Cross-posted from The Brothers Brick.

From Madagascar to Rekohu and from Hawai’i to the South Island of Aotearoa, the people we know today as Austronesians have occupied more of the surface of our planet than nearly any other group of related human beings.

This remarkable ocean-going culture expanded at an astonishing rate across the Pacific and Indian Oceans, resulting in hundreds of scenes like the one illustrated in LEGO microscale by Eldert (evhh):

The volcanic island dwarfs the tiny outrigger canoes, and for me symbolizes human ingenuity in the face of what might appear to be insurmountable odds. It’s achievements like this that make me proud to be human, and makes it easy to imagine tiny outrigger spaceships arriving on the shores of a distant island in the sky not too far in the future…

(Post title courtesy Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, And Steel.)