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Heyerdahl was born in Larvik, [8] Norway, the son of master brewer Thor Heyerdahl (1869–1957) and his wife, Alison Lyng (1873–1965). As a young child, Heyerdahl showed a strong interest in zoology, inspired by his mother, who had a strong interest in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
The Kon-Tiki expedition was a 1947 journey by raft across the Pacific Ocean from South America to the Polynesian islands, led by Norwegian explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl. The raft was named Kon-Tiki after the Inca god Viracocha, for whom "Kon-Tiki" was said to be an old name.
The Polynesian triangle. Between about 3000 and 1000 BC speakers of Austronesian languages spread through the islands of Southeast Asia – most likely starting out from Taiwan, [9] as tribes whose natives were thought to have previously arrived from mainland South China about 8000 years ago – into the edges of western Micronesia and on into Melanesia, through the Philippines and Indonesia.
Aku-Aku: the Secret of Easter Island is a 1957 book by Thor Heyerdahl [1] published in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Finnish, and in French and English the following year. The book describes the 1955–1956 Norwegian Archaeological Expedition 's investigations of Polynesian history and culture at Easter Island , the Austral Islands of Rapa Iti ...
The film is the dramatized story of Thor Heyerdahl and his Kon-Tiki expedition of 1947.. While the prevailing theories of the time held that Polynesia had been settled by peoples originating from Asia, Heyerdahl, an experimental ethnographer and adventurer, sets out to prove his theory that people from South America settled the islands in pre-Columbian times.
The movie has an introduction explaining Heyerdahl's theory, then shows diagrams and images explaining the building of the raft and its launch from Peru. Thereafter it is a film of the crew on board, shot by themselves, with commentary written by Heyerdahl and translated. The whole film is black and white, shot on a single 16mm camera.
Thor Heyerdahl popularised the view that they were a South American indigenous people, who were pale skinned with red hair. [8] Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki expedition was designed to show that migrants from Peru could have reached Polynesia. He believed that the Hanau epe were the earliest inhabitants of the island; they created its unique monuments ...
Following the developments of mitochondrial genetics, Sykes traces back human migrations, discusses the "out of Africa theory" and casts serious doubt upon Thor Heyerdahl's theory of the Peruvian origin of the Polynesians, which opposed the theory of their origin in Indonesia.