6. New worlds—the Americas, Australia, and the Pacific

Abstract

Much of life globally was organized around understanding and living with the spirits of the earth and heavens. ‘New worlds—the Americas, Australia, and the Pacific’ explains that cosmological relations form the thread linking the complex forms of evidence from these continents which cover a large part of the earth’s surface and of global prehistory. Settlement was never a passive process of accepting what was found in a place, but of active engagement with new possibilities and constraints. Debate and inventiveness, including a great range of symbiotic relationships, are central to human success in both moving and creating sustainable lifestyles in novel places: some continental landmasses, others tiny islands.