Kontiki Travel Expedition

Lots of people who grew up in the 1950′s and 1960′s would have laughed at anybody who had to be told what the Kontiki travel expedition was. Sadly because these days you can’t learn about it by watching Spike Tv or listening to Howard Stern, it seems an increasing number of people believe a Kon-Tiki is what you might order if you want to try some thing other than a Mai-Tai.

The Kon-Tiki Travel Expedition was organized in 1947 by Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl to demonstrate that ancient Peruvian balsa wood rafts could have transported men from South America towards the Polynesian Islands. Thor Heyerdahl created a theory that the Polynesians had originated from Peru and not from Asia, as was usually taught. He had written up his arguments, and using the 800 page manuscript tucked beneath his arm, he went to New York to discover a publisher.

Thor rapidly found that nobody was thinking about a theory from a 32 year old college dropout who had largely lived off his wealthy father’s income. And they did not have to waste their time reading his arguments. The Indians from Peru could by no means have reached the South Pacific, they said. They couldn’t get there; they had no boats. All they had had been balsa wood rafts.

Nicely, if the primary objection to his theory of racial migration and cultural diffusion (as he called it) was the Indians had no boats, Thor decided there was only one factor he could do. He would go to South America, build the type of vessel they did have, and sail across the Pacific until he hit the South Sea Islands.

The concept was absolutely lunatic. As a boy Thor had been terrified with the water, and he hadn’t even been able to swim until he was 22. Now he was going to cross the Pacific on a raft? Ridiculous!

Really Thor had much better credentials than it might appear. Even though he had not graduated college, he had been a diligent student and had discontinued his formal education so he could begin studying anthropology initial hand. Prior to Globe War II academic credentials didn’t necessarily mean a Ph. D. Some professors in globe renown universities (particularly in history and social sciences) had no degrees greater than a baccalaureate. So in 1937 (and with his dad’s cash) Thor decided he and his twenty-year old wife, Liv, would go and live on Fatu Hiva, among the South Pacific Marquesas Islands.Herman Watzinger

Expecting to find the noble savage happily gamboling about in a tropical paradise, Thor rapidly found it was more like a palm bedecked Purgatorio. A few of the natives had been good, others quite cantankerous, and some had been downright mean. The noble savage wasn’t usually that noble, either, and also the couple were deliberately swindled when the natives built them a hut from easily obtainable green bamboo instead of wood that was properly cured. The result was a fine powder that floated out from the walls and got into their hair, eyes, and lungs.

But the actual problem was illness. Tuberculosis and elephantiasis were particularly common. Thor and Liv themselves contracted what the native called fe-fe where their legs erupted in hideous boils, some as big as teacups. When the infection spread to where it was reaching toward Thor’s much more strategic parts and Liv was barely able to walk, they decided some thing more than the natural native remedies had been called for. They got a native to row them to a nearby island where one of the inhabitants had some modern medical training. He was able to quit the spread of the infection, and both Thor and Liv recovered. But Thor lost his toenails.

[Note: Percy Smith, a well-known and early New Zealand ethnologist, identified fe-fe as elephantiasis. Thor and Liv did not have that disease. So either Percy was wrong, Thor was wrong, or fe-fe was a more or less generic name for illnesses that produced ugly searching legs, arms, or other appendages.]

When the couple returned to Fatu-Hiva, they found their home overgrown, rotted, and infested with insects. Liv herself was as soon as bitten by a huge centipede. The incident, even though not life threatening, put her out of commission for a whilst. They moved to a cave by the sea so they could keep a appear out for a boat, any boat, that could take them the hell away from their tropical paradise. Finally a ship showed up and took them away.

The experience had a sobering impact on Thor’s “back-to-nature” philosophy, and he realized that many people in big cities were far healthier and happier than the natives on Fatu-Hiva. In later years he took care to steer clear of any semblance of conflict using the missionaries and government officials who were charged with bringing civilization to the out with the way places he frequently discovered himself. To some this may have looked like rank opportunism, but it truly did reflect Thor’s honest beliefs.

Even though in some methods his trip to the Marquesas had been a way for Thor to get away from the real world, he nevertheless had seriously studied the Marquesas culture. It was from comparing the stone statues in the Marquesas and Peru and searching in the wind and surf patterns that he started to think Polynesia had been settled from South America.

