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Tagged “basalt”

• MUST READ

  Nan Madol

  With no draft animals, no metal tools, and no wheel, how did a Pacific island society quarry, move, and stack tens of thousands of multi-tonne basalt columns across open reef water to build a city of nearly 100 artificial islets — and why, after roughly four centuries as the seat of Saudeleur power, was it abandoned?

  c. 12th-13th century CE monumental construction · Temwen Island, Pohnpei, Federated States of MicronesiaAdded July 2026
• HIGH WONDER

  Su Nuraxi di Barumini

  A Bronze Age people who left no writing covered Sardinia with some 7,000 dry-stone towers, then grew this one from a single keep into a walled bastion and town — so what were the nuraghi actually for, and who exactly built them?

  c. 1600–1200 BCE, Bronze Age (later expanded) · Barumini, Sardinia, ItalyAdded July 2026