Voyagers
The Settlement of the Pacific
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
The extraordinary sixty-thousand-year history of how the Pacific islands were settled.
'Takes readers on a narrative odyssey' Wall Street Journal, Books of the Year
'Highlights a dizzying burst of new research' The Economist
'A refreshing addition to the canon of literature that contemplates Oceanic navigation' Noelle Kahanu
'I would not be surprised if, after reading this masterpiece, many readers are compelled to take up voyaging themselves' Science Magazine
Thousands of islands, inhabited by a multitude of different peoples, are scattered across the vastness of the Pacific. The first European explorers to visit Oceania, from the sixteenth century on, were astounded and perplexed to find populations thriving so many miles from the nearest continents. Who were these people and where did they come from?
In Voyagers, the distinguished anthropologist Nicholas Thomas charts the course of the seaborne migrations that populated the islands between Asia and the Americas. Drawing on the latest research, including insights gained from linguistics, archaeology, and the re-enactment of voyages, Thomas provides a dazzling account of these long-distance migrations, the sea-going technologies that enabled them, and the societies that they left in their wake.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cambridge University anthropologist Thomas (Islanders: The Pacific in the Age of Empire) delivers a brisk and intriguing account of how the islands of Oceania came to be inhabited by humans. He begins by documenting the first contacts between Pacific islanders and European explorers including James Cook, who documented linguistic and cultural affinities between the inhabitants of islands thousands of miles apart. Contending that 19th-century maps dividing the Pacific Ocean into regions including Polynesia and Micronesia were based on "invidious and overtly racist contrasts" between natives, Thomas draws on the latest findings in archaeology, genetics, climatology, and linguistics to chronicle the settlement of present-day Australia and New Guinea by people from southeast Asia 45,000 to 50,000 years ago, and tracks the subsequent migration of their descendants across vast stretches of ocean to colonize Hawaii, the Marianas, Tahiti, and other islands and archipelagos. Throughout, Thomas highlights the work of Indigenous scholars, including Tongan anthropologist Epeli Hau‛ofa, and makes the case that the region has been more central to world affairs than is widely known. With lucid explanations of modern advances in historical anthropology and evocative reflections on the author's own fascination with Oceania, this is an accessible introduction to an astounding chapter in human history.
