The exploration of the vast Pacific Ocean and the settlement of its hundreds of remote islands were remarkable episodes in human prehistory. They seem all the more so because the methods and motives of the first Pacific settlers are not well understood. Early sea-going explorers had no prior knowledge of Pacific geography, no documents to record their route, no metal, no instruments for measuring time and evidently none for navigation. But this book, which reviews indigenous navigation and the archaeology of early settlement, suggests that the first exploration of the remote Pacific was rapid and purposeful; that it was more systematic and involved less loss of human life than conventionally thought; that navigation methods continued to improve as colonisation spread to more distant islands.

There are rich ethnographic and historic accounts of traditional navigation methods, but these have had millennia in which to elaborate and change. Sailing in a sea that is mapped in the mind is very different from sailing in an unknown one. There have been many experimental voyages by various rafts, replica canoes and Western vessels, but they cannot fully duplicate conditions of the first voyages. There have been computer simulations. Added to this are the results of 40 years of modern archaeology.

After more than 200 years of debate about how the Pacific was settled, the literature on the subject is now very large and, interestingly, many of the early themes are still alive. In all of this discussion, most attention has been given to whether voyaging was accidental or deliberate, what routes it took through the regions and islands of the ocean, when it happened, and who did it.