Discovering the remains of ancient cities hidden beneath the ocean is a rare event. Recently, a mysterious set of structures was found in the center of a lagoon on the remote island of Pohnpei, an independent nation in the western Pacific Ocean. According to the Science Channel’s series What on Earth?, a striking satellite image revealed the lost city of Nan Madol, often referred to as the “Venice of the Pacific” or “Atlantis.”
In the satellite image, there are a series of mysterious canals and various stone foundations and ruins of ancient architecture. According to the Pohnpei State Government, Polish ethnographer and oceanographer John Stanislaw Kubary made the first detailed description of Nan Madol in 1874. According to the video on the Science Channel, the half-submerged city appears to be over a millennia-old and thanks to modern technology, a satellite mapping of the region has been made possible.
The satellite images have brought up a compiled 97 geometrical structures that are similar in shape and located along the island’s coastline. No additional information about the inhabitants and the civilization of the Nan Madol has been disclosed yet. The local name of the area loosely translates to “the space in between” and it refers to the canals that joined the rectangular islets. “As amazing as this site appears from satellite imagery, coming down to ground level is even more astounding. There are walls which are 25 feet tall and 17 feet thick,” archaeologist Karen Bellinger explained in the YouTube clip.
“It now looks like Nan Madol represents a first in Pacific Island history,” Mark McCoy, an associate professor at Southern Methodist University in Texas told Fox News in 2016. “The tomb of the first chiefs of Pohnpei is a century older than similar monumental burials of leaders on other islands. To me, in its prime, Nan Madol was a capital. It was the seat of political power, the center of the most important religious rituals, and the place where the former chiefs of the island were laid to rest.” According to the Smithsonian Magazine, the island is a tad bit smaller in size compared to New York City. It is also a part of the Federated States of Micronesia and is practically built atop a strong network of coral reefs.
“Nan Madol is one of the most significant sites not yet on the World Heritage List,” Richard Engelhart, an archaeologist and former UNESCO adviser for Asia and the Pacific, said, per the outlet. Nan Madol is also home to mangrove trees that cover 200 acres of the area. Rufino Mauricio, Pohnpei’s only archaeologist, mentioned that building Nan Madol might have required more effort than building pyramids. The people who built the region had to move 750,000 metric tons of rocks and that was an average of 1,850 tons a year for four centuries. “Not bad for people who had no pulleys, no levers and no metal,” Mauricio remarked. “We need to clear all this out in at least some of the islands so we can appreciate the extraordinary effort that was put into this construction.”
