Determined to prove that ancient peoples could have made contact with one another across the oceans, Norwegian ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl built a raft out of balsa logs and hemp rope — and successfully used it to cross the Pacific Ocean in 1947.
ullstein bild / ullstein bild via Getty ImagesThor Heyerdahl with artifact from Easter Island.1957 .
When Thor Heyerdahl looked at the ancient world , he see patterns . Artifacts , language , and cultural body process like pyramid building in disparate cultures convinced Heyerdahl that ancient masses might have interact with one another across oceans . And so he set out to prove it .
Over 30 years , Heyerdahl complete several transoceanic voyages to prove that ancient people could have influenced each other . travel by uncomplicated gravy holder , he and his small squad sweep 1000 of nautical miles to demonstrate that such travel could have been possible in ancient time , too .
ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty ImagesThor Heyerdahl with artifacts from Easter Island.1957.
In the end , Heyerdahl ’s voyages did n’t prove anything definitive , but they did suggest that ancient the great unwashed could have embarked on similar ones . And though Heyerdahl ’s feeling were mostly dismissed in his day , some modern - day scholar see what he was seeing .
How Thor Heyerdahl Became An Adventurer
Born on October 6 , 1914 , in Larvik , Norway , Thor Heyerdahl developed a fascination with the world at a young age . His mother , Alison , was the headway of the Larvik area museum association and inspired her Word ’s interest in nature and animals .
In pursuit of that interest , Heyerdahl recruit in the University of Oslo to canvass zoology and geography in 1933 . But Heyerdahl ’s donnish career was short - populate . Restless and eager to see the world , he throw away out in 1936 and went to live on in Polynesia with his fresh wife , Liv Coucheron Torp .
The Kon - Tiki MuseumThor Heyerdahl with his first wife , Liv Coucheron Torp , during their hitch in Gallic Polynesia .
The Kon-Tiki MuseumThor Heyerdahl with his first wife, Liv Coucheron Torp, during their stay in French Polynesia.
There , living on Fatu - Hiva in the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia , Heyerdahl commence to question how early mass had finalize there . According toThe New York Times , he concluded that they had probably ridden eastern sea currents to sail from South America .
History Dailyreported that Heyerdahl came to this conclusion for a twosome of reasons . The first being that Polynesians ate South American plants like sweet potatoes and seemed to share certain myth and legends with Peruvians . Thor Hyerdahl believed that this was n’t a coincidence , but rather evidence that the ancient civilizations had somehow interacted with each other .
He set about to develop his ideas as the years passed , though his pursuit of answers was briefly put on detention during World War II . Then , Heyerdahl serve in the Free Norse armed forces in the north of the country . But once the war ended , he turned back to his research .
Keystone/Getty ImagesThor Heyerdahl and his Kon-Tiki raft in 1947.
There was just one problem — most academics did n’t support Heyerdahl ’s possibility . They argued that ancient people had migrate to Polynesian from the Mae West , from Asia , and that ancient South Americans would not have been able-bodied to cross the ocean .
So , Thor Heyerdahl decide to prove that such a crossing was possible . In 1947 , he prepared to voyage from Peru to French Polynesia in a mere boat .
The Many Voyages Of Thor Heyerdahl
Keystone / Getty ImagesThor Heyerdahl and his Kon - Tiki raft in 1947 .
On April 28 , 1947 , Thor Heyerdahl set out to prove his theory that the island in Polynesia could have been contact by ancient South Americans . Along with five others , Heyerdahl climbed onto a raft made of balsa log tied together with hemp R-2 . The raft was dubbedKon - Tikiafter the Incan sun god , Viracocha , for whom “ Kon - Tiki ” was said to be an old name , and the military expedition started to navigate east .
“ The Kon - Tiki outing spread out my eyes to what the ocean really is , ” Heyerdahl wrote of the journey in his 1950 bookKon - Tiki . “ It is a conveyer belt and not an isolator . ”
Bettmann/Getty ImagesThor Heyerdahl, in blue, oversees the construction of hisRaship in front of the Egyptian pyramids.
After 101 twenty-four hour period at sea , Heyerdahl and his work party set down successfully in the French Polynesian atoll , Raroia . With that , Heyerdahl had examine that it waspossiblefor ancient mass to have made the same 4,300 - mile voyage by simple watercraft .
