Whatever became of the theories of Thor Heyerdahl, of Kon Tiki fame? Thor made a nice case on circumstantial evidence that population of the south pacific islands originated from South America, an idea whose feasibility he demonstrated magnificently by sailing an ancient-style raft across the Pacific. He noted similarities in religion, language, and vegetation that suggested to him a clear westward migration of people.
I understand that today Heyerdahl is widely regarded as a quack whose ideas never did and still do not have any scientific merit, regardless of the success of his voyage. I have not been able to find out why his ideas are wrong and what compelling evidence lends modern scientists to believe that the migration was eastward from Micronesia and not westward from Peru. If Heyerdahl is wrong, how is the evidence he presented refuted? Whence came the god Tiki and his fair skinned descendants?
Also, does anyone know what Heyerdahl was doing in Peru after his voyage? I know he helped uncover the 26 pyramids of Tucume, but surely he must have a fantastical explanation for their creation and of the people who lived there.
Last year I went to Easter Island and read up on some of Heyerdahl’s theories. The people of Rapa Nui don’t regard him as quack. Just wrong.
What most anthropologists have theorized is that Heyerdahl too quickly seized on the idea that people from South America would have settled Easter Island because of the way one of the platforms for the moai (giant heads) is constructed. One has stones stacked very closely together like many Incan stonework. However, every other one is not built like that.
Heyerdahl also believed that you could take a raft from Peru to Easter Island and that would be an easier way to get to Easter Island. Heyerdahl didn’t think that Polynesians could find their way there. But they did. They were skilled navigators. Very, very good navigators.
What nobody seems to know is just why anybody went to Easter Island in the first place. It’s not near anything. Were the original settles blown off course, were they kicked out of their original home, did they just have an idea that there would be a tiny island out in the Pacific somewhere.
If you ever get the chance to go to Easter Island in your life, by all means do so. It is a fascinating place to visit.
The major modern objection to Heyerdhal is that the Kon-Tiki was towed 50 miles out to sea before it was let loose. This put it past the incoming currents that probably would have prevented anyone setting out from shore from getting to the favorable western currents in the first place.
And there simply isn’t any good evidence for his other theories.
When I was looking into Heyerdah’ls voyage, I read that ‘his theory has been discredited’, but I never read any reasons why or how it had been discredited. BobT’s and Exapno Mapcase’s posts indicate that it would be impossible for a raft to catch the necessary current. I still have not ready any refutations against the anthropoligical similarities between the people of Easter Island and the people of Peru. And ‘impossible’ things have been known to happen.
Still, people who have studied this – which I have not – agree that Easter Island was settled from the West, and not from the East. I can accept that. Still, I’d like to know more.
I have Kon Tiki on DVD. I was sad to hear of Heyerdahl’s passing a couple of years ago. I really like his film. (Partly it’s technical, since I have a few Bolex cameras; and partly it’s fascination at the wholesale slaughter of the sharks. And it’s a jolly good story.) I think I’ll watch it again very soon.
I’d really like to see The Ra Expiditions and Aku Aku. Last time I looked, they were not available.
Trivia: Thor Heyerdahl played a pirate in Pippi [Longstocking] In The South Seas.
I’m not an expert on anthropology, but from what I understood from my trip to Easter Island was that genetically, the Easter Islanders genetically are much different from South American Indians. Linguistically, they aren’t close.
But Easter Island is always going to remain one of anthropology’s toughest nuts to crack. There just isn’t all that much evidence for archeologists to study. The early history of the island was oral and the people who knew that history were pretty much wiped out by a combination of European/South American colonization and the collapse of the Easter Island society due to deforestation and a lack of other natural resources.
And there is the sweet potato issue. Sweet potatoes are a South American plant. But they were found on Easter Island. How did they get there?
There are many other non-native plants that were introduced to the island. I was shown one cave where wild taro and wild tobacco grew. I believe those were brought to Easter Island by others.
Austronesians as a group have been a mostly insular people. The majority of Austronesian peoples live on islands. Many of the islands in Polynesia are small, and my guess is that population pressures would drive groups to set out to look for new land elsewhere.
Easter Island had a very different character before the Polynesians arrived. It was forested, and had a native species of palm (Paschalococcos) which some think would’ve looked a lot like the Chilean Wine Palm (Jubaea). So, it would’ve been an attractive place to settle.
It’s possible that there could’ve been contact between Polynesians and the Coast of South America (since sweet potatoes spoil when exposed to sea water).
Hyerdahl could’ve saved himself embarassment if he’d just consulted a linguist who’s an Austronesianist (studies the Austronesian languages).
Read a book called “The Future Eaters” by Tim Flannery. Things have moved on from Thor’s time. Studies of the genetics of distributions of fauna and flora (people, rats, plants) and of language make it entirely clear that the population spread eastwards from Asia. I’d put in more detail but my copy of the book is at home and I’m at work.
Princhester - thanks for the heads up on the book. I’ll see if the library has it tomorrow. As far as settling Easter Island, I’m eager to read “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” by Jared Diamond. I understand it has quite a bit about how Easter Island was colonized and deforested.
