Thor Heyerdahl (1914–2002)

This is the first person account of Thor Heyerdahl of his 1947 voyage with five companions across the South Pacific; over 4,000 nautical miles in 101 days with five companions on a balsa log raft. There are various genres this book could be said to fall into: anthropology, adventure/exploration and memoir, and I have mixed feelings about its success in each.

The entire purpose of the voyage was "to support a theory that the South Sea Islands were populated from Peru." Heyerdahl did have some show more compelling points for his theory. Given his expeditions sailing in craft of ancient design, Heyerdahl has good reason to claim that the ocean is "a conveyer, not an isolator." (Although in that case one must ask why Old and New Worlds lost contact for centuries.) Right in the front matter is a map showing the Humboldt currents and trade winds--going west, not east, making it seem plausible the islands were peopled from the Americas rather than Asia. And the sweet potato, which comes from South America, is a Polynesian staple. Nevertheless, Heyerdahl couldn't even get a legitimate scholar to look at his manuscript, because the Incas didn't have boats--only rafts which were believed unseaworthy. So Heyerdahl decided to have constructed a craft made of the same design and materials as pre-Columbian Peruvians and sail it from Peru across the Pacific to one of the South Sea Islands to prove it could be done, so his theory could be taken seriously. From what I can gather, despite the success of his voyage, this is considered by anthropologists today to be at best a fringe theory, if not downright crackpot. Worse is Heyerdahl's fixation that every "high" aspect of pre-Columbian New World came from "legendary white people" who voyaged to the New World, presumably from Europe, and created Aztec, Inca and Polynesian civilization and then were displaced by later Amerindian settlers. So as anthropology, although there's not much discussion of it, for me the book fails pretty resoundingly. Especially when you consider his craft had to be towed out of harbor, didn't land so much as wreck itself on a South Sea Island reef, and that, as Heyerdahl admits, it was sheer luck they used just cut balsa wood which still had enough sap to keep the craft afloat. Had they used dried logs as planned, they would have floundered.

And then there's the memoir/adventure tale aspect, which I consider a qualified success. Qualified because note the above part about luck--and admittedly guts. But I'm somewhat a fan of tales of exploration and I couldn't help compare Heyerdahl to his compatriot Roald Amundsen, the polar explorer. Amundsen famously said that "adventure is just bad planning." He won that race to the South Pole because of rational and efficient planning, preparedness, experience and skill--little of which seemed evident in Heyerdahl. Reading of how Heyerdahl prepared and planned for the Kon-Tiki expedition on the other hand, it's hard for me to understand how he didn't wind up with a Darwin Award. Several maritime experts told him the Kon Tiki was unseaworthy, just as anthropologists had told him his migration theories were unsound--he launched anyway. And as memoir, if you're expecting to find much psychological insight into what he and his five companions went through on a raft for nearly four months, you're going to be disappointed.

Ah, but there are some redeeming qualities to reading this--namely as a tale of the sea. It was often (although perhaps not often enough) fascinating to read about the marine life they came across, the storms and dangers they faced. An encounter with a whale shark was particularly memorable--as was just the abundance of food available to them living off the sea in that raft. They had enough flying fish jumping into the raft to make fishing superfluous the way Heyerdahl told it. Crab, squid, even plankton around them could make a tasty meal, although their favorite was the Bonito fish. So it's as an account of nature and the sea that this tale makes up points for me, even if I look at the theories that inspired this voyage with a jaundiced eye. show less

There is BAD speculative/alternative/fringe history. Think David Hatcher Childress, Von Daniken, and their ilk. There is BETTER speculative/alternative/fringe history. Think Graham Hancock and the author of this work: Thor Heyerdahl. It is disingenuous to put someone like Von Daniken or Tsoukalos in the same category as Hancock or Heyerdahl. Thor Heyerdahl's great 1947 work Kon Tiki concerned his theory that balsawood rafts from ancient Peru could have made the ocean journey to the islands show more of Polynesia. How did sweet potatoes reach the area? What of Polynesian myths of settlers from the east? The gripping first-person narrative of Heyerdahl explains his theory, the building of the raft, and his journey, with his companions, across the Pacific. As a first person travel story it is grand and gripping. No wonder it sold so many copies, engendered many copycats, and spawned a documentary film. (A documentary film I grew up watching clips from in various forms on old A&E and Discovery channels in the 1980s and 1990s back when they were good, documentary channels.) There are some spots of the is 1947 book that read funny to modern ears: some subtle racism or Eurocentrism. Some funny old fashioned terms. (And some odd translation choices.) But all-in-all, it's a classic of the speculative history genre and for good reason: it's a gripping yarn of can-do post-WWII attitude. This version is illustrated and "enriched" with a supplementary section that provides some good pics and some odd commentary and context. But, a good paperback version to have. A good book. show less

My husband spotted a copy of this in a used book store, and picked it up upon noticing that it is actually autographed by Thor Heyerdahl himself, 1974! Heyerdahl was the instigator of the famed Kon-Tiki expedition in which he and others successfully navigated a raft from South America to Polynesia, to prove that Polynesia could have been first populated by indigenous Americans.