But Thor Heyerdahl did n’t intercept there . In gain to expeditions in the Galápagos Islands and Easter Island — both of which Heyerdahl believe had been settled by South Americans — Heyerdahl also start to consider other possible transoceanic connexion between ancient culture .
In the late sixties , he twist his attention to Egypt . Heyerdahl was entranced by similarity between ancient Egyptians and ancient Mexicans , like the Egyptian grammatical construction of the Great Pyramid and the ruins of Chichén Itzá in Mexico .
AGNETE BRUN/AFP via Getty ImagesThor Heyerdahl in 1990 in Oslo, Norway.
In 1969 , he set off on a transatlantic ocean trip from Morocco to Barbados in a beating-reed instrument gravy holder calledRato prove bookman , who doubted that ancient Egyptians could have made such a ocean trip , incorrect .
Bettmann / Getty ImagesThor Heyerdahl , in blue , oversee the mental synthesis of hisRaship in front of the Egyptian pyramids .
UnlikeKon - Tiki , however , the firstRavoyage was a bankruptcy . Heyerdahl ’s vas floundered 600 mile from Barbados after sailing for 3,000 miles . compulsive to rise his theory , Heyerdahl made the voyage again in 1970 withRa II . After 57 days at sea , the beating-reed instrument boat successfully made the 4,000 - naut mi voyage from Morocco to Barbados .
“ I still do n’t know [ what exactly this demonstrate ] , ” Heyerdahl wrote , as reported byThe New York Times .
“ I have no hypothesis but that a beating-reed instrument boat is seaworthy and the Atlantic is a conveyer . But I would hereafter regard it scarcely short of a miracle if the multitude of dynamic marine military expedition during the millennia of antiquity never happened to … be sweep off line while struggling to debar shipwreck in the dreaded stream around Cape Juby . ”
Seven years later , Thor Heyerdahl made yet another voyage to explore possible connections between ancient cultures in the Middle East . After build a reed gravy holder calledTigris , Heyerdahl and his crew sweep down the Tigris River to prove that ancient Sumerians could have influenced cultures in present - Clarence Day Egypt and India .
That ocean trip , however , come to an unexpected ratiocination when Heyerdahl and his gang reached Ethiopia . When functionary defy to appropriate them to land because of on-going strife , Heyerdahl burned his gravy holder .
“ Our planet is bigger than the reed bundles that have behave us across the sea , ” he and his bunch compose in a letter to the U.N. , “ and yet small enough to execute the same risks unless those of us still animated open our eyes and nous to the dire need of intelligent collaborationism to save ourselves and our vulgar civilization from what we are about to convert into a sinking ship . ”
By then , with Heyerdahl in his LX , the adventurer decided to retire from his sea - make out living . But he feel that he ’d left a pregnant impingement and asked important questions about how former civilizations might have interacted with each other .
“ I have proved that all the ancient pre - European civilizations could have intercommunicate across ocean with the rude vas they had at their disposal , ” he aver , accord toThe New York Times . “ I feel that the encumbrance of proof now rest with those who exact the oceans were needfully a factor in isolating civilizations . ”
But did Thor Heyerdahl in reality prove his naysayers untimely ?
The Legacy Of The Norwegian Explorer
AGNETE BRUN / AFP via Getty ImagesThor Heyerdahl in 1990 in Oslo , Norway .
By the clip Thor Heyerdahl choke on April 18 , 2002 , most scholars persist convinced that Polynesia had been settled by people migrating from the west — not the Orient , as Heyerdahl suggested .
Indeed , late genetic studiessuggest that Polynesia was first settle by people who come from Asia , believably from Taiwain or the Philippines .
However , according toScience Norway , other genetic studies have suggest that Heyerdahl was onto something — and the ancient Polynesians did in fact have South American DNA .
Meanwhile , other New scholarsargue thatit was the other way around , and that people sailing from Polynesia shape ancient masses in South America . After all , many island cultures in the Pacific have long - standing traditions of navigating to other islands by childlike vessel .
For now , it ’s a question that merits more geographic expedition , discussion , and tryout . But that ’s all Thor Heyerdahl ever really desire , anyway .
“ I have challenge a lot of sure-enough tenet , and this has induce a lot of discussion , ” Heyerdahl said before he kick the bucket . “ And in science you ask give-and-take . ”
After say about the adventures of Thor Heyerdahl , depend through these fascinatingmaps of the ancient world . Or , see how research worker turn up thatVikings landed at Lanse - aux - Meadowsin Canada 500 years before Christopher Colombus .