Following his return home, he wrote a short book on Fatu-Hiva (not the Fatu-Hiva he penned thirty-five years later), as well as articles for the National Geographic along with other magazines. He had also been elected to New York’s Explorer’s Club, and in an effort to carve a career on something other than living off his dad, he started giving talks on his experiences. Liv, although, said no much more back-to-nature life for her, and ultimately she and Thor separated.

Further studies had been interrupted in the 1940′s when Thor volunteered to fight using the Norwegian Totally free Forces. It was only following the war that he was able to write his theory down in an organized form. But when he got to New York none with the experts would even bother reading his manuscript. Bold action was called for and Thor began to make plans to construct the raft and sail to Polynesia.

Even though the president with the Explorer’s Club thought Thor was nuts and did not bother reading his book, another senior member, Peter Freuchen, came to his aid. At that time Peter was one of the most famous arctic explorers alive, and Peter’s support could mean a lot in obtaining an expedition going. When Thor outlined his plans in the club on a cold rainy November evening, Peter didn’t believe that crossing the Pacific by raft was crazy at all. Definitely not as crazy as attempting to camp in Greenland in mid-winter in a pup-tent with a frozen zipper. So with Fruechen on-board (so to speak), issues began to move quick.

Of course, what Thor needed was money. Usually his dad may have put up a great chunk of cash, but based on Thor, currency restrictions produced it impossible to exchange the Norwegian kroner for American dollars. But then an adventurous Norwegian millionaire (with his capital a bit much more fluid) stated he’d help finance the Kontiki travel expedition if no other funds might be found. The US and British Armies agreed to offer provisions and equipment, and also the president of the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA) agreed to pitch in provided Thor agreed to give the NANA first publication rights. Most importantly a wealthy New York patron with two “energetic young reporters” stepped in with the lion’s share of the ready money if Thor would agree to a series of lecture tours. Thor could now get moving.

In the event you read Thor’s book, he claimed that as soon as everything was set up, his chief “backer” (very ambiguously described) came down using the flu and couldn’t authorize releasing the actual cash. So his two buddies agreed to dissolve the partnership and let Thor deal with everything himself. Which left Thor, as he said, within the streets with his hands in his pockets.

It appears strange that a case of flu could stop the signing of a few checks or that the expedition couldn’t wait a few days for their backer to get much better. So it ought to surprise nobody that the story given by Thor was a tactful evasion of what really happened. In short, it just wasn’t true.

What really occurred was as soon as Thor’s financing was set up, everyone with the dough began obtaining cold feet. The rich millionaire also backed out. NANA nonetheless said they’d help but wouldn’t pay the full amount unless Thor got halfway across. Thor naturally asked what the hell good would a check be to him if he had already built the raft and was in the middle with the ocean. In any case, it looked like the plans for the kontiki travel expedition were off.

Then the Norwegian consul, Colonel Otto Munthe-Kaas, heard the promised financing wasn’t shaping up and advanced Thor $1000 out of his own pocket. This revived some faith in the expedition and brought in some other supporters. 1 drawback was all of the cash was in the forms of loans which would have to be repaid (and with interest). But at least Thor now had sufficient cash to go to Peru and build the raft.

As touch and go as the financing had been, it was a snap finding members who would be willing to go along on what the National Geographic Society’s technical consultants said was a suicide mission. The very first member Thor had recruited was Herman Watzinger, a refrigeration engineer operating for a Norwegian firm and who was in America on a company trip.Knut Haugland

Herman had met Thor purely by chance within the cafeteria with the Norwegian’s Sailor’s House in New York exactly where Thor was staying. A couple of years older than Thor, Herman asked his new acquaintance what brought him to New York. Thor outlined his plans, and when they bumped into each other a few days later, Herman provided to quit his job and go along on the raft. Herman did have a family back in Norway, but Thor’s dad stepped in and provided to support them and also the households of other expedition members for the duration of the voyage.