This book is about events pre-dating Kon-Tiki, when a coming-of-age young Norwegian named Thor decides he's fed up show more with civilization - but unlike most teenagers, gathers the wherewithal to do something about it. He convinces his university professors and parents to aid him in a trek to an isolated part of the world where he can live "in nature" in as primitive conditions as possible. Against all odds, he also manages to find a girlfriend eager to go with him! Thus after completing their university studies, newlyweds Thor and Liv set out for the tiny spot on the map which they decided was destined to become their own island paradise; that spot was Fatu-Hiva, an island in the French Marquesas group.

And the craziest thing is, they do find their paradise; it's just not a permanent situation. They are troubled by mud, mosquitoes, tropical diseases, and other people. But through it all were blissful days upon days where they traipsed through their longed-for garden of Eden.

They seem to find an extended period of peace and nirvana on the far side of the island, living alongside a longtime hermit and his pre-teen adopted daughter, far away from the other islanders, by the shore where the mosquitoes are few. The idyll is eventually destroyed, however... no spoilers, but it seems hell is indeed other people. That, and demon drink.

There are many pages where Thor just goes on about the beauty of nature around them, which can get a bit monotonous. His philosophy tends towards the simplistic - civilization bad, white man bad, state of nature perfect, etc. - especially towards the beginning of the story; and he tries to bend all his observations to his philosophy - diseases come from the white man, diseases would never happen when living correctly in a 'state of nature', for example. He seems to mature a bit over his long year on the island, however.

There is little to no sidelong mocking of the natives in this book... individuals and behaviors often get his scorn, but each islander is presented as a full human being, never a caricature. Indeed, Thor conveys his growing realization during the year that the islanders are people exactly like us, with every bit as much intelligence; he observes that we tend to think of illiterate people as childlike, which is a gross injustice and blindness. We are all human beings, doing everything we can put our minds to, given the resources before us.

But while it seemed to me that Thor was generally refreshingly respectful and equitable in his treatment of his fellow islanders, there was one exception where his behavior left me flabbergasted. He and Liv begin a collection of human skulls which they take from areas considered "tabu" by the natives. There are photos of Liv grinning happily while surrounded by human skulls. This seemed horribly disrespectful, not to mention ghoulish.

Liv was an absolute saint, by the way. By all accounts, she had all the eagerness for the adventure as did her husband; the book is by and large written in first person plural, not singular. It is Thor and Liv as a unit who discover, learn, enjoy, suffer together.

There are lots of amazing black-and-white photos throughout the book. I was truly astounded by them, for various reasons. a) Some of the photos have both Thor and Liv in them, in some remote situation - who took the picture?! b) How did they manage, through all their soggy trials and travails, to keep their camera and film with them, and dry enough to be functional? c) What faith did it take to keep taking pictures of things, with no ability - I presume! - to develop the film until if and when you or the camera made it back to civilization? I don't know, maybe there was a Foto-mat in nearby Tahiti where they were sending things.

I found myself thinking at the book's beginning, as the adventure first gets underway: but what about modern medicine? What about birth control? How will they keep healthy, and is Liv prepared to birth babies without assistance on an island? They never really address the latter, except one passing remark towards the end that Liv might "at any time" by "blessed" with a baby; so apparently no birth control. As for medicine, illnesses and injuries are dealt with as they came, and both heroes lived to tell their tales.

This book really did make me think about nature, civilization, and the commonness of human ingenuity. show less

While not all of Thor Heyerdahl’s theories have stood the test of time, he was a true pioneer, and this account of his journey to Rapanui (Easter Island) in 1955-56 conveys his spirit as an explorer into its mysteries. He gives us the island’s unique history, its culture, and most of all, a sense of its majesty. The 1st edition I found has a large number of color photos interspersed in the text, as well a few excellent maps, which heightened my enjoyment.

Among other things, Heyerdahl show more learned by getting his hands dirty, and early on I was taken with his description of sleeping in the depression formed from one of the completed giant statues (moai) in the rock quarry on the island:

“I have slept in the queerest places - on the altar stone in Stonehenge, in a snowdrift on the top of Norway’s highest mountain, in adobe chambers in the deserted cave villages of New Mexico, by the ruins of the first Inca’s birthplace on the Island of the Sun in Lake Titicaca: and now I wanted to sleep in the old stone quarry in Rano Raraku.”

