Nan Madol: How to Build a City with Charisma (and 750,000 Tons of Stone)

Once upon a time, two brothers landed on an island in the Pacific, and convinced the thousands of people who lived there to forsake their relatively peaceful, low-maintenance life, and devote their energy and time to building Nan Madol, a megalithic city.

(Or we can believe the local legend that they built it with the help of their pet flying dragon, which is, honestly, the best mythical answer to any “how” question. If you don’t believe me, try it out. Why do leaves turn color? “A flying dragon breathes on them.” What’s a shooting star? “Oh, it’s just a homeward flying dragon…” But I digress.)

Nan Madol, the city they built, is about a mile long and a third of a mile wide, consisting of nearly one hundred buildings set in the ocean on a coral reef. It’s been called the Venice of the Pacific, a city built on water. It wasn’t easy to build

Naturally occurring basalt pillars, like huge Lincoln-logs, had to be hauled from the opposite side of the island, some ten miles away. Some of them pillars weighed up to 90 tons, (which is why I reluctantly discard the flying dragon theory) and they were stacked on top of each other to make walls up to 25 feet tall. It’s an impressive sight. And since we “know for certain” that the native population had no real tools, (who lets ancients play with tools?! Not we!) we deduce that they must have built the entire thing using brute force.

But the brothers and their descendants, the Saudeleurs, not only convinced the locals to build a huge temple/palace complex, they made them irrigate an entire island.

LiDAR scans of the island show that once contained a “vast archeological landscape of cultivation features.” A series of canals, berms and fields irrigated Temwen Island, where the city of Nan Madol is built, making it one giant food producing machine. The man-hours involved in that little project probably equaled or surpassed what it took to build the city. Archeologists believe that with this irrigation, the island could have produced more food than the population needed, probably even generating extra for trade.

In my mind, the mystery here isn’t actually about how the ancient islanders hauled 750,000 tons of basalt, or checker-boarded an entire island with canals. It’s why.

This might be hubris talking, but I think that given a lifetime and 5000 workers (the island was estimated to have a population of 30k, so 15k males, and I’m guessing one-third of them were workforce,) I think I could direct the building of a megalithic complex like this. I’d sort out the engineer types, and they’d gather around, fold their arms, maybe lean on a nearby tree, and toss ideas back and forth. And sooner or later, someone would have an amazing idea and we’d round up the rest of the guys up and make it happen.

The ancient Pohnpeian engineers found a way, just like you or your nerdy friend would. (By the way, if you’re already pondering how you’d make it happen, you are one of the nerds.) All we’re talking about is moving mass. That’s doable.

The real challenge was bigger than that: convincing people leave their comfortable lives to spend a lifetime hauling stone. This is an island in the Pacific. Food grows on trees, and while life wasn’t labor-free, it certainly wasn’t like Europe, where you had to hustle or die come winter. In many respects, these folks were living the good life before the brothers showed up and started talking. No one needed a city, especially not one that was only for priests and kings.

This, to me, is the mystery. How did a couple men convince an entire population to bend their backs to such hard labor? What kind of charismatic personalities must they have had? According to all accounts, their arrival was peaceful, and in the early days they were held in respect. Maybe even loved. As far as we can tell, they didn’t come with the solution to a problem. They brought the problem.

The brothers established a dynasty at Nan Madol, the Saudeleurs, and ruled for several hundred years of ever increasing despotism and tyranny before the islanders finally rebelled and destroyed them. Without the Saudeleurs, the city had no purpose. It was deserted, overwhelmed with mangrove trees. Brambles and silt collected in the canals, and the irrigation system failed and was abandoned. As far as I can tell, no one cared enough to put the backbreaking labor into fixing it, because no one really needed it in the first place.

So, what do you think? How would you convince people to drop everything and become, essentially, slaves? Do you know someone with that kind of charismatic ability?