Christina Thompson's gorgeous writing arises from a deep well of research and succeeds in conjuring a lost world' Dava Sobel, author of Longitude and The Glass Universe I found Sea People the most intelligent, empathic, engaging, wide-ranging, informative, and authoritative treatment of Polynesian mysteries that I have ever read. Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers ISBN: 9780008339050 Number of pages: 384 Weight: 340 g Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 30 mm MEDIA REVIEWS A masterful mix of history, geography, anthropology, and the science of navigation, Sea People is a vivid tour of one of the most captivating regions in the world. 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. How did the earliest Polynesians find and colonise 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.įor Christina Thompson, this mystery is personal: her Maori husband and their sons descend directly from these ancient navigators. 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. Until the arrival of European explorers they were the only people to have ever lived there. 'Succeeds in conjuring a lost world' Dava Sobel, author of Longitudeįor 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. 'Wonderfully researched and beautifully written' Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan

Winner of the 2020 Australian Prime Minister's Literary Award for nonfiction and the 2019 NSW Premier's History Awards for general history

Sea people christina thompson