Thor Heyerdahl: The Controversial Voyages That Challenged History

The Norwegian anthropologist, author, and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl was arguably one of the most popular figures in the twentieth century. His ideas were simple yet controversial. Heyerdahl posited that even in prehistory, the vast oceans were not barriers to cultural exchanges and that humans used them as routes for technological and linguistic exchange. That is, prehistoric peoples traveled enormous distances by sea to colonize and influence humans of different ethnicities. In an attempt to prove his ideas, Heyerdahl built a series of rafts to prehistoric standards to demonstrate that he could travel great distances by sea. In doing so, he proved that such voyages were not impossible, but he never demonstrated that anyone actually undertook such journeys. In this sense, his legacy was mixed, and he never convinced academics that he had been right. Although a skillful writer, Heyerdahl was more a celebrity than an intellectual.

Early Life.Born October 6, 1914, in Larvik, Norway, Thor Heyerdahl did not seem destined for a life as something of a journeyman seafarer. In one interview, he admitted to having feared the water as a child. He had no desire even to learn to swim. His father was a beer brewer, but the real influence was his mother, the director of a museum. She stoked in her son a passion for scientific inquiry and taught him much about, for example, evolutionary biology. With a wider view of the sciences and the world, he attended the University of Oslo in Norway, where he studied a number of sciences with a fascination for zoology and geography. He did not graduate, however, but left the university to pursue a life at sea. He and his first wife, Liv Coucheron Torp Heyerdahl, spent a year on the Polynesian island of Fatu Hiva, where they tried to re-create life in a primitive but pristine land. During this time, Thor began to wonder how prehistoric peoples came to colonize the Polynesian islands. Noting that the ocean currents moved from West to East, he came to envision the prospect that people had migrated from Eastern lands to colonize these islands in the West.

Kon-Tiki.This view contradicted the opinion of scholars, leading Heyerdahl to attempt to prove his views by making such a journey on his own in primitive conditions. At age thirty-two, Heyerdahl accomplished in 1947 what was thought to be impossible. Building a raft of nothing more stout than balsa wood, he and five colleagues crossed the Pacific Ocean from South America to Polynesia. This voyage of 4,300 miles took Heyerdahl from Peru to Raroia, a small island near Tahiti, in 101 days. He had reached Polynesia in nothing more elaborate than a raft. Along the way, Heyerdahl and his friends had battled sharks and been entranced by nearby whales. Being in the tropics, the men never faced rigorous winter conditions. South America, Heyerdahl believed, was the cradle of Polynesian peoples and civilizations. South America had thus influenced life and culture an ocean away in prehistory.

From the outset, Heyerdahl was unable to convince scholars of this East-to-West connection. Linguistics, culture, and, perhaps most important, genetics favored the thesis that the people of Polynesia had originated in Southeast Asia. The migration of peoples had not come from East to West as Heyerdahl had supposed but from West to East. Polynesian culture was Asian at its core, not South American. Heyerdahl never admitted his error. Instead, he authored the popular book Kon-Tiki, which was translated into sixty-five languages and became an international best-seller. Heyerdahl was now a celebrity, a fact that must have rankled scholars, whose careful monographs sold a few thousand rather than millions of copies. A documentary film followed, winning an Oscar.

From Egypt to the Americas.Other voyages followed, notably the trek from Egypt to the Americas. Studying the pyramids in Egypt and Mesoamerica, Heyerdahl became convinced that Egyptians must have crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas to teach the peoples of Mesoamerica to build pyramids. Building a watercraft of nothing more durable than papyrus, an allpurpose plant that grew in the marshy grounds of the Nile River in Egypt, and naming it Ra in honor of the sun god, Heyerdahl and a small crew set out for Central America. This voyage was not as successful as Heyerdahl had hoped. Ra sank in the Caribbean Sea. Heyerdahl had come close to the Caribbean Islands, however, and viewed his first attempt as an achievement. He built a second papyrus craft, Ra II, and crossed the Atlantic in full, reaching the Caribbean island of Barbados. Again, he had demonstrated the feasibility of an oceanic crossing, but not that such a journey had ever taken place. The job of the historian, of course, is to determine what actually happened and not what might have been feasible but nonetheless implausible. There is no reason to doubt that the Amerindians built pyramids of their own accord. For this reason, there is no rationale that must mandate Egyptian influence.

Later Life.Thor Heyerdahl retired from the sea after other notable voyages, but he was never silent. A series of successful books followed Kon-Tiki, enhancing Heyerdahl’s reputation as a deft storyteller. He wrote about adventure and exploration for a world of people sick of the mundane. His audience was the general reader, not the scholar, and in this sense, Heyerdahl was a writer of almost hypnotic abilities. Developing cancer in old age, Thor Heyerdahl died in Italy on April 18, 2002. Christopher Cumo

FURTHER READING:Anderson, Axel. 2010. A Hero for the Atomic Age: Thor Heyerdahl and the Kon-Tiki Expedition. Witney: Peter Lang.

Blassigame, Wyatt. 1979. Thor Heyerdahl, Viking Scientist. New York: Elsevier/Nelson Books. Evensberget, Snorre. 1994. Thor Heyderdahl: The Explorer. Oslo: J. M. Stenersens Forlag. Heyerdahl, Thor. 2000. In the Footsteps of Adam: An Autobiography. London: Little, Brown and Company.