that is jungled, right? So how do you go from Pissamallet to Namadol? One of the easiest, most likely possibilities is to actually, through displacement, float the logs to Namadol, going through lagoon channels. More than likely. You could, of course, do it over land, but talk about the manpower that would have to move these is phenomenal. Although, if you, again, or this is where oral histories come into play, and oral histories will say, well, you know, we had these chants, and these chants then give great super strength to the people who move these rocks, who move these boulders.

And as long as they continue to chant, they'll have that power, that muscle to move these massive construction pieces, right, across the landscape. But you could also, through displacement, actually move these logs, you float these logs right float right through lagoon channels from pissen mallet because pissen mallet is next to the lagoon it's a little ways away from it it's down a cliff or so but you still have access to the lagoon that you could then float the logs of course the other is that these were flown by magic from Pisanmalad to Nan Madol. That's the other explanation that's often given. Of course, of course, of course. Felicia, if we therefore keep on this area of Nan Madol just a bit longer, this religious,

very important for burial, etc. Because we have evidence of grave goods too from here yes so the grave goods and these come out of the tombs at nandaus which means that we're talking about high status grave goods and its grave goods include um pearls shell fish hooks difficult to make but more than anything else, they are a kind of currency. We also have shell bead money. We have other kinds of valuables like shell adzes, obsidian spear points that show up. But we also have more recent kinds of materials, which include silver coinage and silver crucifixes. So that suggests that these tombs were at least used by high status chiefs in more recent times as well. By more recent, I mean, you know, within the last couple of centuries. Not quite as ancient. Yeah. Not quite as ancient as Romans or Celts or anybody else. One of the things that we have noticed around, especially Nandaos, and that is that there is

an inordinate amount of rock art, which is also unusual in the sense that Ponpei, we don't have a lot of rock art. We do have a couple of petroglyph sites or rock carvings on boulders. But Namadol, you haven't really seen it before. What we do see though at Namadol, especially around Nandaoas, are clan symbols that show up as rock art. So we have the image of a sea cucumber, which more than likely was a clan. We have carvings of eels. We have carvings of turtles, right? We have carvings of other kinds of creatures that we don't know what they are, but they likely represent clan symbols. represent clan symbols. And in the islets surrounding Nandawas, we also have indications of really high status funerary rites occurring. One island was dedicated to turtles and roasting turtles. Another islet was dedicated to eels. And these are in across this part of Micronesia,

turtles and eels in particular are like the super duper high status totems or clan symbols. So these are occurring also in the same area, which then just reinforces the status of Nanda'was in particular. That is incredible. I love the petroglyphs. I love rock art, whether it's in UK or the Pacific or wherever. And as you say, it really seems to emphasise, along with the journeys, the big logistical challenges for these materials, how important Nandawas and that area was for those ancient inhabitants of Nand Madol. We've got to move on to the other area of Nand Madol, to Lower Nand Madol, Madol Pa. Please correct me if I said that wrong. We've got to move on to the other area of Nan Madol, to Lower Nan Madol, Madol Par. Please correct me if I said that wrong.

But what do we know about this administrative heart of Nan Madol, Felicia? So the administrative half in Lower Nan Madol, in Madol Par, we have much larger islets. What we have in the centre of this area is the key administrative site. Pancadera is what it's called. It is described as the home of the Sadalur, the paramount chief, right? The Sadalur is a whole lineage, a dynasty of rulers. And Pancadera is said to have been their home. It's like the palace, right? The living place of the king, of the paramount chief. It's also described as the garden islet. It is one of the most beautiful islets in Namadol, in my estimation, because of the nature of the rock and the building foundations and the architecture. But Pancadera had attached to it several other islets, which were like guest houses. One of them is Kalepewe Island, which is

the place where guests would stay, dignitaries, when they would arrive to Namadol to visit or pay homage to the high chief, to the king, to the ruler, to the Sadalur. But Pankadera is also unique in the sense that our oral histories tell us this is not just the center, the administrative center, the palace of the king, as it were, but it's the place from which the rest of Namadol was constructed. It's the place where the construction was dictated, right? It's the place where the architects started first. And so Pankadira also has this unique symbol attached to it in that its four corners are dedicated to the four principal architects of Namadol. So three of those corners, Kiti, Sokez, and Medlenim, are places in Ponpe. But the fourth

corner is attached to Kosrai, which is further upwind from Ponon Pei, several hundred miles away, about 500 miles away. It is also described as Ktao Paduk. So these four corners then are dedicated to the four architects. Lower Namadol also has many larger islets as compared to Upper Namadol. Some of these islets are dedicated to other kinds of industries, like raising eels and raising oysters. There is one islet that is considered the hospital islet. It's the place where medicine was made, and that's actually attached to a brackish pool in the reef, which is a place of healing, where after you've spent your time in the

hospital, you would take these therapeutic or healing swims in this brackish pool that was also, by the way, inhabited by eels. You probably didn't want to spend a lot of time there because eels have really sharp teeth. because eels have really sharp teeth. Lower Namadol is the place of industry, right? It's the place of administration. And the islets there reinforce that particular role of Lower Namadol. We've talked about the administration, the industry, of course, also Upper Nan Madol and that importance, significance.

