The Menehune Ditch is on the Island of Kaua'i in Hawai‘i.  It looks insignificant today, but it is really much larger than you can currently see.  Many stones have been removed.  The roadway has been built on top of the rest.   But when it was first found, it was described as being over 20 feet high and over a mile long.  So it was not a small and insignificant structure.

The construction of this irrigation ditch is credited to the Menehune, the legendary little people of Hawai‘i.  When you view the few stones visible, look at how beautifully cut and fitted they are.  They appear to be literally carved from stone, not just chipped into shape.  Cutting stones this way requires suitable tools and techniques.  It is its own technology -- a stone cutting and finishing technology.  This is very highly refined stonework and a truly superb construction job, especially for an irrigation ditch.

Look at the photos of Hawaiian heiau (temples) on an earlier page.  They were all made from large rounded stones carefully piled upon each other.  The fishponds were built the same way.  They are very well made, but they do not make use of any stone-cutting like the Menehune Ditch.  If this extraordinary stone-cutting technology were available, why would it not have been used for the heiau?  They are the temples and altars to the gods.  Why use it for an irrigation ditch and not offer it to the gods? 

One possible answer is that the technology to cut these stones had been lost by the time the heiau and fishponds were made.  Specifically, it means that the stone sawing or slicing method used for the Ditch was no longer available to the Menehune or to the known Hawaiians for any of the heiau or fishponds they made.   They had to do the best they could with other techniques for these other projects.

This answer suggests two thoughts. 

1. (1)that there was a high technology available in the past that was later lost, and
   

2. (2)that there was a great passage of time between the Ditch construction and all of the other Menehune building projects.
   

How much time passed?  Of course, no one knows this answer.  The pyramids of Egypt have some of this look in their cut and finished stones.  Although the Egyptian stones are larger, their cutting and finishing technology looks very similar. The pyramids are over 4,000 years old.  Can it be that this ditch was made in that era of time?  If so, these islands were believed to be uninhabited at that time. 

Further, if this technology were lost, how was it lost?  There is some other fine stonework around the Pacific, but there is very little stonework of this quality.  If you had the technology to make the Ditch, would you not use it for many, many things?  Would you only build one ditch and then quit?  I do not think so.  You would make many things.  But where are those many things built of cut and fitted stone?  Should we not see various styles and examples of this technology as it was perfected and used? 

Consider this explanation.  What if the many anticipated structures were once here, but we cannot see them today?  What if we have actually been looking in the wrong place for these many structures?  What if we do not see them because many all of them were built on land that is now covered by water?  What if we do not see them because many were destroyed and the stones scattered.  That is what the Hawaiian legends say happened to the Motherland of Mu‘u. 

We know that this Menehune Ditch is very old.  We know that it was made with a technology lost to the heiau builders.  We know it was made to a remarkably high standard and is separated by vast distances from anything comparable.  We suspect that something has taken away the other examples of this construction technology. 

Is it possible that as we stand here, we are looking at one of the very few visible remains of Lemuria, the Motherland of Mu‘u?