Thor Heyerdahl
Thor Heyerdahl
Thor Heyerdahl was a Norwegian explorer, adventurer, and scientist best known for his famous voyages aboard the Kon-Tiki and the Ra II. By crossing both the Atlantic and the Pacific in easy native crafts, Heyerdahl showed that ancient peoples could have crossed a lot greater distances than was previously imagined and that trade and cultural exchange could have taken location between Africa and the Americas also as in between Pacific Islanders and South Americans. Heyerdahl’s account of his Pacific crossing, KonTiki (1950,) has been published in 67 languages. The documentary film with the voyage won an Academy Award in 1951. Other well-liked works by Heyerdahl consist of: American Indians within the Pacific (1952), Early Man and also the Ocean: A Search for the Beginnings of Navigation and Seaborne Civilizations (1979), and Easter Island: The Mystery Solved (1989).
Thor Heyerdahl was born October 6, 1914 within the coastal village of Larvik, Norway. His father was president of a mineral water plant and a brewery. His mother headed the local museum. Early on the young Heyerdahl created a passion for camping and other outdoors activities. His love of natural science, nurtured by his mother, led him to accumulate his own zoological collection. And when he entered college, at the University of Oslo, he elected to specialize in marine biology and geography. But all along he fantasized about a life lived totally immersed in nature. Get in touch with having a large collection of Polynesian artifacts, owned by a family members friend, focused his interest on the islands with the South Pacific.
In 1936, aided by financial backing from his father, Heyerdahl left school and traveled with his new wife, Liv, towards the remote Polynesian island of Fatu Hiva. Honeymooning in primitive bliss, the couple lived for a year amongst the indigenous individuals and studied native lore and customs also as indigenous fauna and flora. Heyerdahl was intrigued by legends which claimed that the ancestors of Fatu Hiva islanders had come from the east. But the only factor towards the east was distant Peru. Could islanders in tiny primitive craft have crossed such a vast distance? But as Heyerdahl studied Pacific currents he became convinced that such a crossing was extremely feasible. What’s more, sweet potatoes, a food native to South America, had been also discovered on the island, as were some big statues resembling artwork found in parts of South America.
Thor Heyerdahl
Although it ran totally contrary to accepted anthropological theories, Heyerdahl felt the islanders’ claims of eastern ancestry deserved further investigation. So he turned his field of analysis from zoology to anthropology and took a position in the Museum of British Columbia. There, as he studied the native tribes with the Pacific Northwest, he toyed using the notion that natives traveling by small craft could have facilitated contact between North and South America also as the Pacific Islanders, making network of trade and cultural exchange. But when he tried to share these suggestions with colleagues he was met with only scorn and ridicule.
But Heyerdahl reasoned that it was foolish for academics to proclaim such travels impossible without initial investigating the limits with the technologies involved. He resolved to do so himself and therefore, studying traditional South American boat building supplies and crafts, he constructed a 45 foot balsa raft which he named the Kon-Tiki. On it Heyerdahl and his crew sailed some 4300 miles across the Pacific, landing on Raroia Atoll within the South Pacific on August 7, 1947 (the well-known Kontiki travel). Despite the primitive nature of their craft and despite their relative encounter with it, Heyerdahl and his crew had demonstrated that early contact between South Americans and Pacific Islanders was technically feasible.
Heyerdahl’s subsequent mission was to search for clues pointing to actual get in touch with between the Americas and the Pacific isles. Over the subsequent 50 years he studied language, art, folklore, physical characteristics, and more in numerous parts of South America and also the Pacific. But although some of his findings had been very compelling, anthropologists by no means accepted his theory. In component this was because of easy skepticism and bias. But over the years other researchers began unearthing new archaeological, linguistic, and DNA evidence that backed up the old notion of a western origin for Pacific Island peoples. Some even accused Heyerdahl of having selected only that evidence which supported his claims, while discarding any information that which didn’t fit his preconceived conclusions.
