Author(s): K. R. Howe

History

From space, from Egypt, from the Americas? From other ancient civilizations? These are but some of today's more fanciful claims about the first settlers of New Zealand and 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 linguistic findings about the origins of New Zealanders and Pacific Islanders. Why have there been such extreme and diverse opinions on this subject? Professor Kerry Howe also examines the 200-year-old history of Western ideas about Polynesian origins in the context of ever-changing fads and intellectual fashions.