The Quest for Origins

Download or read book The Quest for Origins written by K. R. Howe and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2003-05-31 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.