Why read Sea People?

Book cover of Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia

Book description

A blend of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel and Simon Winchester's Pacific, a thrilling intellectual detective story that looks deep into the past to uncover who first settled the islands of the remote Pacific, where they came from, how they got there, and how we know.

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Sea People as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Ann Göth

Author

Having lived with Polynesian people on remote islands for 17 months, I always wondered where they originally came from and how their fascinating culture evolved.

This book enlightened me as it beautifully describes how the earliest Polynesians reached these far-away islands with amazing seafarer skills but no written tradition or metal tools at hand. I came across this book when it won the 2020 Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award for nonfiction and can only agree that it is very well-researched and written in an easy-to-understand way.

From Ann's list on sweeping you to remote islands in the South Pacific.

James Hannam

Author

Not all ways of thinking are written down.

The people of Polynesia in the Pacific Ocean have a finely tuned understanding of their environment which enabled them to travel vast distances across the waves to colonise islands hundreds of miles apart, from Hawaii to New Zealand. This book starts with how European explorers tried to comprehend how they had done it but ends as a journey of self-discovery by the Polynesians themselves as they retrace the voyages of their ancestors.

From James' list on how non-western cultures think about the world.