The Quest for Origins: Who First Discovered and Settled the Pacific Islands?

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.

Author: K. R. Howe
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Published: 08/01/2003
Pages: 235
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.58lbs
Size: 7.82h x 6.36w x 0.67d
ISBN: 9780824827502

Review Citation(s):
Choice 02/01/2004 pg. 1120

About the Author
Howe, K. R.: -

Editor: Howe, K. R.;
K. R. Howe is professor of history at Massey University, Auckland.