Empire of the Ocean: The Lost Maritime Civilization of the Pacific - Couverture souple

Reagan, Luke

Couverture souple

ISBN 13 : 9798233079467

Editeur : Alistair Ravenhurst, 2026

Synopsis

For centuries the Pacific Ocean was described as an empty wilderness-an immense stretch of water dotted with isolated islands. Yet this view ignores one of the greatest achievements of human history. Long before modern instruments, ancient navigators crossed thousands of kilometers of open ocean guided only by stars, winds, and the subtle language of waves. Their voyages linked distant islands into networks of exchange, culture, and memory that spanned the largest ocean on Earth.

Empire of the Ocean explores the forgotten story of these early mariners and the extraordinary maritime world they created. Drawing on archaeology, linguistics, environmental science, and traditional navigation, this book reveals how Pacific societies transformed a seemingly endless ocean into a navigable human landscape. For readers fascinated by ancient exploration, lost civilizations, and the ingenuity of early cultures, this journey into the deep history of the Pacific uncovers a remarkable truth: the greatest roads of the ancient world were not built on land-they were written across the sea.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Luke Reagan is a qualified historian with a lifelong devotion to the ancient cultures of Mesoamerica and the wider Americas, with particular studies in the Huastec, Zapotec, Teotihuacan, Toltec, Mixtec, and Aztec, or Mexica, worlds. His work is also shaped by an intense interest in Spanish history in the New World, especially the first encounters between Indigenous civilizations, explorers, chroniclers, soldiers, missionaries, and antiquarians. A lifelong collector of *National Geographic Magazine*, Reagan grew up with exploration, archaeology, and historical discovery as part of his intellectual environment, while his father and uncle were partly involved in the development of Lidar, the remote-sensing technology now used to reveal ancient landscapes, hidden settlements, and buried architectural systems.

Reagan's personal idols include Hiram Bingham, John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, and Percy Fawcett, explorers and antiquarians whose field accounts, drawings, controversies, ambitions, and obsessions helped bring ancient American sites into public imagination. His own interests follow that same line of inquiry, moving between ruins, archives, maps, expedition literature, colonial records, and the material remains of cultures too often reduced to footnotes. He comes from three generations of Reagans who fought for the rights of Native Americans in Texas and the wider region, giving his historical work a personal stake beyond scholarship alone. His mother's involvement in archaeoastronomy, especially at Chaco Canyon and Ancestral Puebloan sites, further shaped his interest in how ancient peoples read the sky, built sacred landscapes, and encoded cosmology into architecture.

Luke Reagan's work stands at the meeting point of historical research, exploration history, Indigenous cultural study, Spanish colonial history, archaeoastronomy, and the enduring mystery of ancient American civilizations.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Alistair Ravenhurst
• Date d'édition: 2026
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 13: 9798233079467
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 442
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Allemagne