Islands and Cultures: How Pacific Islands Provide Paths toward Sustainability

Between 3,000 and 800 years ago, humans began to settle the Polynesian islands, bringing with them material culture, ideas about societal organization, and biophysical features. This book analyzes the formation of human-environment systems using oral histories, biophysical evidence, and historical records, arguing that the Polynesian islands can serve as useful models for how human societies in general interact with their environments.

Format: Hardback
Length: 242 pages
Publication date: 29 November 2022
Publisher: Yale University Press

Between 3,000 and 800 years ago, humans began to settle the region we now know as Polynesia, bringing with them a material culture that included plants and animals as well as ideas about societal organization. They then adapted to the unique biophysical features of the islands they discovered.

This book's authors examine the development of their human-environment systems using oral histories, biophysical evidence, and historical records, arguing that the Polynesian islands can serve as useful models for how human societies in general interact with their environments.

The islands' distinct (and relatively isolated) environments, relatively recent human discovery, and innovative and dynamic societies provide insights that are not available when studying other cultures. To demonstrate how these cultures adapted to novel environments in the past and how we can draw insights for global sustainability today, Kamana Beamer, Te Maire Tau, and Peter Vitousek have collaborated with a dozen other scholars, many of whom are Polynesian.

Dimension: 216 x 140 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780300253009