One thing we haven't really seemed to be able to mention yet is about everyday people who lived in this floating citadel, as it were. I mean, Felicia, do we have any evidence of there being housing on any particular islets? Do we know where the everyday citizens of Nan Madol, as it were, would have lived. So if you think about administering this massive site, now the size of Nan Madol, it's about 83 hectares. That's what we've calculated it to. Islets, in terms of islet numbers, it's anywhere from 92 to 120 islets, depending on how you identify them. Some have now been sort of disassembled and material salvaged and used elsewhere. So it's a pretty large area. You have obviously tombs, right? People are buried there. You've got a palace, but palaces had to be attended to. Funerals, burials had to be attended to.

So we have every indication that across these islets generally, we've got the residences of priests. We have the residence of guards, the military, the security. We have the indications of servants, of lower chiefs. One of the things you want to do as the ruler is keep your lower chiefs close to you so that they could administer their own sections of the island of Pompeii remotely, right? But you want them closer to you. They become, in a in a sense your counsel but you keep an eye on them as well so it's like keeping your enemies close to you so you know what's going on so we

have housing for servants we have probably corvée laborers who probably lived in and on and around Namadol as well, because there's going to be a constant maintenance of these islets that have to be completed. You have farmers because of, you know, there wasn't food necessarily grown on these islets. Many of these islets were used to produce other kinds of materials and goods like turmeric, possibly coconuts, medicines, more than likely medicines, oysters, eels, you know, there's fishing ponds. You had to have had a whole section of medicine makers, priests, or doctors of some sort. makers, priests or doctors of some sort. And of course, your architects and masons and others, the labor force who are needed to support the capital and all the work that the capital has to have done in order to exert its power. And if we therefore keep on exerting its power,

the settlements and its location and its importance, and you've kind of mentioned it earlier as well, but it sounds like this city must have been the center of some extensive connection routes, trade routes. It must have had people going to and from it from other places and to other places in Micronesia, maybe hundreds of miles away, and perhaps beyond that too. So we have an indication that Namadol was not just a central place. It was a capital. It was a point of power. It was a point of connection. And it seems to have played a

central role in what we would call a long distance interaction and exchange network that ran anywhere from Yap in the west to perhaps Tonga in the east, possibly even to the Hawaiians, right? Possibly. And we know this from the types of goods that start showing up, like spondylus shell necklaces, as an example, right? It's not something you see locally, but it is something that comes from afar. We have other indications of materials that might come from the southern part of the Pacific, further into Kiribati, as an example. So we start going down the island chains, possibly from New Guinea, like obsidian, right? Obsidian more than likely came from the Admiralty's.

So we have goods that show up in Namadol, in the excavations, in the archaeological work, that suggest we have this incredibly extensive trading network, exchange network, communication network. And there's even some indication, there are some old stories that say that Namadol ruled the oceans. That is, it was in charge of or directed the maritime economy of that part of the Pacific, or that half of the Pacific. So Namadol serves as this, it's not as this capital, as this city, as this point of contact. It's the first place anybody outside or off island would go to when they would arrive to Pompeii. Their first stop would have to be Namadol. This is the place where they would gain permissions to even be there. It all begs the question, Felicia, then, this central city, this capital with connections

stretching far and wide, including with the Polynesians, this statement of power, if it's so powerful, what happens to it? It begs the question, what happens to Namadol? So how did it end, right? What happened? Did people just disappear, right? Namadol comes to an end. Construction seems to stop sometime in the 15th, 16th, 17th century, probably closer to the 15th, 16th century. Construction stops. That suggests that all those people that occupied and supported the administration of this capital place, left, disappeared. Somehow they went missing. Nan Madol seems to have fallen out of the power structure. It doesn't play this major role anymore. So oral histories talk about the tyrancy of the Sadalors, of the paramount

chiefs, of this dynasty that occupied Nan Madol. These were the worst of the worst. They controlled every aspect of your life, every small act, right? Every decision that anybody would make. So it becomes a pretty sort of restrictive governance on the island itself. And that's what the oral histories talk about. But they also talk about the fall of the Sadalur dynasty came when this legendary hero, Isokalikel, arrives from upwind, right? Possibly from Kosrae. So from an upwind, vague place, Kataupai-duk. So this upwind island. It's associated with Kosrae, but we're not sure. It's a little vague.