But while Heyerdahl was willing to concede that a wave of west to east colonization had taken location (i.e. not coming from the Americas but from the direction of India and Southeast Asia), he remained convinced that his theory of transpacific contact was correct. Native mariners, he argued surely made contact in between the Islands and the Americas. These days some scientists grudgingly admit that trade in between Pacific Islanders and also the Americas might have taken location from time to time. But Heyerdahl’s theory remains marginalized.
Heyerdahl meanwhile was not content to limit his theory of ocean hopping to the Pacific. Actually he began to envision a broad network of cultural and trade exchange that looped through the Pacific, Central America, Africa, as well as parts of ancient Europe. To prove his point he collected images and lore of little craft that were markedly comparable in various parts of the world. And to prove that such craft could have produced the lengthy journeys he suggested, he also mounted additional ocean expeditions. Notably, in 1970 Heyerdahl and his crew succeeded in crossing from Morocco to Barbados, a distance of 4,000 miles, in a 45 foot ancient Egyptian style craft built of bundled papyrus reeds — the Ra II. The feat showed the possibility of early contact between Africa and also the Americas. Similarly, in 1977-78 aboard the Tigris, Heyerdahl demonstrated the feasibility of contact between the great civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and also the Indus Valley.
Ultimately his interest within the legends and pictographs of curved reed or wooden boats led him to Azerbaijan, a Caucasus nation sandwiched in between Russia towards the North and Turkey and Iran within the south. There the 5,000 year old pictographs of crafts, reminiscent of ancient Viking ships, seemed to support Heyerdahl’s belief that substantial sea travel, and long distance river travel, had been going on a lot earlier than most historians believed and in pretty “primitive” but high efficient craft — craft that decayed leaving little trace of existence or construction. Whilst many historians believed that significant boat travel occurred only after the rise of large civilizations, Heyerdahl was certain that travel by boat created trade and cultural exchange and thus spurred the growth with the fantastic civilizations. Thus, he claimed, boat travel was a leading cause of civilization, not merely one of its products.
But the similarity in between the pictographs and also the ships of his Heyerdahl’s Norwegian ancestors had significance. They reminded him of ancient legends which claimed that his people had originally come from the land of Aser, east with the Black Sea. According to the scribes they were led north from that land by their leader Odin, to escape the coming with the Romans. Even though numerous regarded Odin as merely a mythological figure, Roman expansion was a historical reality. And Roman presence in Azerbaijan could be reliably dated. When Heyerdahl compared the timeline of the Roman presence in Azerbaijan with the timeline of the reigns with the early Norwegian kings he discovered apparent correlations, indicating the possibility of a Caucasian homeland for the Norwegians along with other Scandinavian peoples. Extra archaeological and DNA evidence appears to lend credence to the notion.
Thor Heyerdahl
This discovery, coupled with his sea going expeditions aboard the Kon-Tiki and so forth, only confirmed an essential principle that Heyerdahl already believed, if 1 digs deeply enough it may be shown that we are all related, each culturally and biologically. What’s much more, he argued, harping on national or racial differences and using them to justify war and discrimination is foolish. We’re all 1 individuals under the skin. As an ardent environmentalist too, Heyerdahl believed human beings would be much better served by operating together to save the planet – rather than attempting to monopolize and exploit its resources for the temporary gain of any 1 people.
Thor Heyerdahl continued his studies of cultural diffusion and of ancient sea going societies well into his eighties, remaining an active lecturer and globe traveller. But in April of 2002 he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He died a short time later in a hospital near his family retreat in Colla Michari, Italy. Throughout his lifetime he was awarded numerous honorary degrees and fellowships. The asteroid 4473 Heyerdahl, discovered by Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh in 1977, is named in his honor. The Kon-Tiki Museum near Oslo, Norway houses displays about his life and work, especially his well-known expeditions
Even though much of Heyerdahl’s anthropological function continues to be rejected by scientists, he opened the eyes with the public to the very actual reality that our assumptions about the past, and about what’s feasible, can be wildly inaccurate. And his expeditions on the sea proved that ancient peoples, although using easy technologies, had been capable of much higher feats of navigation and travel than was previously realized. The story of Heyerdahl’s own voyages continues to fascinate each would-be adventurers and those who think human history, or prehistory, is a lot more complicated than mainstream science admits.
