HEYERDAHL SAILS PAPYRUS BOAT:

May 17, 1970

On May 17, 1970, Norwegian ethnologist Thor Heyerdahl and a multinational crew
set out from Morocco across the Atlantic Ocean in Ra II, a papyrus sailing craft
modeled after ancient Egyptian sailing vessels. Heyerdahl was attempting to
prove his theory that Mediterranean civilizations sailed to America in ancient
times and exchanged cultures with the people of Central and South America. The
Ra II crossed the 4,000 miles of ocean to Barbados in 57 days.Heyerdahl, born in
Larvik, Norway, in 1914, originally studied zoology and geography at the
University of Oslo. In 1936, he traveled with his wife to the Marquesas Islands
to study the flora and fauna of the remote Pacific archipelago. He became
fascinated with the question of how Polynesia was populated. The prevailing
opinion then (and today) was that ancient seafaring people of Southeast Asia
populated Polynesia. However, because winds and currents in the Pacific
generally run from east to west, and because South American plants such as the
sweet potato have been found in Polynesia, Heyerdahl conjectured that some
Polynesians might have originated in South America.To explore this theory, he
built a copy of a prehistoric South American raft out of balsa logs from
Ecuador. Christened Kon-Tiki, after the Inca god, Heyerdahl and a small crew
left Callao, Peru, in April 1947, traversed some 5,000 miles of ocean, and
arrived in Polynesia after 101 days. Heyerdahl related the story of the epic
voyage in the book Kon-Tiki (1950) and in a documentary film of the same name,
which won the 1952 Oscar for Best Documentary.Heyerdahl later became interested
in the possibility of cultural contact between early peoples of Africa and
Central and South America. Certain cultural similarities, such as the shared
importance of pyramid building in ancient Egyptian and Mexican civilizations,
perhaps suggested a link. To test the feasibility of ancient transatlantic
travel, Heyerdahl built a 45-foot-long copy of an ancient Egyptian papyrus
vessel in 1969, with the aid of traditional boatbuilders from Lake Chad in
Central Africa. Constructed at the foot of the Pyramids and named after the sun
god Ra, it was later transported to Safi in Morocco, from where it set sail for
the Caribbean on May 24, 1969. Defects in design and other problems caused it to
founder in July, 600 miles short of its goal. It had sailed 3,000
miles.Undaunted, Heyerdahl constructed a second papyrus craft, the Ra II, with
the aid of Aymaro Indian boatbuilders from Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. With a
multinational crew of seven, the Ra II set sale from Safi on May 17, 1970. After
a voyage of 57 days and 4,000 miles, the ship arrived in Barbados. The story of
this voyage is recorded in the book The Ra Expeditions (1971) and in a
documentary film.In 1977, Heyerdahl led the Tigris expedition, in which he
navigated a craft made of reeds down the Tigris River in Iraq to the Persian
Gulf, across the Arabian Sea to Pakistan, and finally to the Red Sea. The goal
of the expedition was to establish the possibility that there was contact
between the great cultures of Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and Egypt across
the sea. Heyerdahl later led research expeditions to Easter Island and an
archeological site of Týcume in northern Peru. For the most part, Heyerdahl's
ideas have not been accepted by mainstream anthropologists.