By Harry Pearl, Benar News
An aerial view of Ouballang terrace, the largest of a series of ancient man-made earthworks spread across Aimeliik state in Palau on Nov. 29, 2024. Photo: Rivers Reklai/BenarNews
2,400-year-old earthworks revealed as predating stone moai statues of Rapa Nui and megalithic Nan Madol in Micronesia.
Palauan tourism official Lelly Obakerbau shakes her head and motions at the encroaching jungle that threatens to reclaim an ancient and largely unknown Pacific archaeological site.
"If we don't keep this clean, the layers of the terraces will disappear," she says while walking below the pyramid-like crown of one of Palau's monumental earthworks.
"Palauans have to be proud of what they have from way back, from their ancestors."
She is determined to spread the word about her country's unique archaeological heritage.
The earthworks of Palau, shaped by humans over the course of millennia, are the earliest expression of monumentality in all of Oceania, according to current research.
Records show the monuments predate the World Heritage-listed giant stone moai figures on Rapa Nui - also called Easter Islands - in Chile and the megalithic basalt stone structures of Nan Madol in the Federated States of Micronesia.
Nearly 20% of Babeldaob, the largest of approximately 445 islands that make up Palau, is estimated to have been transformed by terraced hillsides, crowns, moats and trenches. Smaller earthworks were also built on the nearby islands of Oreor, Ngerekebesang and Malakal in the archipelago located between the Philippines and Guam.
Using primitive tools, early inhabitants altered the landscape in a way that is without parallel in the Pacific, reflecting a complex and well-organized society, skilled in engineering and hydrology, according to archaeologists.
Lelly Obakerbau, the tourism program assistant for Aimeliik state, sits outside a bai, or traditional meeting house, on Nov. 30, 2024 in Palau Photo: Harry Pearl/BenarNews
"For Palau to have been able to build so many huge monumental structures so early in time - before any other Pacific Islands - it really says that it was quite advanced," said archaeologist Jolie Liston, who has been studying the earthworks for more than three decades.
Today, however, most of these ancient terraces are hidden under dense forest.
Archaeologists have recently been using drones fitted out with laser technology called light detection and ranging [lidar] to map the earthworks and boost their visibility to the public. Lidar takes precise measurements of the earth's surface by measuring the amount of time laser pulses take to bounce back after hitting the ground.
With a grant from the U.S. Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation, Liston and her team surveyed 2,400 acres of terraced landscape in Aimeliik last year using drones.
"The whole point was to capture the full extent of the earthworks under the forest," she said. "I could only do a portion of Aimeliik state, which is the area that we're trying to have for tourism."
The lidar images will inform ongoing research and be used to create a three-dimensional model for a small museum in the Aimeliik visitors' center. It will allow local students and tourists to visualize the earthworks' magnitude and be used for training of local tour guides.
A drone lidar image showing the topography of earthworks in Aimeliik in 2024 Photo: U.S. Ambassador's Fund for Cultural Preservation
Archaeological evidence suggests that the earthworks supported burial grounds, gardens, fortifications and were used in ceremonies and rituals. The terraces were also likely symbols to display individual chiefly or polity power, Liston said.
Though a number of questions remain about their function and social significance, the scale reflects a high degree of planning and specialized knowledge.
Annette Kühlem, an archaeologist at the German Archaeological Institute, said the monuments reshaped previous assumptions about prehistoric life not just in the Pacific islands but beyond.
"For the longest time there was this belief that humans were at the mercy of nature, especially on island environments. They made do with what they found," said Kühlem, who in 2022 announced the discovery of six skeletons on the summit of one of the monuments.
"This is such a dramatic example of how people reshaped - literally reshaped - an entire island."
An aerial view of a portion of the Aimeliik Earthwork District taken in 1976. Photo: U.S. Government
Archaeologists have been investigating the earthworks since the 1960s, but the structures have not received the attention of other ancient sites in the Pacific, according to Liston.
"They never really caught attention and I think it's because most people don't pay attention to Micronesia," she said. "They're really paying attention to Polynesia, Melanesia and Lapita [considered the first people to have settled in Melanesia]."
One challenge in piecing together their origins and driving preservation efforts is that the earthworks do not feature prominently in Palauan oral history.
"Oral history in the Pacific is pretty much everything," Liston said.
Drawing on historical writings and interviews with elders, Liston and Melson Miko, a Palauan tourism official, published a paper in 2012 that said that many Palauans were skeptical about their ancestors' ability to build the earthworks, in part because they didn't appear in the oral traditions.
Elders did recount stories about a mystical time where terraces are depicted as steps linking the gods to heaven and earth. But this was related to specific locations or individual features, rather than a generic explanation of how or by whom earthworks were constructed, the paper said.
Some have even speculated they were built by an early wave of settlers, though there is no archaeological, linguistic or genetic evidence suggesting that today's population is not directly descended from the archipelago's earliest inhabitants, Liston and Miko reported.
Exactly when and where the first Palauns migrated from is unclear but the most likely region of origin is considered to be Southeast Asia based on linguistic similarities and the evaluation of sea currents, Kühlem said in a study published in 2022.
According to Liston, by the time of Western contact in the late 1700s, the use and meaning of the terraces had been forgotten after centuries of abandonment as the population moved to stonework villages along the coastline.
"We've been trying to get the word out not just to the world, but so that Palauan people realize how fabulous they [the terraces] are and will have more pride in their construction, the architecture and want to preserve them," she said.
Today, efforts to preserve and promote the earthworks face a number of challenges: a lack of financial support, limited technical capacity, and difficulties navigating the complex system of customary land ownership.
Environmental restrictions on burning in Babeldaob have also allowed the jungle to grow back unchecked over the past decade.
In her tourism role with the Aimillik government, Obakerbau works on a small budget and with just two staff to raise awareness about the earthworks - something she admits is "very tough."
"I want historical and cultural heritage in my state Aimeliik to be more active," she said, adding that the government is now getting onboard
"I've been trying to encourage the kids to do classes at the community college in tourism and archaeology, because if you're Palauan you have to know your places.
"You have to know what was happening back then and what is happening today."
This article was first published on BenarNews.
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