Sea people : the puzzle of Polynesia / Christina Thompson.
Thompson, Christina, 1959- author.
2019
DU510 .T56 2019 (Mapit)
Available at General Collection

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Title
Sea people : the puzzle of Polynesia / Christina Thompson.
Author
Thompson, Christina, 1959- author.
Edition
First edition.
ISBN
9780062060877 (hardcover)
0062060872 (hardcover)
Published
New York, NY : Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2019]
Language
English
Description
xvi, 365 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), maps (some color) ; 24 cm
Call Number
DU510 .T56 2019
Dewey Decimal Classification
305.8994
Summary
"A blend of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel and Simon Winchester's Pacific, a thrilling intellectual detective story that looks deep into the past to uncover who first settled the islands of the remote Pacific, where they came from, how they got there, and how we know. For more than a millennium, Polynesians have occupied the remotest islands in the Pacific Ocean, a vast triangle stretching from Hawaii to New Zealand to Easter Island. Until the arrival of European explorers they were the only people to have ever lived there. Both the most closely related and the most widely dispersed people in the world before the era of mass migration, Polynesians can trace their roots to a group of epic voyagers who ventured out into the unknown in one of the greatest adventures in human history. How did the earliest Polynesians find and colonize these far-flung islands? How did a people without writing or metal tools conquer the largest ocean in the world? This conundrum, which came to be known as the Problem of Polynesian Origins, emerged in the eighteenth century as one of the great geographical mysteries of mankind. For Christina Thompson, this mystery is personal: her Maori husband and their sons descend directly from these ancient navigators. In Sea People, Thompson explores the fascinating story of these ancestors, as well as those of the many sailors, linguists, archaeologists, folklorists, biologists, and geographers who have puzzled over this history for three hundred years. A masterful mix of history, geography, anthropology, and the science of navigation, Sea People combines the thrill of exploration with the drama of discovery in a vivid tour of one of the most captivating regions in the world." --Amazon.com.
Note
"The quest to understand who first settled the islands of the remote Pacific, where they came from, how they got there, and how we know..."--Jacket.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references (pages [325]-348) and index.
Record Appears in
On-Campus Resources > Books
All Resources
Prologue: Kealakekua Bay
The eyewitnesses (1521-1722). A very great sea : the discovery of Oceania ; First contact : Mendana in the Marquesas ; Barely an island at all : atolls of the Tuamotus ; Outer limits : New Zealand and Easter Island
Connecting the dots (1764-1778). Tahiti : the heart of Polynesia ; A man of knowledge : Cook meets Tupaia ; Tupaia's chart : two ways of seeing ; An aha moment : a Tahitian in New Zealand
Why not just ask them? (1778-1920). Drowned continents and other theories : the nineteenth-century Pacific ; A world without writing : Polynesian oral traditions ; The Aryan Maori : an unlikely idea ; A viking in Hawai'i : Abraham Fornander ; Voyaging stories : history and myth
The rise of science (1920-1959). Somatology : the mesure of man ; A Maori anthropologist : Te Rangi Hiroa ; The Moa hunters : stone and bones ; Radiocarbon dating : the question of when ; The Lapita people : a key piece of the puzzle
Setting sail (1947-1980). Kon-Tiki : Thor Heyerdahl's raft ; Drifting not sailing : Andrew Sharp ; The non-armchair approach : David Lewis experiments ; Hokole'a : sailing to Tahiti ; Reinventing navigation : Nainoa Thompson
What we know now (1990-2018). The latest science : DNA and dates ; Coda : two ways of knowing.

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