So Isoko-le-Kel comes with 333 men, and he arrives with this entourage, right? This is all of his guys, his entourage. And he enters Namadol as a kind of a dignitary. He is placed onto and housed onto one of these guest islets, in particular, it's Kolepwe, which is attached to Pankadira, the palace islet. But Isokalikel has ulterior motives. Isokalikel essentially overthrows the Sadalur. He and his 333 men overthrow the Sadalur dynasty. They kill off the last Sadalur and in his place they establish a new governance structure and

this is the structure of the Namurkis which is the structure that is in place today. So the Namorquies on Pohnpei today actually trace their lineage back to Isokalikel. Isokalikel is described as the first Namorki who sort of sets the structure, makes it a much more democratic or people-friendly governance structure. Sadalors, they're now gone. They're so bad, the tyrant is dead, he's tossed out. Namorces replaced the Sadalors. Early Namorces are said to have lived at Namadol, but not for very long. They move on to the main island of Pohnpei and have been there ever since. The tombs that exist, Nandawis in particular, was said to have not just been the tombs of the Sadalors, but also of the early Namurkis. And we have another place, another tomb islet in Namadol,

and this is an islet that actually kind of straddles Temun and the innertidal zone. It's called Pine Katal. This is supposedly the burial place of the original brothers or two men who founded Namadol according to oral histories. So it's another kind of special place that's also the place where the Sadaluras were laid to rest, where the Namorkees were laid to rest. So we've got this kind of confusing oral history that talks about the earliest founders of Namadol in this one particular islet, but also the Sadalors through this entire dynasty, as well as the Namorkees, the early Namorkees, all of them buried in this one particular place, in addition to Nantawas, in addition to the burial locations and the cemeteries that become established on the main

island of Ponpe. So it's really the overthrow of a tyrant. That's the story of Namadol. It is raised by a tyrant. It's overthrown. You know, the tyrancy is overthrown and a new governance, better life for the people of Pompeii emerge thereafter. Felicia, there are so many layers to this site, whether it's the pre-Nan Madol and the 2000-year-old archaeology you've got there or near the site itself, whether it's the Saudelias or whether it's what happens afterwards. It's an astonishing site with so much ancient history, centuries of it. But Nan Madol today, going to visit Nan Madol today, I haven't had the pleasure. I would love to go one day. How is it looking now? What's

happened recently surrounding it? And what does the future hold for this ancient, extraordinary, enigmatic site? So if you think about Namadol as a palimpsest, where you've got these layers and layers and layers of history that is built one on top of the other, it's an incredible site. It's a site of an enduring cultural memories more than anything else. So today, Namadol has been inscribed on the World Heritage List. So it was inscribed in 2016. At the same time it was placed on the World Heritage List, it was also placed on the Sites in Danger list. So it has these two inscriptions in that sense. The site has been taken over by the mangrove vegetation.

Many of the islets are overgrown with vegetation. The canals in many parts of the site are not navigable because they are silted in by the roots of the mangroves have really trapped the silt and created this kind of a mucky, sort of still environment. Part of the reason for placing the site on the endangered list for the World Heritage is that Nemadol is being inundated by rising sea levels. It is being battered by stormier storms. It is requiring a lot more treatments in terms of trying to ensure that foundations don't succumb to tidal surges in that respect. So we see a place that today is still magnificent. If you were to go there and visit the site, one of the things that you would have to do is cross a number of property owners' lands, right? Each property owner is in

effect asking a fee to cross the land to access the site. But once you get to the site, once you gain permission to enter the site, there's a nice little pathways that have been constructed with bridges across various islets that basically take you to Nandaos, the most spectacular of all the islets, really. Nandaos has been maintained. The vegetation has been cut, you know, in order so it's not overgrown in that respect. But trying to maintain the rest of Namadol has been trickier. It's incredibly costly.

This is in the tropics where vegetation not only works its way into and on these islets, but the roots and the branches start breaking through the construction of the islets. So in some sense, you can't really remove vegetation without destroying or causing some kind of damage to many of the foundations and the walls that are on these other islets. So we have a lot of questions on how to maintain the site, how to ensure that its integrity remains intact. And that's just the physical aspects of maintaining the site itself. But if you think about the site overall today, it's a place of relationships. It's a place of cultural memories. It's kind of a permanent symbol in the landscape that reinforces the history of place. the current governing structure derives from. So this is that origin point, that point where all things emanate from that exists today on Pompeii and in this part of the Pacific.

Felicia, that's a lovely way to wrap up this podcast. It's an incredible sight. Thank you for coming on the show and shining more light on it. And yes, just begs for me to say once again, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast. Well, thank you for asking me. This is always fun. I love talking about this site and every place else in Micronesia. The archaeology is fascinating. So thank you very much.