Nan Madol
- Dated
- Place
- Madolenihmw, Pohnpei State, Federated States of Micronesia · Pohnpeians under the Saudeleur dynasty
- Coordinates
- 6° 51′ N · 158° 20′ E (approximate)
- Remains
- Fragmentary
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From the archivist
Off the southeast shore of Pohnpei, on a shallow reef, this civilization raised more than a hundred islets out of the sea. It had no mortar and no metal tools. It had basalt, which cools into long natural prisms, and it had coral. The prisms were laid crosswise, one course across the next, like logs stacked for a fire, and the hollows were packed with coral rubble until the walls rose several metres above the water.
By about 1180, stone was being hauled from the far side of the island for a tomb on the islet of Nandauwas. By about 1200, the vault had received its first burial, a chief whom oral history remembers as the first to rule all of Pohnpei. His successors, the Saudeleur, governed from here. Palaces, temples, tombs and houses each had their islet, and between them ran channels that the tide filled and emptied.
The Saudeleur fell; the islets emptied, and the mangrove came in. What remains is a city that belonged to the sea as much as to the land, and that the sea, silting and rising, is slowly taking back.
Established
- Nan Madol is a group of more than 100 artificial islets off the southeast coast of Pohnpei, built with walls of basalt and coral boulders (UNESCO).
- The islets held stone palaces, temples, tombs and residential areas, and formed the ceremonial centre of the Saudeleur dynasty, placed by UNESCO at about 1200 to 1500 CE.
- Coral dated by uranium series shows that by about 1180 CE basalt was being brought from a distant source on the island for the central tomb of the islet of Nandauwas, and that the vault received its first burial by about 1200 CE (McCoy et al. 2016).
- Oral histories identify that tomb as the resting place of the first chief to rule all of Pohnpei (McCoy et al. 2016).
- UNESCO inscribed the site on the World Heritage List in 2016 and, the same year, on the List of World Heritage in Danger, because silting canals and unchecked mangrove growth undermine the structures; it was retained on that list in 2025.
Interpretation
How long before the Saudeleur the reef was built upon, and when their rule ended, remain debated: radiocarbon dates suggest earlier phases of islet building, and Pohnpeian tradition, which tells of the dynasty's overthrow by the hero Isokelekel and the rise of the Nahnmwarki chiefs, is dated differently by different scholars. How the heaviest basalt columns were moved is not known.
In 10,000 years
In 10,000 years, when the sea has risen, will the stones of Nan Madol be a reef again?
Sources (4)
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Nan Madol: Ceremonial Centre of Eastern Micronesia (property 1503), inscribed 2016 and placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger the same year. · whc.unesco.org
- McCoy, M. D., Athens, J. S., et al. Earliest direct evidence of monument building at the archaeological site of Nan Madol (Pohnpei, Micronesia) identified using 230Th/U coral dating and geochemical sourcing of megalithic architectural stone. Quaternary Research, 2016, doi:10.1016/j.yqres.2016.08.002. · doi.org
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre. World Heritage Centre and ICOMOS reactive monitoring mission to Nan Madol: Ceremonial Centre of Eastern Micronesia. · whc.unesco.org
- UNESCO World Heritage Committee, 47th session (Paris, 2025). Decisions on the state of conservation of properties on the List of World Heritage in Danger (Nan Madol retained on the List). · whc.unesco.org