Search
Log in
  • Home

  • Categories

  • Audiobooks

  • E-books

  • For kids

  • Top lists

  • Help

  • Download app

  • Use campaign code

  • Redeem gift card

  • Try free now
  • Log in
  • Language

    🇳🇴 Norge

    • NO
    • EN

    🇧🇪 Belgique

    • FR
    • EN

    🇩🇰 Danmark

    • DK
    • EN

    🇩🇪 Deutschland

    • DE
    • EN

    🇪🇸 España

    • ES
    • EN

    🇫🇷 France

    • FR
    • EN

    🇳🇱 Nederland

    • NL
    • EN

    🇦🇹 Österreich

    • AT
    • EN

    🇨🇭 Schweiz

    • DE
    • EN

    🇫🇮 Suomi

    • FI
    • EN

    🇸🇪 Sverige

    • SE
    • EN
  1. Books
  2. History
  3. Australia and New Zealand

Read and listen for free for 14 days!

Cancel anytime

Try free now
4.6(8)

Sea People : In Search of the Ancient Navigators of the Pacific

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

‘Wonderfully researched and beautifully written’ Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan

‘Succeeds in conjuring a lost world’ Dava Sobel, author of Longitude

For 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. Until the arrival of European explorers they were the only people to have ever lived there. 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.

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.

For Christina Thompson, this mystery is personal: her Maori husband and their sons descend directly from these ancient navigators. 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. 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.


Author:

  • Christina Thompson

Narrator:

  • Susan Lyons

Format:

  • Audiobook

Duration:

  • 11 h 41 min

Language:

English

Categories:

  • History
  • Australia and New Zealand

More by Christina Thompson

Skip the list
  1. Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All

    Christina Thompson

    audiobook
  2. Sea People : The Puzzle of Polynesia

    Christina Thompson

    audiobook
  3. Vintage Love Stories

    B.L. Aldrich, Kathryn Burns, Amanda R. Woomer, Cassandra Campbell, Christina Thompson, Jacob Strunk, K.E. White, Tony Healey

    audiobook

Others have also read

Skip the list
  1. Reading Backwards

    John Crowley

    audiobook
  2. Typee

    Herman Melville

    audiobookbook
  3. Six Victories

    Vincnet O'Hara

    audiobook
  4. The Fight to Save the Town: Reimagining Discarded America

    Michelle Wilde Anderson

    audiobook
  5. The Year That Broke America : An Immigration Crisis, a Terrorist Conspiracy, the Summer of Survivor, a Ridiculous Fake Billionaire, a Fight for Florida, and the 537 Votes That Changed Everything

    Andrew Rice

    audiobook
  6. How to Grow Rich by Giving : Why Philanthropy Will Multiply Your Wealth

    Praveen Kumar, Prashant Kumar

    audiobook
  7. Day of Deceit : The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor

    Robert Stinnett

    audiobookbook
  8. Sub Culture

    John Medhurst

    audiobook
  9. Betrayal of Trust

    Laurie Garrett

    audiobook
  10. The Making of the Balkan States

    William Smith Murray

    book
  11. In Search of Us : Adventures in Anthropology

    Lucy Moore

    book
  12. Storm World

    Chris Mooney

    audiobook

  • 4 books

    Christina Thompson

    Christina Thompson is the editor of Harvard Review and the author of Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story, which was shortlisted for the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-fiction and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her essays and criticism have appeared in numerous publications, including Vogue, the American Scholar, the Journal of Pacific History, and three editions of Best Australian Essays. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, a Writer's Grant from the Australia Council, and a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Award. A dual citizen of the US and Australia, she lives outside of Boston with her family.

    Read more

Help and contact


About us

  • Our story
  • Career
  • Press
  • Accessibility
  • Partner with us
  • Investor relations
  • Instagram
  • Facebook

Explore

  • Categories
  • Audiobooks
  • E-books
  • Magazines
  • For kids
  • Top lists

Popular categories

  • Crime
  • Biographies and reportage
  • Fiction
  • Feel-good and romance
  • Personal development
  • Children's books
  • True stories
  • Sleep and relaxation

Nextory

Copyright © 2025 Nextory AB

Privacy Policy · Terms ·
Excellent4.3 out of 5