Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland: Three Crowns and a Republic - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 156

WHY IS THOR HEYERDAHL SO FAMOUS?
By far the most renowned of Norway's explorers is Thor Heyerdahl. Building on Nansen's
theories of ocean drift and in an attempt to prove that ancient cultures spread by means
of ocean currents, Heyerdahl and his crew sailed and drifted on a raft, the Kon-Tiki, from
Peru to Polynesia in 1947. In seeking to account for the origins of Mayan pyramids and
Aztec myths (from Egypt, Hyerdahl asserted), he drifted across the Atlantic on a copy of an
Egyptian reed boat, The Ra, coming within 600 miles of Central America. Another exped-
ition, intended to fortify his theories of cultural diffusion, took him by raft from the Tigris
River to Pakistan and down to the Red Sea. Other expeditions took him to Easter Island
and the Maldives Islands. Most anthropologists reject his cultural diffusion theories, a re-
jection fortified by DNA testing of Polynesians and Amerinds. Even so, his willingness to
endure great privation and risk his life in support of his ideas won him worldwide respect
and acclaim.
Figure 11.2. Thor Heyerdahl