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Dr.
Thor Heyerdahl in Baku, November 1994. Book is Russian 
translation
of "The Tigris Expeditions" that Heyerdahl made in
1978.
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He's convinced that the ocean
was only a barrier to man as long as our ancestors were strictly
pedestrians, but it became a conveyor for cultural contact and
the growth of diversified civilizations from the moment the first
sea-going watercraft was invented. Heyerdahl accepts the "isolationist"
claim that cultural parallels are often due to the analogies
of man's need and nature, but he holds a "diffusionist"
view when it comes to explaining the concentrated clusters of
cultural identities and analogies which suddenly emerged in coastal
areas of the Old and the New World as shipbuilding spread from
the Middle East some five thousand years ago.
The question for Heyerdahl has simply become: "Where and
when did the 'zero hour' of civilized man begin?" (See Thor
Heyerdahl's article in this issue -"The Azerbaijan Connection"
in which he makes public for the first time, his "growing
suspicion" that the region of Azerbaijan may be one of the
important early dispersion centers.)
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Above: Left:
Boat petroglyphs on rune
stone (Copenhagen National Museum). From Larousse World Mythology,
1965.
Above: Right:
Cane boat petroglyphs near
Fredrikstad, Norway. Photo: Jacqueline Beer.
Sails before Saddles
Heyerdahl is fond of
saying that "man hoisted sail before he saddled a horse.
He poled and paddled among rivers and navigated open seas before
he traveled on wheels along roads." Like a detective in
search of missing clues, Heyerdahl believes the search for mankind's
first vehicles - water craft - will take him back to the source
of civilization.
"I believe I've opened the locked door to the hidden evidence
that the vessels of antiquity permitted unrestricted voyages
in pre-European times and that there is a complex global root
relationship between all those rapidly growing civilizations
that suddenly grew up with evidence of advanced boat building
some 5,000 years ago."
Evidence for this comes from Heyerdahl's expeditions which all
were based on authentic boat designs, either found on petroglyphs,
etched or painted on ancient walls, burial crypts, ancient seals,
or from the memories of people who still use such craft.
Looking back, one would have hardly found the young Thor a likely
candidate for a career that would make him so vulnerable to the
world's largest bodies of water. Before "Kon-Tiki"
he had never sailed a boat, much less a raft. As a child he had
almost drowned in an accident.
Even now when Heyerdahl looks back on the oceanic voyages, he'll
admit, "There were moments during every one of my experimental
voyages that I was momentarily deadly afraid. Like seafarers
throughout the ages in similar situations, I felt I survived
through my faith in some superior invisible power. Gradually,
I got used to the friendly partnership between the dancing ocean
and its gentle playmate, our flexible, wash-through aboriginal
raft-ships. Of course, my closest friends worried about me, but
they knew I loved life and assumed I had founded my unshakable
faith in my scientific theories on solid facts."
Reed Boats Only
Look Fragile
Heyerdahl admits that
a single reed of papyrus seems so fragile that you could hardly
dare think about entrusting it with your life on a violent ocean.
But when reeds are harvested in the appropriate season and tied
together in bundles, he found they made a boat that was exceptionally
seaworthy, virtually unsinkable and safer than any canoe or ship
with a vulnerable hull. When breakers surge over a reed boat,
all the water which showered onboard disappears the same instant
through a thousand fissures.
Heyerdahl first became interested in marine migration after his
first visit to the Marquesas Islands in Polynesia in 1937-38.
Trained as a biologist at the University of Oslo, he had specialized
in studying animal and plant diffusion to Oceania. He noticed
that a number of the most important food plants cultivated in
aboriginal Polynesia, as well as the Polynesia dog, appeared
to have spread from South America prior to European arrival.
That's when he became suspicious of anthropological dogma which
insisted that the Peruvian balsa raft could not have floated
there in pre-Columbian times.
The Trans-Oceanic
Voyages
And that's when he set
out to prove that such migrations were possible. The quest would
take him on four trans-oceanic voyages over a span of 29 years.
The first was the balsa raft, "Kon-Tiki", (1947) which
sailed 4,300 miles from Lima to Polynesia. In 1969 he constructed
a papyrus reed boat, the "Ra" which crossed the Atlantic
via the Canary Current from Morocco, traveling 3,000 miles in
eight weeks and arriving within 600 miles of Central America.
