TPO5TheOriginofthePacificIslandPeople第二段中，有这样一段话：SpeculationontheoriginofthesePacificislandersbeganassoonasoutsidersencounteredthem,intheabsenceofsolidlinguistic,archaeological,andbiologicaldata

Question

TPO 5 The Origin of the Pacific Island People
第二段中，有这样一段话：
Speculation on the origin of these Pacific islanders began as soon as outsiders encountered them, in the absence of solid linguistic, archaeological, and biological data, many fanciful and mutually exclusive theories were devised. Pacific islanders are variously thought to have come from North America, South America, Egypt, Israel, and India, as well as Southeast Asia. Many older theories implicitly deprecated the navigational abilities and overall cultural creativity of the Pacific islanders. For example, British anthropologists G. Elliot Smith and W. J. Perry assumed that only Egyptians would have been skilled enough to navigate and colonize the Pacific.
其中，older theories 觉得 Pacific islanders 的 navigational abilities 很差，却有举了个例子,Elliot等人发现只有埃及人的航海技术足够好去殖民Pacific
这个内在逻辑是什么啊？搞不明白作者的写作思路~

Answer 1

这一段是在讲猜测pacific islanders的种族起源。最后举的British anthropologists的例子与older theories对应。换句话来讲，英国的人类学家认为只有埃及人的航海能力才够去殖民pacfic的这种态度，就是在轻视这些islanders的航海能力。
个人理解是，人类学家的态度是islanders应该是埃及人；而最后两句整体是在暗示，新的理论认为islanders很可能来自于其他人种。