Excerpted from The Sound of the Sea: Seashells and the Fate of the Oceans. Copyright (c) 2021 by Cynthia Barnett. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. The islands of Palau in the western Pacific—hundreds of them, comprising one of the world’s smallest nations—have been inhabited for at least 3,400 years, and from the start, giant clams were a staple of diet, daily life, and even deity. Many of the islands’ oldest surviving tools are crafted of thick giant-clam shell: arched-blade adzes,…
