Those Sparks Are Still Flying

Back in December, 1962, PIM published a story (p. 38) entitled 'Sparks Fly Over Those Old Polynesian Voyages'. It recorded the publication, in the Journal of the Polynesian Society, of a symposium on what was then a virtually heretical theory put forward by the New Zealand scholar Andrew Sharp.

This was that the islands of the Pacific (particularly Polynesia) had not been settled by bold navigators who deliberately set out to discover homelands new, but, rather, that they were mainly settled by hapless canoeloads of people who were blown from one island to another.

The JPS symposium created so much interest that the Polynesian Society re published it in book form in 1963 under the title Polynesian Navigation.

That volume has long been out of print. But the sparks are still flying over Andrew Sharp's theory—David Lewis' book. We, the Navigators (reviewed in PIM, Sept., p. 77) being a recent example of its scintillating aftermath.

In the circumstances, the Polynesian Society has done Pacific scholars a service by bringing out a new edition of Polynesian Navigation. It is exactly the same as the previous edition except for a new foreword by the editor. Jack Golson, and a select bibliography of writings on Polynesian navigation that have appeared in the interval. The contributors to the symposium were G. S. Parson son, Captains G. H. Heyen and Charles Bechtol, and G. M. Dening. (POLYNESIAN NAVIGATION. Published for the Polynesian Society by A. H. and A. W. Reed, Wellington and Sydney. $3.95).