Dating a world-unique Pacific ruin: Nan Madol

Abstract

Great Holocene civilizations on Pacific islands were created by Homo sapiens. However, most of the construction histories remain uncertain due to the lack of developed writing system and the limitation of dating techniques. Nan Madol (0.7 km in width and 1.5 km in length), an abandoned city called the “Venice of the Pacific” with over 100 artificial islets, is located on the southeastern coast of island Pohnpei in Micronesia. This world-unique ruin, inscribed onto UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 2016, was built with basalt megaliths and scleractinian coral cobbles. Oral histories and previous charcoal 14C ages suggested that the main construction of Nan Madol of Pohnpei could begin in the 13th or 14th century and ceased at the 16th or 17th century, associated with the rise and fall of the Saudeleur Dynasty. However, after 150 years or more of studies, the timing of construction and the dynasty, and the probable influence of environmental factors, remain unresolved. High-precision U-Th dating techniques, developed at the High-Precision Mass Spectrometry and Environment Change Laboratory (HISPEC), Department of Geosciences, National Taiwan University, were used to date the selected pristine coral infills and reveal the construction time of the two ruins. With over 150 coral ages determined, results show a peak of construction activity during the middle 11th century could be related to the rise of the Saudeleur Dynasty. In the early 15th century, construction activities ceased, associated with the dynasty’s downfall. Our study shows that Nan Madol construction and the rise and fall of the dynasty occurred 2-3 centuries earlier than previously estimated. Moreover, the entire development was dominated by El Niño-Southern Oscillation variability and tectonic-related sea level rise.