PAC Books
The 'Origin' Debate Continues
Pacific origins dissected by 'Raod of Winds'
On the Road of the Winds: An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands Before European Contact. By Patrick Vinton Kirch. Published by University of California Press, 2000. 446 pages; $45/cloth.
Pacific prehistory has long been a topic of debate. Where did the early Oceanic people come from? How did they get here? Theories and counter-theories have been, and continue to be debated.
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This book doesn’t resolve the debate, but it pulls every theory together into one volume, providing summaries and comparisons. It distills the author’s lifetime of study into a coherent whole. In Kirch’s words, the title "…invokes not just voyages undertaken by Oceanic peoples themselves — whether by raft, dugout, or double-hulled sailing canoe — but also another kind of voyage: the intellectual voyage of exploration and discovery of the oceanic past, a past encoded not in written texts, but in potsherds and stone tools unearthed from island middens…"
The opening chapter provides a survey of theories, as they emerged over the years, or individual archaeologists and anthropologists and their sponsoring institutions. Erroneous and competing theories are also explored.
Then the author explores what constitutes the human environment early Oceanic colonizers had to face: winds; currents; distances; plant and animal foods; variations in soils, rainfall, climate; presence or absence of materials such as basalt, chert, obsidian, shells and plant fibers. After elaboration of these physical features, the book turns to the distribution, customs and history of the individual cultures.
There is information here to suit everyone’s interests, whether they be Melanesia, Polynesia, Micronesia or some specific place such as Rapa Nui (Easter Island), the Nan Madol ruins, or strongholds of the Lapita culture. There is such a wealth of information that it is not a book to be read from front to back. It is a single-source, heavily documented reference book for the scholarly reader.
