The idea that anyone would first explore out that far and then would go back and forth, and develop a navigational capacity that would enable them to do that sort of thing, it was just mind-bending to me. Once you get out to the far reaches of the Polynesian Triangle, you’re talking about distances of over 2,000 miles between some of the islands. THOMPSON: First of all, it’s the distance, the sheer distance. GAZETTE: You wrote that “Sea People” is about the “sheer wondrousness of the improbability” of the peopling of Polynesia. She also explores the investigation itself, how different times and changing Western assumptions colored the inquiries into native peoples’ abilities and their past, and how sometimes the right questions were asked, even though the tools didn’t yet exist to answer them. In her book “Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia,” Harvard Review editor Christina Thompson examines what’s known about what might be humanity’s most epic migration, and what questions remain. Who the Polynesians were, where they came from, and how they navigated such formidable seas has puzzled explorers, missionaries, anthropologists, and archaeologists for centuries. They told tales of epic voyages of discovery and colonization, undertaken in ocean-going canoes, robust enough to make the trip but fragile enough to make some Western scholars doubt they could have made the crossing, preferring instead a narrative of accident and drift.
Yet early Europeans exploring the Pacific found island after island full of people who shared similar customs and beliefs despite their far-flung distribution. The islands of Polynesia stretch over thousands of miles of ocean, presenting a daunting barrier to ancient people before the invention of magnetic compasses and modern navigation equipment.
0 kommentar(er)