It was Herman who suggested the Kontiki travel expedition have a radio and operator to preserve whatever outside get in touch with would be possible on a deck heaving and rolling a foot or so above the water’s surface. Even though Thor did not like the idea, he was lastly convinced and called on two radio specialists from the Norwegian wartime resistance, Knut Haugland and Torstein Raaby. Thor had met Knut, who was nonetheless a main within the Norwegian army, during his coaching and he had bumped into Torstein after he re-entered Norway. No doubt feeling that crossing the ocean on a balsa raft was child’s play compared to engaging in radio espionage in occupied Norway and (for Knut) getting the occasional shootout using the Germans, each men agreed to come.

The other member Thor picked was a boyhood friend, Erik Hesselberg. In the time Erik was an amateur artist and the only one on the expedition who was an experienced seaman. He had sailed around the world a couple of times, acquired his navigator’s certificate, and now lived with his wife, Liss, and his infant daughter, Anne Karin. Liss seemed to have no issue letting her husband go off (literally) towards the other side of the world for eight months or so. So after receiving Thor’s invitation, Erik traveled to Panama by boat, and from there he flew on to Peru.Torstein Raaby

An unexpected air of academic respectability came towards the expedition when Bengt Danielsson knocked on the door of Thor’s hotel room in Lima. A graduate from the University of Uppsala, Bengt had been studying the Indians of South America. He had just arrived in Peru from the inland by canoe. By now there had been considerable newspaper play concerning the Kon-Tiki travel expedition and Thor was wary of the academic Danielsson when he walked in. Thinking the Swede was going to trash his theory, he was surprised when Bengt mildly told him he thought the idea was interesting and asked if he could join the expedition.

Before leaving New York, Thor had obtained useful diplomatic contacts in the United Nations. Now following a personal interview with the Peruvian president, he obtained permission to build the raft in the naval dockyard in Callao, the seaport suburb of Lima. The raft was christened the Kon-Tiki following the legendary (but as Thor believed, real) pre-Inca figure that Thor believed left South America by his raft only to show up as the Polynesian deity named Tiki.

As Thor told it, as soon as the specialists looked at the raft there wasn’t a single stick, rope, or knot that wasn’t guaranteed to send them towards the bottom. The dimensions had been wrong, the raft would snap in two, the ropes would wear away, and the balsa logs would suck up water like a sponge. Choose any reason, baby, they’d never make it.

Some of the warnings, although did not truly – pardon the poor joke – hold water. After all, there was no doubt that the balsa rafts could get onto and navigate upon the open sea. Francisco Pizzarro encountered one within the ocean that was nearly as big as his own ship. Even though modern experts claimed the Incas had to dry the rafts out each and every two weeks to maintain them from sinking, what really occurred (as Thor found out) was the sap within the freshly cut balsa logs kept the water from seeping in. Also none with the experts ever questioned why the Indians would have continued to make use of a type of vessel for hundreds or even thousands of years if they required to refit their lashings each and every two weeks. Balsa rafts had been still being used in the nineteenth century generating voyages up and down the South American coast as well as going out to the Galapagos, 650 miles west of Equador.Erik Hesselberg

Other dangers, though had been real sufficient. Footing on the bamboo deck was treacherous and in rough seas, waves could easily knock a man overboard. In fact, Herman as soon as went more than the side and only quick action on Knut’s part saved him. Even though the crew did encounter a couple of storms, which admittedly kept them busy, luckily they had been not hit by any full blown typhoons which could have splintered both the raft and also the six expedition members.

The kontiki travel expedition began on April 28, 1947 using the raft becoming towed by tug to get them outside the shipping lanes and (it has to be admitted) to give them a bit of a leg up on getting away from the coastal currents and wind patterns. On August 7, following 101 days at sea, the raft literally crash landed on Raoria Reef in the Tuamotu Archipelago. The only non-minor injury was when the mast fell and cracked Danielsson on the noggin, leaving him having a concussion from which he rapidly recovered.

4 days later and using the crew nonetheless on Raoria, Thor’s by-line appeared on a story within the New York Times. Clearly a somewhat garbled re-write transmitted by radio, the story got the basics right but erred in a number of particulars. In addition to confusing the names with the crew with their backgrounds, the men had been identified as Swedish, an error which most likely amused Danielsson who was the sole Swede on board. In any case, Thor had proven his point. Not that Polynesia was peopled from Peru, he was fast to admit, but that the South Sea islands were in reach with the water craft used in ancient America.

