Dallas Public Library

Sea people, the puzzle of Polynesia, Christina Thompson

eng

not applicable

not applicable

other

Sea people

not applicable

1086613888

Christina Thompson

the puzzle of Polynesia

For more than a millennium, Polynesians have occupied the remotest islands in the Pacific Ocean. 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? 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. Here, Thompson explores the fascinating story of these ancestors, as well as those of those of the many others who have puzzled over this history for 300 years

not applicable