NARRATOR: In the middle of the Pacific Ocean,
roughly 2,500 miles northeast of Australia,
lie the ruins of a once great ancient city, Nan Madol,
consisting of hundreds of man-made islets
off the eastern coast of Micronesia.
It has been dubbed the eighth wonder of the world.
The site of Nan Madol, on the island of Pohnpei
in Micronesia, is one of the strangest places on the planet.
It's an 11-square mile complex composed of over 250
million tons of basalt logs.
They're floating on a submerged coral reef.
They're 18 feet long, 4 feet in diameter,
and are stacked 40 feet up in the air.
Why did they do this?
And how did they do this?
NARRATOR: Today, the site lies abandoned
and shunned by the local Micronesians,
who consider it haunted.
TOK THOMPSON: Nan Madol is one of these
disappeared civilizations.
It is fascinatingly interesting.
This seems to have been the center of power
of a major civilization.
And yet, it also seems that it might
have been built on earlier civilizations
that are lost in time.
NARRATOR: Since stone is difficult to accurately date,
no one knows for certain when it was constructed
or how it was built.
GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: When you ask the local population,
where were these blocks quarried, in unison they will
tell you from across the island, and that they
were flown across the island.
According to legend, twin sorcerers of giant proportions
came down from the sky and floated above the site
and positioned the basalt columns as they desired.
A legend that's very similar to the same story at Puma Punku.
GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: When I hear stories like that, I
wonder, well, perhaps we have another example of what I refer
to as misunderstood technology.
NARRATOR: As with other sites like Puma Punku, Baalbek,
and the Coricancha, legend says that these structures were not
the first to exist here, but instead were
built above a much older city.
ANDREW GOUGH: The mystery of Nan Madol
is even more intriguing when we factor in the local legend that
states that it was built on an earlier civilization called
the Kanamwayso, which is submerged below water
but still has those same basalt megaliths.
NARRATOR: Objects that appear to be
basalt columns have, in fact, been found
beneath the ocean at Nan Madol.
And those who have studied the columns,
both above and below the water, have
discovered a curious electromagnetic anomaly.
DAVID CHILDRESS: There's a strong magnetic field
in every single one of the 250 million tons of basalt there.
You can take a compass and run it along these basalt blocks,
and your compass will just spin as you
move it along the blocks.
Also, it's thought that the site itself is a special power
spot and an energy vortex.
And that's why Nan Madol is built there,
and this legendary sunken city called Kanamwayso as well.
GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: The local population also
reports many, many sightings of orbs and lights
that have been seen hovering around Nan Madol.
Is it because of the magnetic spectrum of Earth?
And you have to wonder if, through magnetism, the stones
were transported in the first place,
because they were transported through the air.
NARRATOR: Some ancient astronaut theorists
suggest that elevated electromagnetic energy present
at Nan Madol was not only a powerful tool used to move
the giant basalt columns, but that it may also
have been the reason that extraterrestrials
helped the locals to build here in the first place.
HUGH NEWMAN: Could it be that there was a sacred kind of part
of the site there where they were connecting with the gods,
you know, not just through visionary experiences,
but actually something in the land,
like a magnetic hot spot or a vortex?
TRAVIS TAYLOR: We hear the word vortex in science fiction,
popular culture all the time.
And a vortex is just a mathematical thing that
describes a swirling motion.
An electromagnetic field can be formed in a vortex.
You could create a vortex that would enable transporting
information from somewhere else to here at the speed of light
or faster than the speed of light.
And if there are places on the Earth where
these types of vortexes may be stronger than others,
you can see people going there to build structures that
maybe altered the electromagnetic field
of the local environment.
HUGH NEWMAN: Was there even some kind of portal or vortex
present in some of these sacred places?
If that's the case, we have to question
these principles of oracle sites, megalithic temples.
Were they built to harness this, to be
these communication portals between these different places?
GEORGE NOOR: There is no question in my mind
that these are much older sites than we think
and that they were spots for extraterrestrial communication
a long, long time ago.