This is CBS High on the World. I'm John Batchew, Professor Nicholas Thomas, Professor of

Historical Anthropology at Cambridge University, also the director of archaeology and anthropology

museum at Cambridge. His new book is Voyages. And we plunge into the 19th century and are amazed that a chieftain,

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 ice.

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 Wallasia,

Walasia, forgive my pronunciation professor, what is it that we understand about the voyagers from the mainland

into and crossing Wallasia 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 via 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 land, initially through short distance crossings.

Wallachia 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 light, the ice age,

because the sea levels were lower, but there were always

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