(1728-79). From 1769 until his death in the Hawaiian Islands in 1779, the great English navigator made three voyages of exploration in the Pacific and made many discoveries in Polynesia and Australia. Cook was not the first European to discover most of the islands he visited, but his accounts of the native peoples of Polynesia, Melanesia and Australia at the crucial point of first European contact are by far the most important in maritime history. His journals are used constantly by archaeologists who work in the Pacific region.
The Macmillan dictionary of archaeology, Ruth D. Whitehouse, 1983Copied