PRC INFLUENCE PEDDLING SUCCESS: 3/4: Voyagers: The Settlement of the Pacific by Nicholas Thomas (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 2 December 2024
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Voyagers-Settlement-Pacific-Nicholas-Thomas/dp/1541619838/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3TWNZZ00KO4TU&keywords=NICHOLAS+CLARK+VOYAGERS&qid=1674136652&sprefix=nicholas+clark+voyagers%2Caps%2C124&sr=8-1
The islands of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia stretch across a huge expanse of ocean and encompass a multitude of different peoples. Starting with Captain James Cook, the earliest European explorers to visit the Pacific were astounded and perplexed to find populations thriving thousands of miles from continents. Who were these people? From where did they come? And how were they able to reach islands dispersed over such vast tracts of ocean? In Voyagers, the distinguished anthropologist Nicholas Thomas charts the course of the seaborne migrations that populated the islands between Asia and the Americas from late prehistory onward. Drawing on the latest research, including insights gained from genetics, linguistics, and archaeology, Thomas provides a dazzling account of these long-distance migrations, the seagoing technologies that enabled them, and the societies they left in their wake.
1815 DEATH OF COOK, HAWAIIAN ISLANDS
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Once upon a time, Amazon Music met audiobooks and listeners everywhere rejoiced. |
| 0:05.8 | Oh yeah. |
| 0:06.6 | Because now they could listen to one audiobook title a month from an enormous library of popular audiobook titles, including romanticity, |
| 0:15.3 | autobiographies, true crime, and more. |
| 0:19.3 | Suddenly listeners didn't mind sitting in traffic or even missing their |
| 0:22.6 | flight. Amazon Music Unlimited now includes Audible. No way. Download the Amazon Music app now to start |
| 0:28.4 | listening. Terms apply. |
| 0:34.7 | This is CBS. I in the world. I'm John Batchel. Visiting with Professor Nicholas Thomas. His new book is Voyagers, The Settlement of the Pacific. |
| 0:43.5 | He's a professor of historical anthropology at the University of Cambridge, and that's what we're doing here. |
| 0:47.7 | History, but near history. The mystery of Oceania begins with Captain Cook's first, second, and third voyage, |
| 0:58.8 | present mysteries to be solved. |
| 1:01.5 | Professor, who was Captain Cook? |
| 1:03.3 | Why was he in the Society Islands in 1768? |
| 1:08.7 | What was his mission? |
| 1:11.1 | So Cook was a naval man, but he was above all an exceptionally accomplished surveyor. |
| 1:19.0 | And that's why the Royal Society and the Admiralty selected him in the 1760s to lead an expedition. |
| 1:32.1 | The ship was the endeavor. |
| 1:33.9 | They went to Tahiti and the core purpose, certainly the ostensible purpose, was the |
| 1:40.8 | observation of the transit of Venus. |
| 1:43.8 | And that observation, that astronomical observation |
| 1:47.3 | was scientifically important. It was part of a coordinated set of observations and the Royal Society |
| 1:55.5 | and colleagues internationally hoped to be able to measure the distance between the earth and the sun. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.