This is the story of the world's first blue water sailors: the Austronesians and Polynesians who conquered the largest ocean on the planet. Their story begins in Southeast Asia more than 5,000 years ago, when the Austronesians began an eastward thrust into the Pacific. From Indonesia they headed East, reaching Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and finally Fiji. Dispersed throughout the earth's largest and loneliest expanse of water, their exploits remained unknown to the rest of the world until recently. They were the first blue water sailors.