Thor and the other people returned to America on a Norwegian ship sent specially to pick them up. Thor’s gratitude was somewhat dampened when on their arrival in San Francisco the captain handed him a travel bill for $10,000. Later although, the ship’s owner met him for dinner and told him to forget about it.

Thor became an instant celebrity and ultimately the #1 national hero of Norway. Following some unexpected delay in discovering a publisher, his book, Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft, became one of the very best sellers within the twentieth century. Still in print, it quickly sold tens of millions of copies and has been translated into practically each and every language on earth (numbers in between 60 and 70 are usually cited). Thor also produced a motion picture from footage shot on the voyage, a film which won the Oscar for Very best Documentary in 1951, an honor it clearly merited.

It was the movie’s early success that made it possible for Thor to pay off the loans. But it also got him sued by a hula dancer who appeared on screen for about 20 seconds. She stated no one told her that she would appear in a movie and utilizing the scene degraded her and her culture. But she felt that $150,000 would relieve most of her humiliation.

The lawsuit was filed within the United States because at that time American law was strict on requiring film makers to get permission from anybody appearing in a film. Thor’s lawyers, convinced they would lose, recommended settling out of court. But Thor decided to fight the suit all the way. He won and also the ruling set an important legal precedence within the amount of freedom documentary film makers had been allowed.

The success with the movie, and more importantly, his book gave Thor sufficient capital where he was literally able to write his own ticket, Thor conducted excavations on the Galapagos Islands in 1952 and Easter Island in 1956 (which got him another best seller and an additional film). As usually he felt his findings supported his theory of migration and cultural diffusion.

It’s sometimes supposed that the Kon-Tiki travel expedition totally vindicated Thor’s suggestions and his theories were lastly accepted by scholars. It’s true that instantly after the voyage and his dig on Easter Island, there was some openness toward of his ideas, and Thor published a number of papers in academic journals. But mostly he met resistance as well as ridicule.

What irritated Thor most was that prior to the voyage, the specialists stated the Indians couldn’t reach Polynesia because all they had had been balsa wood rafts. Now they had been saying the voyage meant absolutely nothing because the Indians didn’t really have those kind of balsa wood rafts anyway. Worse, Thor was accused of being an experienced seaman (not accurate) and that all he proved was five contemporary Norwegians and one Swede subsisting on contemporary army rations and building a raft using the aide of the Peruvian navy could float across the ocean. But the undeniable truth is that if five landlubbers and one graduate of navigation school could float across the Pacific on a balsa wood raft, the ancient Peruvians with generations of experience to draw on could make it as well.

But sadly (for Thor) these days when scholars and ethnologists might have no objection with the basic concept of population migrations – as well as those who at 1 time may have thought Thor’s ideas had been great ones – most anthropologists and ethnologists still consider Thor’s fundamental theory incorrect. Instead his methods are more often looked on as how to use selective information mining to build false theories and improper correlations.

Bengt DanielssonThere’s nothing which will kill a great theory like much more data, and further linguistic studies and (much more conclusively) DNA sequencing have shown that the present Polynesians indeed originated from Asia, not South America. Conclusive evidence, some say, that Thor was wrong. But Thor replied he had never said current Polynesians had been from South America. If they’d just read his damn books they’d understand he proposed that there was a get in touch with of two cultures – one from Asia; the other from South America – and the one from Asia won out.

But, his opponents countered, excavated bones from Polynesia showed no South American genes. Surely that wouldn’t be the case if some of the population came from America. Thor then countered that the Polynesians who had come South American had cremated their dead and so nothing remained to test. Now modifying theories to meet objections is usually OK, but as soon as Thor started saying he knew he was correct simply because there was no evidence, many people began to label his theories as pseudoscience.

Not surprisingly what captured the well-liked imagination often hurt Thor in the eyes of traditional academia. In the late 1960′s he and an internationally composed crew floated from Egypt to Central America on a papyrus raft named the Ra. To many this was just Thor attempting to recapture the by-gone days of his past glory, and also the term “stunt” archeology was coined.

