Nan Madol artificial Islands since 1300 AD

First experiment on artificial islands...


"The early occupants of The Federated States of Micronesia constructed Nan Madol, a series of 92 artificial rectangular islets, for nobility made of basalt prisms in about 1300. Megalithic land manufactured of columnar basalt formed seawalls stacked like logs, with coral rubble fill behind the seawalls. The basalt seawalls and breakwaters of Nan Madol have survived centuries of brutal Pacific conditions and have become symbiotic with the existing island coast.


Today, Nan Madol’s ruins, often called the Venice of the Pacific, are connected by a grid of shallow canals. (In fact, “Nan Madol” originates form the term “spaces between,” which carries a double meaning of between land / water and literally the canal-like spaces between its enclosures.) Again, Deleuze is useful here. From Desert Islands he writes: “Islands are either from before or for after humankind.” Islands are themselves a kind of geologic ruin—or in some way considered partial complete or partially eroded. How ideal then to have Nan Madol, artificial island, nestled within Micronesia, an originary island."