What do you think about this?
Off the coast of Pohnpei, a small island in the western Pacific, lies a ruined city that should not be possible. It is called Nan Madol, and it is built out over the water, more than a hundred artificial islets laced together by canals, which is why some call it the Venice of the Pacific. But it is what the islets are made of that stops people cold.
The whole city is constructed from massive columns of black basalt, long rod like stones that formed naturally in a volcano, some of them weighing several tons. They are stacked like giant logs to build walls over twenty feet high. In total, the site holds close to a million tons of stone. It was the capital of the Saudeleur dynasty, built up over centuries beginning around eight or nine hundred years ago.
Here is the puzzle. There are no quarries at the building site. The basalt came from elsewhere on the island, and somehow those enormous columns were moved across land and water and lifted into place, by a people with no metal tools, no pulleys, and no written record of how they did it. Local legend simply says two sorcerers made the stones fly through the air.
Makes you wonder how a society we tend to picture as small and simple moved a mountain of stone into the sea and built a city on it.
Lost engineering we have underestimated, or a mystery the islanders themselves could only explain with magic? What do you think raised Nan Madol?
What do you think about this? On January 20, 1996, three young women in Varginha, Brazil, saw a four foot creature with oily skin and red eyes crouched by a wall. The army was in town that morning. A policeman said to have handled it died a month later. Cover story, or Brazil’s Roswell?
What do you think about this? In 1800 settlers at Conneaut, Ohio, opened a four acre burial ground in rows and reported skeletons over seven feet, jaws that fit over a man’s face, double rows of teeth. The graves were plowed under within a generation. Tall tale, or a people buried twice?
What do you think about this? The Iron Pillar of Delhi is six tons of forged iron from around 400 AD. It has stood outside through 1,600 years of monsoons and never rusted, thanks to a protective film from phosphorus rich iron nobody made again. Lucky recipe, or knowledge lost on purpose?
What do you think about this? North Sea trawlers pull up mammoth teeth, flint tools and a carved harpoon from 120 feet deep. Until 8,000 years ago that seabed was Doggerland, a forested land the size of Britain, drowned by rising seas and a tsunami. The lost land of every old story?
What do you think about this? In 1974 a Florida family found a polished 22 pound steel ball in burned brush. It hummed when a guitar played, rolled across rooms on its own and changed direction. Navy X rays showed objects inside, origin unknown. Valve ball, or something that landed?
What do you think about this? The Whaley House in San Diego was built in 1857 where a man was slowly hanged five years earlier. A baby and a daughter later died inside. Visitors report footsteps in empty rooms and a pressure on the throat where the gallows stood. Old house, or long memory?
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