Today in class we begin an adventure that will take us to one of the most naturally beautiful, geographically fantastical and musically exuberant regions of the world.

Oceania and the Pacific Islands are a vast and – until the very recent advent of air travel – practically impenetrable array of thousands of islands that rise above the now-rising waters of the Pacific Ocean. The 300,000 square miles of land are strewn across millions of square miles of ocean. Water defines the life in all but the largest of the area's land masses; the incredible distances between earthen peaks are as much a character in the region's story as the histories and complex cultural customs of the peoples themselves.

This season we trace paths of long log canoes that impossibly fought their way through infinite oceans to find these thousands of specks of land. Scientists speculate that the peoples of the Pacific originate from Africa and then from South and Southeast Asia, but specific theories contradict and functional pathways are unclear. We do know that the early settlers navigated using both instinct and the stars.