Search Results: Pacific islands

Polynesian navigation of the Pacific Ocean and its settlement began thousands of years ago. The inhabitants of the Pacific islands had been voyaging across vast expanses of ocean water sailing in double canoes or outriggers using nothing...

Clove, nutmeg, and mace are native to only a handful of tiny islands in the middle of the vast Indonesian archipelago – cloves on five Maluku Islands (the Moluccas) about 1250 km (778 mi) west of New Guinea, and nutmeg on the ten Banda Islands...

Ferdinand Magellan, or Fernão de Magalhães (c. 1480-1521), was a Portuguese mariner whose expedition was the first to circumnavigate the globe in 1519-22 in the service of Spain. Magellan was killed on the voyage in what is today the Philippines...

The Portuguese colonization of the Cape Verde (Cabo Verde) Islands began from 1462. Initially envisaged as a base to give mariners direct access to West African trade, the Central Atlantic islands soon became a major hub of the Atlantic slave...

The Kon-Tiki expedition of 1947, led by the Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl (1914-2002), successfully crossed 8,000 km (5,000 miles) of the Pacific Ocean from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands on a balsa-wood raft. The aim of the expedition was to demonstrate...

Vasco Núñez de Balboa (1475-1519) was a Spanish conquistador who famously discovered the Pacific Ocean after crossing the isthmus of Panama in 1513. An utterly ruthless adventurer and colonizer, Balboa was as much a danger to his fellow conquistadors...

A 1590 illustration showing a Spanish Manila galleon in the Ladrones Islands (Mariana Islands) in the Pacific Ocean. (From the Boxer Codex)

A map of the Juan Fernández Islands in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The islands famously hosted the marooned mariner Alexander Selkirk (1676-1721) from 1704 to 1709. Selkirk inspired the title character of Daniel Defoe's celebrated novel...

Explore the breathtaking, rugged, and misty landscapes of the North American Pacific Coast, showcasing towering cedar trees that stand like ancient sentinels. Witness the dynamic interaction between the powerful ocean waves and the rocky...

Instruments for traditional Pacific Island tattoos: hāhau (tapping stick) made of ulei wood, moli (tattoo tool) made of wood and bone, and apu paʻu (ink bowl), made of jade. Date unknown.