Thor Heyerdahl & the Scientific Community
The celebrated hero who sailed the Kon-Tiki across the Pacific, wrote several best-selling books, and inspired a whole generation of archeologists is one of Norway’s most celebrated heroes. But Heyerdahl’s ideas about Polynesian migration (among others) were not embraced by the scientific community and we set off to understand why. Was Heyerdahl a “fringe scientist”? Join us as we interview Polynesian archeologist Dr. Matthew Spriggs and examine what Jo Ann Van Tilburg wrote about Heyerdahl. It’s a lesson on how we gain knowledge through scientific evidence and scientific discourse.
Corrections
The new Kon-Tiki Museum on Bygdøy in Oslo is slated to open in 2025, not 2023 as announced in the podcast. You can read about it in the Norwegian American News here. You might be encouraged to subscribe to digital access for $30/year or $70 for print and digital access (which is well worth it).
Heyerdahl was researching the origins of Odin, not Thor, in the Caucasus Mountains near the Black Sea, believing that Snorri Sturluson’s Ynglinga Saga about the Norse Gods was referring to a real man. This Wikipedia article about that research can be translated to English (using Google Chrome) using a right-click/translate to english selection in the drop-down. Heyerdahl caught a lot of flak in the Norwegian press during his “search for Odin”, believing that Snorri Sturluson “didn’t just sit down and dream all this up [about Odin]”.
Links
A brief biography of Thor Heyerdahl can be found on the Kon-Tiki Museum website. It has great photos of the man and gives insight into what he was like.
The entry “Thor Heyerdahl” offers a nice short biography in Den Store Norsk Lexicon (The Large Norwegian Encyclopedia) (2019) l written by Axel Sommerfelt and Espen Wähle. If the webpage is not in English, do a mouse right-click on the website and select translate to English in the drop-down.
The Coming of the White Bearded Men: The Origin and development of Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki Theory by Victor Melander (2020) gives a critical review of Heyerdahl’s work. This doctoral thesis (yes, they write theses for PhDs, and dissertations for Master’s degrees in Australia, opposite the USA system) is essentially a small book, which I found quite informative.
Heyerdahl’s 1958 Aku-Aku is a classic story of adventure about the secrets and mysteries on Easter Island (Rapa Nui). This is an online version at the Internet Archive (you have to sign up first, but it’s free, and I’ve not gotten any spam from them myself for the 4 years I’ve “belonged”); or you can check it out from your local library. While you’re there at the Archive, have a look at Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki Expedition book. Best of all, in my opinion, is the amazing photographs in the picture book, Easter Island: Mystery Solved, which especially shows the giant moai head statues.
The documentary (now on video) The Kon-Tiki Expedition ,which won best picture in 1951, was filmed by Heyerdahl during the expedition. It’s a classic. Then, of course, there’s the 2013 movie The Kon-Tiki (a link to the theatrical trailer) which, while everyone involved agreed that it deviated from what actually happened, captures the spirit of Heyerdahl fairly well. And it’s fun.
An article I wrote about my 2019 visit to the Kon-Tiki Museum (Norwegian American News).
Early Archeology of the Pacific , is a video of Dr. Matthew Spriggs talking about his research in March 2020 at the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture. The 8 minute introduction is lengthy, but explains who Spriggs is and why is work (especially on Vanuatu) is important. This is a Powerpoint lecture but Spriggs is well-lit off the side (unlike many recordings in a darkened theater) and it lays what we know about the earliest Polynesian settlers, especially the Lapita People – and how we know it.
Jo Ann Van Tilburg‘s Hoa Hakananai’a (the proper name for the moai) book reveals what was known in 2004 about the culture on Rapa Nui that produced the giant statues. “The stone faces and human problems” by Jessica Wolfe of the UCLA Newsroom (2019), describes what Van Tilburg has been doing on Rapa Nui and the challenges of doing archeology in a sensitive and ethical way.
Voices on the Wind, Traces in the Earth: Integrating Oral Narrative and Archeology in Polynesian History was a paper by Dr. Patrick Kirch describing his exploration of oral traditions (storytelling) that has been established as an insight into events and people in the past (Journal of the Polynesian Society, Volume 127: 3, September 2018). You can download and read this pdf yourself. Heyerdahl submitted that oral history was a dependable and important record of actual past events, but during his time, little credence was placed on oral history among anthropologists. Times change, ideas change (science is not static), as anthropologists like Patrick Kirch have shown that oral history often can be validated from historical facts gathered by other means (like from writings, dances, art, songs, visiting explorers, the unearthing of buried villages, etc.).
Dr. Sven Haakonsson of the Dept of Anthropology at the University of Washington reminded me that while scientists shouldn’t amass large amounts of data and then try to form hypothesis to fit the data (this is backwards), they do gather some data before writing hypotheses. This gathering may come from initial observations in the field or in museum collections, from doing a few lab experiments, and always from reading scientific literature to learn what others have discovered in doing similar research. Then, based on this preliminary data, they form “an idea or proposition that can be tested by observations or experiments, about the natural world”. An hypothesis.
In lab science, an hypothesis more formally states a relationship between two variables, like light intensity and temperature on a metal surface. You might propose, based on observation, that the stronger the light intensity (measured in lux), the higher the surface temperature (measured in Celsius). Usually scientists also establish other hypotheses, especially a null hypothesis, which says there is no relationship between the two variables (e.g. light intensity has no clear affect on temperature). Then they set up and conduct lab experiments and tests, or do archeological digs, make observations, and continue talking to other scientists in the same research field, to find measurable evidence that shows which hypotheses are correct.
One of the best discussions I’ve seen on the “demarcation of science” is Michael Gordin‘s On the Fringe: Where Science Meets Pseudoscience. I found it at my local library.
If you’re struggling to understand why archeology is important to humankind, check out this four minute video where four US archeologists explain their perspective.
You don’t need an advanced degree to contribute to scientific knowledge. Science needs you! Join the ranks of citizen scientists at https://www.citizenscience.gov/ (USA) www.globalcitizenscience.org (global), eu-citizen.science/projects (European Union) and help gather data on water quality testing, weather recording, endangered animal sightings, monitoring wildfire smoke, identifying cloud types and cloud cover, play the protein folding game “FoldIt”, look for unusual astronomical activity, join an archeological excavation, count marine iguanas using aerial photos (“Iguanas from Above”), monitor plastics on beaches….the list is endless and citizens across the globe are collecting valuable scientific data for scientists.
Dr. Don Ryan of Pacific Lutheran University, and an Egyptologist, worked with Heyerdahl soon after graduate school, and has an (unusually) positive view of Heyerdahl as person and an archaeologist. His website on Heyerdahl describes his work and contributions.
What brought you to this website and episode about Thor Heyerdahl? We would love to know what attracted you to this episode, and how you discovered it. Interest in science or anthropology/archeology? Something associated with school or college? Please write to us at nordicontap at gee-mail dot com (spelled strangely here to foil web bots) and let us know. 🙂 Thank you for visiting!
Pictures
The Kon-Tiki sun god on the sail (Kon-Tiki Museum) was my first encounter with Heyerdahl’s legacy. Photo by Bahrend, 2019, CC.
Thor Heyerdahl showing some small statues that support his thesis. From 1955; Bjørn Førtoft (under CC license).
Two moai statues close up. Excavation around the statues has revealed that the “heads” also have torsos too, some with etched petroglyphs! (See article). Photo by Arian Zwegers (under CC license).