Heyerdahl, Thor (1914–2002)
Norwegian ethnologist famous for his expeditions to prove the feasibility
of his theories of cultural diffusion, and for his books. In the Kon-Tiki,
a primitive balsa wood raft, he and his crew sailed from the west coast
of South America to Polynesia, demonstrating the possibility that the Polynesians
originated in South America (1947). In Ra, a facsimile
of an ancient Egyptian papyrus reed boat, he and his cosmopolitan crew succeeded
at the second attempt at sailing from Morocco to Barbados, showing the possibility
that the pre-Columbian cultures of South America were influenced by Egyptian
civilization (Ra I, 1969; Ra II, 1970).
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