The prehistoric exploration and colonisation of the pacific

The exploration and colonisation of the Pacific is one of the most remarkable episodes 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 navigation. Forty years of modern archaeology, experimental voyages in rafts and canoes, computer simulations of voyaging using real data on winds and currents have combined to produce an enormous range of literature on this controversial and mysterious subject. This book represents a major advance in the knowledge of and models for the settlement of the Pacific by suggesting that exploration was rapid and purposeful, undertaken systematically and that navigation methods progressively improved. The prehistoric exploration and colonisation of the Pacific is concerned with two distinct periods of voyaging and colonisation. The first began some 50,000 years ago in the tropical region of Island Southeast Asia, the continent of Australia and its Pleistocene outliers in Melanesia and was the first voyaging of its kind in the world. The second episode began 3500 years ago and witnessed a burst of sophisticated maritime an