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This book is a reprint of an archaeological report by, among others, the great Norwegian archaeologist Thor Heyerdahl, that was originally published in 1956 in American Antiquity. It deals with material, mostly potsherds, that was found during the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to the Galápagos Islands in 1953, and which may be correlated with the Costal Tiahuanaco (Tomaval), Chimu (La Plata), and Inca (Estero) periods of the Peruvian coastal sequence. A fascinating account of an expedition that changed the face of New World archaeology, this new edition includes Spanish translations of the principal sections of the book.

Foreword By Erik K. Reed. Memoirs Of The Society For American Archaeology, No. 12, 1956.

An insightful exploration of the iconic Galápagos tortoises, and how their fate is inextricably linked to our own in a rapidly changing world The Galápagos archipelago is often viewed as a last foothold of pristine nature. For sixty years, conservationists have worked to restore this evolutionary Eden after centuries of exploitation at the hands of pirates, whalers, and island settlers. This book tells the story of the islands' namesakes--the giant tortoises--as coveted food sources, objects of natural history, and famous icons of conservation and tourism. By doing so, it brings into stark relief the paradoxical, and impossible, goal of conserving species by trying to restore a past state of prehistoric evolution. The tortoises, Elizabeth Hennessy demonstrates, are not prehistoric, but rather microcosms whose stories show how deeply human and nonhuman life are entangled. In a world where evolution is thoroughly shaped by global history, Hennessy puts forward a vision for conservation based on reckoning with the past, rather than trying to erase it.

From the beginning of history to the present, a sweep of the world's oceans and seas and how they have shaped the course of civilization. From the author of the acclaimed The Great Sea, ("Magnificent . . . radiates scholarship and a sense of wonder and fun," Simon Sebag Montefiore; Book of the Year, The Economist), David Abulafia's new book guides readers along the world's greatest bodies of water to reveal their primary role in human history. The main protagonists are the three major oceans--the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian--which together comprise the majority of the earth's water and cover over half of its surface. Over time, as passage through them gradually extended and expanded, linking first islands and then continents, maritime networks developed, evolving from local exploration to lines of regional communication and commerce and eventually to major arteries. These waterways carried goods, plants, livestock, and of course people--free and enslaved--across vast expanses, transforming and ultimately linking irrevocably the economies and cultures of Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Far more than merely another history of exploration, The Boundless Sea shows how maritime networks gradually formed a continuum of interaction and interconnection. Working chronologically, Abulafia moves from the earliest forays of peoples taking hand-hewn canoes into uncharted waters, to the routes taken daily by supertankers in the thousands. History on the grandest scale and scope, written with passion and precision, this is a project few could have undertaken. Abulafia, whom The Atlantic calls "superb writer with a gift for lucid compression and an eye for the telling detail," proves again why he ranks as one of the world's greatest storytellers.