The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation of the Pacific

The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation of the Pacific PDF Author: Geoffrey Irwin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521476515
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
The exploration and colonisation of the Pacific is a remarkable episode of human prehistory. Early sea-going explorers had no prior knowledge of Pacific geography, no documents to record their route, no metal, no instruments for measuring time and none for exploration. Forty years of modern archaeology, experimental voyages in rafts, and computer simulations of voyages have produced an enormous range of literature on this controversial and mysterious subject. This book represents a major advance in knowledge of the settlement of the Pacific by suggesting that exploration was rapid and purposeful, undertaken systematically, and that navigation methods progressively improved. Using an innovative model to establish a detailed theory of navigation, Geoffrey Irwin claims that rather than sailing randomly downwind in search of the unknown, Pacific Islanders expanded settlement by the cautious strategy of exploring upwind, so as to ease their safe return. The author has tested this hypothesis against the chronological data from archaeological investigation, with a computer simulation of demographic and exploration patterns and by sailing throughout the region himself.

The Pacific Islands

The Pacific Islands PDF Author: Moshe Rapaport
Publisher: Bess Press
ISBN: 9781573060424
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Book Description
Forty-five contributors offer information on the physical environment, history, culture, population, economy, and living environment of the Pacific islands.

The People of the Sea

The People of the Sea PDF Author: Paul D'Arcy
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824829599
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Countering the dominant paradigms of recent Pacific Islands' historiography, which tend to limit understanding of the sea's importance, this volume emphasizes the flux in the maritime environment and how it instilled an expectation and openness toward outside influences and the rapidity with which cultural change could occur in relations between various Islander groups." "Students and scholars of Pacific history and environmental and cultural studies will welcome this re-evaluation of the sea's influence in Oceanic history."--BOOK JACKET.

The Boundless Sea

The Boundless Sea PDF Author: David Abulafia
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190933135
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1115

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Book Description
From the beginning of history to the present, a sweep of the world's oceans and seas and how they have shaped the course of civilization. From the author of the acclaimed The Great Sea, ("Magnificent . . . radiates scholarship and a sense of wonder and fun," Simon Sebag Montefiore; Book of the Year, The Economist), David Abulafia's new book guides readers along the world's greatest bodies of water to reveal their primary role in human history. The main protagonists are the three major oceans--the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian--which together comprise the majority of the earth's water and cover over half of its surface. Over time, as passage through them gradually extended and expanded, linking first islands and then continents, maritime networks developed, evolving from local exploration to lines of regional communication and commerce and eventually to major arteries. These waterways carried goods, plants, livestock, and of course people--free and enslaved--across vast expanses, transforming and ultimately linking irrevocably the economies and cultures of Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Far more than merely another history of exploration, The Boundless Sea shows how maritime networks gradually formed a continuum of interaction and interconnection. Working chronologically, Abulafia moves from the earliest forays of peoples taking hand-hewn canoes into uncharted waters, to the routes taken daily by supertankers in the thousands. History on the grandest scale and scope, written with passion and precision, this is a project few could have undertaken. Abulafia, whom The Atlantic calls "superb writer with a gift for lucid compression and an eye for the telling detail," proves again why he ranks as one of the world's greatest storytellers.

The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean: Volume 1, The Pacific Ocean to 1800

The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean: Volume 1, The Pacific Ocean to 1800 PDF Author: Ryan Tucker Jones
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108334067
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 948

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Book Description
Volume I of The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean provides a wide-ranging survey of Pacific history to 1800. It focuses on varied concepts of the Pacific environment and its impact on human history, as well as tracing the early exploration and colonization of the Pacific, the evolution of Indigenous maritime cultures after colonization, and the disruptive arrival of Europeans. Bringing together a diversity of subjects and viewpoints, this volume introduces a broad variety of topics, engaging fully with emerging environmental and political conflicts over Pacific Ocean spaces. These essays emphasize the impact of the deep history of interactions on and across the Pacific to the present day.

The Colonization of Unfamiliar Landscapes

The Colonization of Unfamiliar Landscapes PDF Author: Marcy Rockman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113452014X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
A series of case studies examines the archaeological evidence for and interpretations of landscape learning from the movement of the first pre-modern humans into Europe to the English colonists at Jamestown.

The Quest for Origins

The Quest for Origins PDF Author: K. R. Howe
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824827502
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Did they come from space, from Egypt, from the Americas? From other ancient civilizations? These are some of today's most fanciful claims about the first settlers of the islands of the Pacific. But none of them correctly answer the question: Where did the Polynesians come from? This book is a thoughtful and devastating critique of such "new" learning, and a careful and accessible survey of modern archaeological, anthropological, genetic, and linguistics findings about the origins of Pacific Islanders. Professor Howe also examines the two-hundred-year-old history of Western ideas about Polynesian origins in the context of ever-changing fads and intellectual fashions.

An Island Archaeology of the Early Cyclades

An Island Archaeology of the Early Cyclades PDF Author: Cyprian Broodbank
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521528443
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description
A case study of the Greek Cyclades, documenting new ways of studying global island archaeology.

The Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders

The Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders PDF Author: Donald Denoon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521003544
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Book Description
An authoritative and comprehensive history of the Pacific islanders from 40,000 BC to the present day.

Pacific Histories

Pacific Histories PDF Author: David Armitage
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 113700164X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
The first comprehensive account to place the Pacific Islands, the Pacific Rim and the Pacific Ocean into the perspective of world history. A distinguished international team of historians provides a multidimensional account of the Pacific, its inhabitants and the lands within and around it over 50,000 years, with special attention to the peoples of Oceania. It providing chronological coverage along with analyses of themes such as the environment, migration and the economy; religion, law and science; race, gender and politics.