Thor Heyerdahl

Thor Heyerdahl (1914-2002) was a Norwegian adventurer and ethnographer with a background in biology, specializing in zoology, botany, and geography. He became internationally famous for his 1947 Kon-Tiki expedition, where he and five companions drifted 8,000 kilometers across the Pacific Ocean on a primitive balsa wood raft from South America to the Tuamotu Islands. This expedition was designed to demonstrate that ancient South American peoples could have reached Polynesia using period-appropriate technology. Heyerdahl continued his experimental archaeology with the Ra expeditions in 1969-1970, sailing papyrus reed boats from Morocco across the Atlantic to prove that ancient Egyptians could have reached the Americas. The Ra II expedition in 1970 successfully completed the Atlantic crossing from Morocco to Barbados with an international crew. These expeditions also documented ocean pollution, with findings reported to the United Nations. Beyond his famous voyages, Heyerdahl led the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to Easter Island, conducting important excavations and experiments with the famous moai statues. His hyperdiffusionist theories about widespread ancient cultural contact were widely rejected by the mainstream scientific community, though his expeditions proved the technical feasibility of ancient trans-oceanic voyages. Heyerdahl was appointed as a government scholar in Norway in 1984. He died on April 18, 2002, in Colla Micheri, Italy, while visiting close family members, and received a state funeral in Oslo Cathedral on April 26, 2002.