THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION BATTLES THE PRC FOR OCEANIA. 3/4: Voyagers: The Settlement of the Pacific by Nicholas Thomas (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 30 June 2025
⏱️ 14 minutes
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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.
NOVEMBER 1900 GUAM TYPHOON
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Shop incredible Don't Miss Deals at ShopRights. This week, large snow crab clusters are now $6.99 per pound with your price plus card. |
| 0:08.4 | Look for the Don't Miss Deals icon in stores and online at shopwrite.com. ShopRights, check out Happy. |
| 0:19.8 | This is CBS. I in the world. I'm John Batchel, visiting with Professor Nicholas Thomas. |
| 0:24.8 | His new book is Voyagers, The Settlement of the Pacific. |
| 0:28.4 | He's a professor of historical anthropology at the University of Cambridge, and that's what we're doing here. |
| 0:32.7 | History, but near history. |
| 0:34.4 | The mystery of Oceania begins with Captain Cook's first, second, and third voyage, present mysteries to be solved. |
| 0:46.4 | Professor, who was Captain Cook? |
| 0:48.2 | Why was he in the Society Islands in 1768? |
| 0:53.6 | What was his mission? |
| 0:56.1 | So Cook was a naval man, but he was above all an exceptionally accomplished |
| 1:03.1 | surveyor. |
| 1:04.7 | And that's why the Royal Society and the Admiralty selected him in the 1760s to lead an expedition. |
| 1:17.0 | The ship was the endeavor. |
| 1:18.8 | They went to Tahiti. |
| 1:20.8 | And the core purpose, certainly the ostensible purpose, was the observation of the transit of Venus. And that observation, |
| 1:30.4 | that astronomical observation was scientifically important. It was part of a coordinated set of |
| 1:37.3 | observations and the Royal Society and colleagues internationally hoped to be able to measure the distance between the earth |
| 1:46.0 | and the sun. But Cook was also exploring the South Pacific because the British, among other |
| 1:54.2 | European nations, were very interested to try and establish whether there was a great southern |
| 1:59.9 | continent. They thought that a great southern continent. They thought that a |
| 2:01.9 | great southern continent might be a previously unknown land like China or India. That could be a key |
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