"The quest to understand who first settled the islands of the remote Pacific, where they came from, how they got there, and how we know..."--Jacket.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 325-348) and index.

Prologue: Kealakekua Bay -- The eyewitnesses (1521-1722). A very great sea : the discovery of Oceania ; First contact : Mendana in the Marquesas ; Barely an island at all : atolls of the Tuamotus ; Outer limits : New Zealand and Easter Island -- Connecting the dots (1764-1778). Tahiti : the heart of Polynesia ; A man of knowledge : Cook meets Tupaia ; Tupaia's chart : two ways of seeing ; An aha moment : a Tahitian in New Zealand -- Why not just ask them? (1778-1920). Drowned continents and other theories : the nineteenth-century Pacific ; A world without writing : Polynesian oral traditions ; The Aryan Maori : an unlikely idea ; A viking in Hawai'i : Abraham Fornander ; Voyaging stories : history and myth -- The rise of science (1920-1959). Somatology : the mesure of man ; A Maori anthropologist : Te Rangi Hiroa ; The Moa hunters : stone and bones ; Radiocarbon dating : the question of when ; The Lapita people : a key piece of the puzzle -- Setting sail (1947-1980). Kon-Tiki : Thor Heyerdahl's raft ; Drifting not sailing : Andrew Sharp ; The non-armchair approach : David Lewis experiments ; Hokole'a : sailing to Tahiti ; Reinventing navigation : Nainoa Thompson -- What we know now (1990-2018). The latest science : DNA and dates ; Coda : two ways of knowing.