For Pacific people in the more distant past it was limitless, foreground and background to the world, and probably needed no specific name. Later, in some Polynesian languages, it became a variant of Te Moana Nui a Kiwa – the Great Ocean of Kiwa. The European name for this largest of oceans tends to evoke images of white beaches and palm trees, coral reefs and trade winds, sunlight and sea, images of tranquillity as deceptive as the name itself. The first explorers of the Pacific and their descendants had the less romantic job of surviving in this unique oceanic world, something that required both cultural and biological adaptation. It is the human biology of the first Pacific people and the underlying theme of adaptation that occupy this book. Adaptation suggests evolution, yet there is a tendency to assume Homo sapiens has been exempt from evolutionary influences, at least in the short term, which is sometimes taken to mean tens of thousands of years. Probably this is because from our beginnings we have been the technological animal and until recently an ever-increasing control of the environment has made it easy for us to assume some independence of it and to believe that it has not shaped us to the extent that it has other organisms. However we are not exempt, and the biology of any human group needs to be considered in the light of its environment and adaptation to it.

The first chapter therefore outlines the nature of the Pacific environment and our present understanding of the sequence of settlement.