Sea People

Starred review from November 5, 2018
In this artfully written book, Thompson (Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All) ably elucidates changing understandings of the ancient Polynesian migrations. This story, she tells readers, “is not so much what happened as a story about how we know.” Since “we” here refers to Westerners, the narrative begins not with the prehistoric Polynesians but with Europeans’ first journeys into the Pacific, most notably those of Capt. James Cook, the first European to recognize that the distantly dispersed islands he visited were all populated by related peoples. Thompson looks at the contributions to knowledge of the migrations of Polynesian oral tradition (first shared with Cook by Tahitian “man of knowledge” Tupaia, a master of various fields including navigation, medicine, and genealogy), ethnographers (including Maori anthropologist Te Rangi Hiroa), linguists, archaeologists, mathematicians, and latter-day experimental voyagers who recreated Polynesian sea journeys (including Nainoa Thompson, president of the Polynesian Voyaging Society; no relation to the author). Thompson does not hesitate to point out erroneous thinking, such as Thor Heyerdahl’s unfounded claims that Polynesians migrated westward from South America. Along the way, she writes with infectious awe and appreciation about Polynesian culture and with sharp intelligence about the blind spots of those investigating it at different times. This fascinating work could prove to be the standard on the subject for some time to come.

December 15, 2018
An inspired history of the elusive far-flung Pacific region and peoples of the "Polynesian Triangle."Defined by the three points of Hawaii, New Zealand, and Easter Island--and encompassing all the islands within it--the Polynesian Triangle was initially colonized thousands of years ago by a group of voyagers carrying with them their shared language, tools, myths, and plants and animals. Where did they come from: South America or Melanesia and Taiwan? Since the Pacific islands were first "discovered" by European explorers in the 16th century, the Western myths surrounding the "problem of Polynesian origins" abounded, and Harvard Review editor Thompson (Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story, 2008), a dual citizen of the United States and Australia, follows the thread in a beautifully woven narrative. The author is inspired by her husband, Seven, of Maori origin, who is essentially at home among any of the islands within this vast area of the Pacific Ocean, much as the original settlers would have been. From the first eyewitnesses to make contact with the islanders--Spaniard Álvaro de Mendaña on the Marquesas (1595), Jacob Roggeveen on Easter Island (1722), and James Cook on Hawaii (1778)--there was much wonderment about how these early seafarers could have traversed 600 miles between islands amid a vast expanse of ocean in canoes lacking sophisticated navigation instruments. As Thompson smoothly traces the history of the Polynesians and their language and culture through discoveries in anthropology and archaeology, especially radiocarbon dating, she emphasizes the importance of the migrations of the Lapita people from Asia. Ultimately, the author makes clear that the original settlers were not just blown about by currents and winds; they keenly navigated using star paths, ocean swells, and other land-finding techniques like bird-watching.Thompson vividly captures the wondrousness of this region of the world as well as the sense of adventure tied up in that history.

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Starred review from March 1, 2019

The islands that we now collectively refer to as Polynesia have led explorers such as Captain James Cook to ask the question: How could people from such distant places as Hawaii and New Zealand have similar cultural and physical attributes? Thompson (Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All) uses a chronological narrative to explore how both the Western world and the diverse groups of Polynesians themselves have sought to answer this question. Much of this book deals with the prejudices that Westerners hold toward cultures that solely have oral traditions. In this vein, the book also serves as a microcosm of how anthropological advancements have been made over the last 200 years. This progression is exemplified by the recording of oral histories and the advent of experimental archaeology that, in this case, was the building of traditional watercraft and voyages undertaken using Polynesian navigational techniques--passed down from generation to generation by memorization and experience--and the acceptance of different but still equal ways of understanding the world in which humans live and interact. VERDICT Thompson accomplishes a lot in this work that blends history, anthropology, and geology; the smoothly flowing narrative makes for an exceptional read.--Brian Renvall, Mesalands Community Coll., Tucumcari, NM

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2019
So vast is the Pacific Ocean that European explorers were astonished to find its isolated archipelagos not only inhabited, but also that those inhabitants together constituted a coherent cultural group?the Polynesians. Where they came from, how, and when thus became questions investigated for three centuries, a quest Thompson freshly illuminates. The story begins with discoverers like James Cook, who carefully noted the island peoples' language, dress, and customs, while puzzling over how people with canoes and without navigational instruments colonized the Pacific. A Tahitian named Tupaia, the subject of Joan Druett's Tupaia (2010), memorably explained how, and shared a wealth of further information embedded in an oral transmission shared generation by generation. Nineteenth-century scholars recorded cosmic myths and genealogies, but it took twentieth-century archaeology, carbon-14 radioactive dating, DNA analysis, and computer simulations of Polynesian voyages to finally map the chronological and geographic sequence of the Polynesian settlement of the Pacific Islands. A superb chronicler of the intellectual explorers of Polynesian history, Thompson writes with command and insight, enhancing this fascinating book's rich appeal.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)