What a fascinating life he had! But my admiration soon turned to revulsion when he says a large number of cockroaches began crawling on top of him in the night. Also riveting is his description of a journey to the ‘cave of the virgins’, so-called because in the past virgins had been kept there to be out of the sun, allowing their skin to lighten. He traverses a sheer cliff face, and then down into crevices so narrow that he literally feared getting his head stuck. As he was trailed by a native, breathing stale air, through muddy passages with no maneuverability, and took the wrong turn twice, it’s all quite scary. The cave itself has a horrifying history, as the young girls relied on food being brought down to them which was interrupted by warfare, and a great many starved to death. Later on he does another treacherous walk along a cliff, forced to strip first according to custom, and with the ocean raging below and him clinging tight to a cliff face, the line "Never again will I climb on a lava cliff in my underwear" brought a smile.

The island is of course home to several mysteries, starting with the massive moai. Heyerdahl makes a number of observations about the statues, including those which were still in the process of being carved when work abruptly halted. He had a team of natives attempt to carve one in the same quarry to determine how long it must have taken (the answer upwards of a year, quite a lot longer than previously estimated), but can only listen to the natives’ accounts from their oral history that transportation to sites all over the island was accomplished by them walking. This was three decades before he attempted to recreate this feat with mixed results, his technique causing excessive grinding in the moai’s base. It was only in the last decade that researchers made some important observations about the bases of the moai in transport and successfully accomplished the feat, as shown on a fantastic episode of the PBS show Nova. In the end, despite criticism of the natives’ account and of Heyerdahl lending credence to it, it was correct.

Heyerdahl in his team were also mystified about how the massive statues were raised from a horizontal position to standing. As he notes, between the time of the Europeans first visit to the island under Roggeveen in 1722, when many statues were still erect on platforms and sporting their massive red topknots, and his own day, they had all been pulled down following a civil war. Heyerdahl and team scoffed at the leader (‘The Mayor’) of the natives who says he’s been told the secret, which has been passed down over 11 generations, the time when the moai were still being produced. They are then blown away by the natives actually doing it over the course of a few weeks, using an ingenious technique of incrementally slipping small stones beneath the statue which has been raised just a sliver.

Another mystery surrounding the island were the people themselves. Heyerdhal, like Europeans before him, observed that there were light-skinned and red-haired people among the natives. He had read the accounts of Spanish conquistadors who had also met pale redheads among the Incas. He was also aware of their oral history describing the ‘long ears’ (those who had their ear lobes elongated) perishing in a fire at the hands of the ‘short ears’ in a massive defense structure (12 feet deep, 40 feet wide, nearly 2 miles long) of their own making. He searches for evidence for this fire and believes he finds it, and carbon dates it to the late 17th century. He concludes that the ‘long ears’ were from South America, bringing with them the ability to build the moai, the ‘short ears’ were Polynesian, and that the account of their warfare is true.

All of that is in dispute today, but the jury is still out, and it’s hard to conceive that the Incans had not made it to Rapanui. Heyerdahl and his team also uncovered evidence of them in the expert stone masonry at Vinapu, statue types different from the moai, and in determining that a structure was a solar ‘observatory’. He also points out the use of reed boats, similar to those he had seen on Lake Titicaca, and reliance on the sweet potato. I like how he maintained a strict adherence to science while trying to thread a needle between native lore, his own observations, and his understanding of the region. Even when he makes his conjecture in the last chapter, he makes it clear he is speculating in an imaginary conversation with his ghostly spirit, or aku-aku.

I have no issue with Heyerdahl possibly being off-base in a few areas, as science is always about revision and advancement. Where I do find fault is in what I suppose is a sense of superiority to the native people. It’s hard to read the lengthy portions of the book devoted to essentially tricking them into first giving him their 'family stones', precious and unique carvings that had been in their families for generations, and then letting him into the secret caves which they were stored in. In part, it's just too long and should have been pared down, but more significantly, one sees the moral paradox. Heyerdahl means well and makes it clear that all his actions were sanctioned by the Chilean government, believing that the carvings would be better off safely preserved in European museums, but in the end the act of removing them seems like a violation, even when they’re given as gifts by the natives.

The book picks up in its final two chapters, as Heyerdahl and crew make it westward from Rapanui (Big Rapa) to Rapaiti (Little Rapa), and once there, excavate the site of Morongo Uta. His description of the work balance between native women and men is fascinating (the men were quite lazy!), as are his frustrations when the men decide to go on strike. Along the way he also visits Pitcairn Island and direct descendants of mutineer Fletcher Christian. Heyerdahl’s account may be superseded by more modern research, but it’s still highly relevant today. It wasn’t until 50 years later, for example, that Morongo Uta was explored again. Heyerdahl’s account is a bit long, but well worth reading. show less