DIRECTIONS: Read this excerpt from an informational essay. Then, answer the questions.
If you had to guess where surfing as we know it first began, you might say Hawaii-and
you would be right. But you might be surprised by how long people have been practicing
the sport. Roughly 800 years ago, around 1200 A.D., Hawaiian villagers and royalty alike
rode the surf. Hawaiian monarchs road a very heavy, large style of board called an olo,
but the common people rode a smaller style of board called an alaia. This board was
roughly 10 feet long and more agile than the olo, and surfers would stand up on it to ride
the curling waves, very much the way modern surfers do.
Early European explorers who visited the islands wrote of the amazing skills of the
Hawaiian surfers and the beauty of the sport. Historian Andy Martin even theorizes that
these romantic accounts of surfing may have influenced Thomas Jefferson to include "the
pursuit of happiness" as a basic right in the Declaration of Independence. Historian Peter
Westwick explains: "Both the French and American revolutions occurred as these
incredible literary images were coming back from explorers in the tropical Pacific. The
surfer on a tropical wave is the very antithesis of what we were doing in Europe, which
was perfecting the guillotine and better ways to kill each other. If you are sitting in Europe
or colonial America reading these travelers' accounts coming back from the South Pacific
who are describing the most supreme pleasure,' it really might give you pause. It might
make you think, Wow, these surfers have it right."
1. What central idea is conveyed in the first paragraph?