In 1971, Heyerdahl commissioned the Aymara Indians from Lake
Titicaca (Bolivia) to construct a second version of the reed
ship, "Ra II". This one crossed the Atlantic "without
loss or damage to a single papyrus stem" from Morocco to
Barbados in 57 days (two months). For Heyerdahl Mexico should
be perceived as only a few weeks away from Morocco-not centuries
or millennia as had been thought previously.
In 1978, his fourth expedition was of ancient Sumerian design.
The "Tigris", a 60-foot reed vessel, began its journey
at the convergence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and sailed
4,200 miles in 143 days (five months plus) out through the Arabian
Gulf eventually arriving at Djibouti at the entrance of the Red
Sea.
Pyramid Excavations
in Peru
Dr. Heyerdahl's most
recent project is directing archaeological excavations at Tucume,
Peru, South America's largest complex of pyramids (26 large pyramids
plus numerous smaller ones). Curiously, early art found on site
shows boats built of reed bundles as well as balsa-log rafts.
The Tucume Pyramid project is financed by the Kon-Tiki Museum
in Oslo in collaboration with the Peruvian government. Currently,
the archaeological team have interrupted major field operations
to publish their discoveries in a volume to be published by Thames
and Hudson (London) this spring.
The Peruvian Tourist Department has built a site museum in Tucume
to exhibit the archeology findings which include large pre-Inca
adobe reliefs of bird-headed men navigating among ocean fish
on reed-ships which depict a cabin on deck and rows of oars in
the water.
In the meantime, Heyerdahl has initiated a purely humanitarian
development project in the neighboring town of Tucume, named
"Tucume Vivo" in honor of the local village people
who are descended from the former pyramid builders. Its sponsors
(a private Norwegian welfare organization and the Norwegian government)
have equipped the town with running water, a sewer system, schools
and inventory, bridges, irrigation channels, dams against floods,
etc. Plans also include the construction of a technical school.
Heyerdahl has been criticized as being a showman and adventurer.
Since he does not act like a scholar in the conventional, traditional
sense of the word, his academic colleagues have often been disgruntled
and skeptical of his work. But Heyerdahl insists that his work
is based on solid research. Despite his successful voyages, some
people still find it hard to accept alternatives to the Trans-Bering
Straits Hypothesis for migration from the Old to the New World.
And some still can't believe that reed boats are seaworthy enough
to have made long ocean voyages prior to the European efforts
in the 14th and 15th centuries.
Environmental Concerns
Despite the fact that
Heyerdahl formally researches ancient history, he has always
advocated a deep concern for contemporary problems. When his
reed boats encountered oil slicks and chemical pollution spills
in the ocean in the late 60s, Heyerdahl was the first to send
a report to the United Nations and appeal to governments and
international environmentalists. He has since testified on ocean
pollution for governmental and scientific institutions in 23
countries, including the US Senate and the Soviet Academy of
Sciences.
Heyerdahl is convinced that if more money were spent on the environment,
there would be fewer wars. "History and archaeology both
show us that no progress in the quality or quantity of arms can
secure peace. It can only lead us into ever more horrible and
inhuman wars. Therefore, we should be spending more money on
research related to environmental protection of our globally
deteriorating planet than on arms to protect ourselves from each
other.
This is our only alternative; otherwise we will all sink together
by undermining the delicate and highly complex environmental
ecosystem, thus committing suicide by interfering with biological
recycling and hastening climatic changes."
By studying the past, by searching for missing gaps in the prehistory
of mankind, Heyerdahl is hoping to find links that tie humanity
together. It's his way of trying to persuade contemporary man
that we are really of one blood and, therefore, have even one
more reason to work together to preserve our future.
Further Resources
Dr. Heyerdahl's voyages are documented in various books and films-"Kon-Tiki",
"The Ra Expeditions" and "The Tigris Expedition".
The most famous expedition was Kon-Tiki, and Heyerdahl's book
describing the voyage has been translated into 67 languages while
the film was awarded an Oscar. As well, he has written Aku-Aku,
Fatuhiva, Early Man and the Ocean: A Search for the Beginning
of Navigation and Seaborne Civilizations and the Art of Easter
Island and The Maldives Mystery as well as several scientific
volumes and articles. The most recent biography is Thor Heyerdahl,
the Explorer, 1994 by J.M. Stenersens Forlag, Oslo.
From Azerbaijan International (3.1) Spring 1995.
© Azerbaijan International 1995. All rights reserved.
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to Index AI 3.1 (Spring 1995)
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