Invective in between Thor and his detractors continued to get downright nasty. Some opponents even seized on Thor’s phrasing that a “white”, “fair-skinned” race from Peru was the civilization that was responsible for the advanced functions of Polynesian culture. After all, Thor had said that the astronomical understanding and advanced calendar used by the Polynesian seafarers was “certainly” not from the Asia or Malay Peninsula. Thor, an ardent opponent of Fascism and bigotry, now discovered his theories dismissed as absolutely nothing much more than the old racist doctrine that you simply had to be Caucasian to do anything worthwhile.

To his credit, Thor could create expert collaborations as well as private friendships with individuals who disagreed with him. His expedition to Easter Island was with the assist of two American archeologists Edwin N. Ferdon and William Mulloy. Neither of these men ever purchased onto Thor’s suggestions and Mulloy once went so far as to tell Thor, “I don’t think a damn thing you’ve published”, a remark Thor thought was funny. But he nonetheless gave the two archeologists cash and manpower for their excavations and did so with no strings attached. Other archeologists and ethnologists who had been willing to treat him as a peer found a discussion with Thor was a stimulating physical exercise and couldn’t assist but like and respect the man.

Regardless of the rights or wrongs within the arguments on either side, labeling the theory behind the Kontiki travel expedition as pseudoscience is certainly unfair. It was, actually, a fine theory and was according to first hand observations and a careful review of previous research. Yes, it is most likely wrong, but you nonetheless need to wonder.

The fundamental message with the Kon-Tiki is it was not a fluke. Not just did Thor manage to sail other small craft across the major oceans, but in 2006, the Tangoroa Expedition repeated nearly precisely the Kon-Tiki’s trip utilizing a copy of the raft. Although the leaders of the expedition admitted the evidence against Thor’s theory was powerful, the expedition was organized both as a means to gather scientific data from the Pacific up close with out the disturbance that major ocean going research vessels create, but also as a well-merited tribute to Thor. So it was fitting that his grandson, Olav, went along.Olav Heyerdahl

The Kon-Tiki travel expedition infected Raaby with the exploration bug and no doubt aided by his association with Thor, he undertook other trips and travels. Sadly whilst attempting to reach the North Pole on a sledge trip in 1964 he unexpectedly died. He was only 44.

Erik returned to his wife and daughter and built some thing of a reputation as a painter and sculptor. He later got a boat of his own and sailed the Mediterranean painting as he went. He also served as a designing consultant for numerous establishments that wanted a Kon-Tiki motif. Like Thor, he wrote a book about the voyage, the entertaining “Kon-Tiki and I” which he also illustrated. Ostensibly written for kids, the book (which mentions the difficulty of attempting to eat your food at a Polynesian banquet when the hula dancers wear nothing beneath their grass skirts) may also be enjoyed by adults. He died in 1972.

Herman ended up performing extremely nicely. Although he may have liked the Polynesian islands, there had been limited employment opportunities there for a refrigeration engineer. Peru, though, was a good compromise between living within the tropics and pursuing a modern career. Herman moved to Lima and started a number of business ventures related with Peru’s fishing industry which allowed him to use his engineering expertise. He ended up as the Norwegian consul to Peru. He died in 1986.

While he was in Lima waiting for the raft to be built, Bengt had met a young French woman named Marie-Therese and the year following the expedition, they married and moved to Tahiti. Bengt continued to study the culture and people of Polynesia while maintaining his connections with Swedish academia. He earned his Ph. D., and dividing his time between Sweden and Polynesia, became the director of Sweden’s National Museum of Ethnology. Much more mainstream than Thor’s, his analysis had a decent standing among the majority with the academic community. He ultimately became Sweden’s consul to Tahiti and seeing the post-war modifications hitting the South Seas, Bengt was extremely critical of how dumping thousands of megatons of nuclear weapons on various Polynesia islands successfully destroyed (amongst other things) the inhabitant’s self-sufficiency. He died in 1999.

Thor himself kept going strong quite literally to the finish. In his later years he organized expeditions which ranged from the Canary Islands to the Black Sea and became increasingly concerned and vocal concerning the environmental damage done towards the oceans by industrialized countries. He died in 2002 in Italy exactly where he lived with his third wife, Jacqueline Beer, who was Miss France for the Miss Universe contest in 1954.

Knut Haugland remained a career military man and later helped set up and manage the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo exactly where the original raft remains on display. On Christmas Day, 2009 and at age 92, Knut died, the last member of the Kon-Tiki travel expedition.