As a second-generation Scandinavian immigrant (three Swedish
grandparents and one Norwegian), I’ve never felt a strong connection with my
northern European origins. Still, I have found the tales of Nordic explorers compelling,
most notably Roald
Amundsen’s expedition to the South Pole and Otto Nordenskjöld’s
research adventures in Patagonia. I’ve never felt quite the same about Thor Heyerdahl’s voyages
across the Pacific, for reasons I’ll detail below, but I nevertheless went to
see the new Heyerdahl-themed Kon-Tiki movie
last Saturday night.
A couple months ago, I reviewed the Chilean
film No which, with Kon-Tiki, was an Oscar nominee for best foreign film.
Kon-Tiki also has a Chilean connection, in the sense that Heyerdahl fancied
himself an expert on Rapa
Nui (Easter Island) in his book Aku Aku, but this film is the
tale of his audacious 1947 voyage from Peru
to Polynesia on its namesake balsa log raft, ostensibly to prove that South Americans
settled the Pacific.
Heyerdahl certainly proved it was possible, but that doesn’t
mean it happened that way. In the film, at the outset of the voyage, he vainly
compares himself with Darwin and, throughout the trip, he continues to showcase
an outsized ego even as he concedes, reluctantly, that he could not have saved
a shipmate (rescued by another crewmember) because he himself could not even swim.
In another instance, he berates an engineer concerned that fiber ropes will not
hold the Kon-Tiki together, and tosses potentially voyage- and life-saving wire
into the open ocean.
Heyerdahl’s ego aside, Kon-Tiki makes an absorbing adventure
story. Handling a crew of half a dozen feisty young men in close quarters, for 101
days on a 4,300-mile (6,900-km) voyage, would have challenged anyone’s
leadership skills. While the claustrophobia is palpable, spending so much time beyond
sight of land paradoxically made the Kon-Tiki expedition an agoraphobic experience.
Add close encounters with storms, whales and great white sharks, and a
climactic attempt to surf the coral reefs ringing the Polynesian atoll of Raroia (with a panicked
Heyerdahl hiding in the cabin), and Kon-Tiki rarely lacks for excitement
(though most of the voyage must have been routine, with dull moments greatly
outnumbering the thrills).
For all his accomplishments, Heyerdahl had one undeniable shortcoming:
his unwillingness to consider any conclusions other than his own. Simply
because he proved it was possible for pre-Columbian South Americans to sail to
Polynesia didn’t mean it happened that way – any more so than Erich von Däniken’s
lunatic fantasy that extraterrestrials transported and erected Rapa Nui’s emblematic moai (even though plenty of
half-carved moai still lie in bedrock at the Rano
Raraku quarry, as my photograph below displays).
Heyerdahl deserves credit for asking big questions, but not
for his unwillingness to accept conclusive scientific research that ancient mariners
settled Polynesia from the west rather than the east. The film, unfortunately,
fails to acknowledge that every serious specialist dismisses
Heyerdahl’s conclusions, which fall into the category of “hyperdiffusionism.”
According to an archaeologist friend of mine who has done
extensive research on Easter Island, and prefers anonymity here, “The most ‘telling’ bit about Thor is that he
required all the archaeologists working with him on his expedition to Rapa Nui
and other islands to sign a paper agreeing to not publish anything that
contradicted his 'story line.' This is one reason [archaeologist William] Mulloy
published practically nothing about his research on the island: he had to toe
the party-line.”
According to my same informant, when another accomplished
archaeologist confronted Heyerdahl by asking "How, in the face of all that we now know about the Pacific, can you
keep spouting off about American Indians in the Pacific?", the Norwegian
responded that “I have my audience.”
Adds my informant, “That of course was true; he had an audience.
However, they were all idiots.”
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