Sea People
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.
Stats for nerds
6recommend
8mentions
7people
2016–2022years
75% recommend13% neutral13% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Recently read and recommend Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia by Christina Thompson:
> […]
> 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.
* https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/40536236-sea-people
It examines the question of the migration of Polynesians, but also the history of people examining the question itself: from the earliest European historians to the Polynesians themselves asking question about their own traditions, and how different 'senses of history' interacted.
It also gives a general description of the system of navigation used:
- I enjoyed reading Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia which is all about how Polynesia became populated.
https://www.amazon.com/Sea-People-Polynesia-Christina-Thomps...
- There's a good book that came out earlier this year about the Polynesian expansion called _Sea People_ by Christina Thompson. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
- I happened to read "Sea People" this past fall, and it's one that I'd recommend to anyone interested in more or less any of the areas it touches on. The author took an approach of not just explaining what information was learned, but the how it was learned, and did so in a way that I felt made things really accessible, though not at the expense of making things hand-wavy in her explanation (imho, anyway).
Polynesian exploration and the logistics involved (both from a Polynesian and European point of view), interaction between dissimilar cultures trying to understand each other, historical re-creation, and more, plus some of what I think is simply good writing. It's not a topic I'd looked into much beforehand, but found it a really interesting and enjoyable read. If anyone finds that the interview in the article sparks an interest, I think you could definitely do worse.
- Non-fiction I read this year:
Michael Benson - Space Odyssey - The detailed story of the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey. If you're a fan of the movie, or of Stanley Kubrick and/or Arthur C. Clarke in general, you should read this.
Atul Gawande - Complications - Fascinating look at life in the medical profession.
Christina Thompson - Sea People - Detailed, well-researched history of Polynesian-Western contact and relations. As a New Zealander I was interested in this, although American or European readers with no personal connection may be less so.
Peter Singer - Marx: A Very Short Introduction - What it says on the tin.
Robert C Allen - Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction - Also good, but inaccurately titled; it should have said "Global Economic History Since the Industrial Revolution".
Fraser A Sherman - Now and Then We Time Travel - A thorough if somewhat superficial survey of time travel in the movies.
Alec Nevala-Lee - Astounding - A history of the magazine Astounding Stories, and the four men most closely associated with it: John Campbell, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Ron Hubbard. Very thoroughly researched and annotated; it reveals a lot of new information and debunks a lot of old myths. (Whichever version of the "FBI visits Campbell to complain about A-bomb stories" you've heard, I can pretty much guarantee it wasn't the real one.)
Elizabeth Sandifer - Tardis Eruditorum 1: William Hartnell - The first volume of a thorough study of Doctor Who, with a combined fannish and scholarly point of view that I enjoyed.
Randall Munroe - How To - It's by Randall Munroe, what else do you need to know?
- I’m in Tahiti now and in preparation I started reading Sea People [1] which explores Polynesian culture and the westerner discovery of it. It’s a truly incredible story, most of which I never knew. Highly recommend the read, and doing so with a map handy.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Sea-People-Polynesia-Christina-Thomps...
