A Monastery Unearthed.
On Kaashidhoo island, a 1996 dig led by Norwegian archaeologist Egil Mikkelsen uncovers a 1,880 m² Buddhist monastery — 64 coral-stone structures including a 16-sided stepped platform so geometrically precise that Thor Heyerdahl compared Maldivian stonemasonry to the Inca walls of Cuzco.
Between 1996 and 1998, a Norwegian team led by archaeologist Egil Mikkelsen — in partnership with the Maldivian National Centre for Linguistic and Historical Research — excavated a site on Kaashidhoo island in Kaafu Atoll known as Kuruhinna Tharaagandu. What they found beneath the sand was a Buddhist monastery covering 1,880 square metres.
Sixty-four coral-stone structures were uncovered. The most striking was Ruin XXXIII: a sixteen-sided base platform six metres across, 1.3 metres high, with a southern stairway and five distinct stepped tiers, each of the sixteen sides subtly concave. The geometry is so precise — and the fit of the coral blocks so tight — that the Maldivian masons appear to have worked at a level comparable to the greatest pre-modern stoneworkers anywhere.
On Kudahuvadhoo in Dhaalu Atoll, Thor Heyerdahl went further. Surveying the coral masonry there in the 1980s, he wrote that it was 'among the finest I have ever seen', comparing it directly to the monumental Inca walls of Cuzco. The comparison is extravagant — but the photographs bear it out.
- Mikkelsen, Egil. The Maldives: Archaeological Excavations on Kaashidhoo (Oslo, 2000)
- Heyerdahl, Thor. The Maldive Mystery (Allen & Unwin, 1986)