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This is CBS Eye in the World. I'm John Batchwood, Professor Nicholas Thomas, Professor of Historical Anthropology at Cambridge University.

Also the director of Archaeology and Anthropology Museum at Cambridge is New Book as Voyagers.

And we plunge into the 19th century and are amazed that a sheepton significant that he's a leadership position in the Cook Islands, this is Polynesia, is able to direct a European sailing master without use of European tools.

Now we go back to the beginning beginning, at least until the retreat of the last size. This is about 11,000 years ago.

And we're not in Polynesia, that's well to the east. We're not in Melanesia. We're in Formosa, Taiwan now.

And the line, the North South line called Wallacia. Wallacia, forgive my pronunciation, Professor. What is it that we understand about the voyages from the mainland into and crossing Wallacia into Melanesia?

There are two stages to this incredible chapter in human history. And it is worth underscoring just how incredible this story is, because otherwise since the beginnings of human history, since the beginnings of our species, people have been continent based.

So they, of course, anatomically modern humans evolve in Africa, they settle Europe, Asia and the Americas by a land bridge.

So people get around almost everywhere in the world, on foot through gradual migrations, but towards the end of the Pleistocene, towards the end of the last great ice age, people in Southeast Asia start to move beyond this land.

Initially through short distance crossings, Wallacia is a set of islands broadly speaking between New Guinea and Island Southeast Asia, Java, Borneo.

Much of that land was, the land was far more extensive during the ice age, because the sea levels were lower, but there were always deep straits that separated what we call Sunder, that greater Southeast Asia, land mass, and islands such as New Guinea.

But early on, 50 to 60,000 years ago, people began to cross that channel. We don't really know how or why, but very likely on rafts made of bamboo, they went on to settle New Guinea, huge land mass, extraordinary diverse ecology, and also Australia.

And from New Guinea, they began to settle the Solomon Islands and the islands to the north and immediate east of New Guinea, and those passages are extraordinary and unprecedented in human history, because it is the first time that people seek to reach new lands, not by making short water crossings, but by going further, by venturing out into the sea.

So they're leaving land behind them, land is out of sight, and they still don't see land ahead, but they travel and they eventually find new spaces.

And those early migrations are very early, they were about 30,000 years ago, and so we are aware that speakers of what are now called parkour and languages, languages spoken across New Guinea,

settled islands in the Solomon's Archipelago by that time. But they don't go further, whereas later on, about 5 to 6,000 years ago, people who are agriculturalists, people who have clearly a developed culture of travel across water, people who have a maritime orientation,

leave the island, now the nation of Taiwan, travel down again into the island of New Guinea's area, and that is where this extraordinary culture, 높ita, known for a distinctive pottery style, people speak, what we call Austronesian languages, Malayo Polynesian languages, they constitute a new kind of voyage in culture, and move very swiftly from there, through the Solomon Islands.

Into Bonoartu, into New Caledonia, and that part of the island, Malanesia, and they seem for that period to constitute an intensive culture.

They build substantial settlements, linguistic evidence suggests they have socially complex societies, they have chiefs, they have priests, they have specialized roles, they engage in trade.

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