Heyerdahl, Thor (hā`ərdäl', hī`–), 1914–2002, Norwegian explorer and anthropologist, b. Larvik. He carried out research in the Marquesas Islands in 1937–38 and studied the indigenous peoples of British Columbia in 1939–40. To support his thesis that the first settlers of Polynesia were of South American origin, in 1947 he and five companions made the crossing from Peru to the Tuamotu Archipelago on a primitive log raft. This voyage is described in the international bestseller
Kon Tiki (tr. 1950). In 1970, Heyerdahl sailed, in a papyrus boat, from Morocco to Barbados, in an attempt to prove that ancient Mediterranean civilizations could have sailed in reed boats to America. This adventure is described in
The Ra Expeditions (tr. 1971). In 1977, he sailed from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea, following a route he believed was once used by the Sumerians; this trip is detailed in
The Tigris Expedition (1979). Heyerdahl was an exponent of the diffusionist school of cultural anthropology, now largely discounted, and today most academics regard his theories as speculative and unproven. His other writings include
American Indians in the Pacific (1952),
Aku-Aku (tr. 1958),
Sea Routes to Polynesia (1968), and
Easter Island: The Mystery Solved (1989).
Bibliography
See biography by A. Jacoby (1967).
Heyerdahl, Thor
Thor Heyerdahl.
(credit: Pierre Vauthey—Gamma/Liaison)
(born Oct. 6, 1914, Larvik, Nor.—died April 18, 2002, Colla Michari, Italy) Norwegian ethnologist and adventurer. After a trip to Polynesia convinced him that Polynesian culture bore traces of South American cultures, he built a raft, the Kon-Tiki, and sailed it from South America to Polynesia in 1947 to demonstrate the possibility of such contact, a trip recounted in his best-selling Kon-Tiki (1950). In 1969 he sailed a reconstruction of an ancient Egyptian reed boat (the Ra) from Morocco to the Caribbean to show that the Egyptians could have had contact with the early peoples of Central and South America. In 1977 he took the reed craft Tigris from the Tigris River in Iraq across the Arabian Sea to Pakistan and back to the Red Sea to demonstrate the possibility of two-way trading journeys that could have spread ancient Sumerian culture eastward. Although he inspired many with his daring expeditions, his theories have not been generally accepted by anthropologists and his methods have been questioned.
Heyerdahl, Thor Born Oct. 6, 1914, in Larvik. Norwegian scholar, traveler, and writer.
Heyerdahl studied zoology and geography at the University of Oslo from 1933 to 1938. During World War II he took part in the Norwegian resistance movement. He has studied the diffusion of culture and the possibility of transoceanic migration of peoples between the Old and the New World.
In 1947, with five companions, Heyerdahl sailed the raft Kon-Tiki across the Pacific Ocean from Peru to the Tuamotu Archipelago to prove the possibility that Polynesia was settled by American Indians. In 1953 he discovered the remains of pre-Inca settlements in the Galápagos Islands. His archaeological research on Easter Island, Rapa, and the Marquesas in 1955 and 1956 determined that the islands were first settled in the fourth century A.D. In 1969 and 1970, Heyerdahl organized expeditions on the sailboats Ra and Ra II from the western coast of Morocco to America, and in 1977 and 1978, on the reed boat Tigris from Al Qurnah in Iraq to the estuary of the Indus to Djibouti. His popular books combine scholarly research with entertaining narration.
WORKS
In Russian translation:
Vpoiskakh raia. Moscow, 1964.
Puteshestviena “Kon-Tiki.” Moscow, 1956.
Aku-Aku: Taina ostrova Paskhi. Moscow, 1959.
Ekspeditsiia “Kon-Tiki”—“Ra.” Moscow, 1972.
Prikliucheniia odnoi teorii. Leningrad, 1969.REFERENCES
Anokhin, G. I. “Tur Kheierdal.” In Skandinavskii sbornik, vol. 8. Tallinn, 1964.
Jacoli, A. Sen’or Kon-Tiki. Moscow, 1970. (Translated from Norwegian.)
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