Exapno - I’m not sure how severe the 50 mile barrier really is. You might enjoy a book called Tahiti Nui by Eric de Bisschop. De Bisschop was incessed with Thor Heyerdahls casual dismissal of the Polynesians sailing ability and Heyerdahls general lack of sailing knowledge and skill. Heyerdahl believed that Peruvians drifted on rafts, not sailed, westwards, and that Polynesians were not capable of sailing east against the Humboldt current. De Bisschop created a Polynesian sailing craft and sailed eastward towards South America quite successfully, almost the reverse of Thor’s journey. The point is that he demonstrated that it is possible to sail against a strong current, and it may be that a more capable sailor could have sailed from the Peruvian shore.
(You’ll find Rapanui, the language of Easter Island, if you go through the following branchings: Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian, Central-Eastern, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, Oceanic, Central-Eastern Oceanic, Remote Oceanic, Central Pacific, East Fijian-Polynesian, Polynesian, Nuclear, East, Rapanui.)
The wanderings of the Austronesian peoples has been mapped out fairly precisely by these linguistic relationships. We know that they originated in Taiwan a few thousand years ago, traveled to Malaysia, and then fanned out over the Pacific. The idea that the speakers of one of these languages should instead be related to the inhabitants of South America, where the languages have no resemblance to Rapanui, contradicts everything we know about the relationship of languages.
The same book describes how some early Western explorers (who were of course great sailors themselves) were awestruck by the speed and size of the islanders’ craft, and their sailing abilities.
Interestingly, I had a chat with a man who studied languages in Indonesia, and he mentioned that the closer to Taiwan you get, the more conservative the languages become. The Philippine languages he said are probably the most conservative, after the Taiwan languages.:
“Tagolog -um- infix. This, along with its
counterpart -in-, seems also to be of ancient Austronesian lineage. In all
the langs. that retain the morphology (PI and Taiwan) um/in are always
infixes, presumably reflecting the original situation. Within the Indonesian
archipelago, AFAIK only Old Javanese shows productive use of the infixes. (Of
course, it’s the only lang. with ancient documentation.) Otherwise, in most
of the modern langs., they’ve either been lost, or retained only in
fossilized forms.”
*PI = Philippine
I’ve read the migration was most likely from Taiwan through the Philippines, heading south and eastward, and also westward.
You are always safe if you side with the majority, the experts or the Establishment. Studies in recent years have shown genetic similarities between South American Indians and Polynesians (sorry I don’t have the references but I believe then can be found on Google).
I would like here to make a personal observation: Nobody seems to have noticed the extraordinary resemblance between Eastern Island sculptures and the wooden human representations (chemamull) of the Mapuche people in the Museo de Etnologia of Santiago de Chile. Could this indicate that the Mapuche had reached the island accidentally and erected the giant statues facing their native land to which they could not return, in the hope they would be seen ?
The sweet potato was found not only on Easter Island, but elsewhere in Polynesia. It is indisputably of South American origin, and is actually the best evidence that there was some kind of trans-Pacific contact between South America and Polynesia.
I think that many anthropologists would admit that there had to be at least one westward voyage from South America. However, this was not a major or even significant route for colonization or the transmission of culture.
Those three groups are not at all synonymous. In any case, as a defense of such a poorly supported hypothesis as Heyerdahl’s, it’s bullshit.
I’m going to ask for a cite on that. If you are going to make a statement contrary to the general consensus of research on the subject, it’s up to you to support it, not ask us to do your research for you. (Of course there will be some genetic similarities, since both groups are ultimately of Asian origin. What needs to be shown is that Polynesians and South Americans are more similar to each other than they are to any other groups.)
If you are talking about these, I don’t see any extraordinary resemblance. Unless there is some evidence that the Mapuche had a tradition of making such sculptures more than 1500 years ago, and also had a seafaring tradition, there is no reason to suppose that whatever vague similarity there might be is anything more than coincidental.
No one’s saying there couldn’t have been contact between the coast of South America and People on Easter Island. What people are saying is that Hyerdahl’s theory that the Polynesians as a whole originated in South America has been shot down by cultural, linguistic, archaeologic, and genetic studies. That’s pretty solid, hard evidence.
There was contact between the various Polynesian islands, there is even a story about how pigs got to Samoa from Fiji.
"Sometime before the 13th century an unknown Polynesian voyager sailed east in search of a new land. It is probable that Easter Island was not used as a port of call because any voyager would have settled there and not gone on. The nearest islands from which the expeditions could have set out are Mangareva and the Marquesas and it is apparent that the clear open sea between the Marquesas and north Peru offered no interruption suggesting that the expedition set out from the Marquesas.
The distance from the Marquesas to the north Peruvian coast is just over 4,000 miles allowing a canoe with a favourable wind a speed of seven miles an hour, the voyage from the Marquesas would have taken a little over three weeks which is considered not too long a period for the voyagers to endure. The voyage was exceptional and was probably made only once. What a sight the Peruvian coast must have been to people accustomed to oceanic islands. The party would have landed but had to go wearily among a strange people. Fearing a conflict against larger numbers, they would have returned to their homeland in Polynesia. Their visit would have been too short to make any lasting exchange in religious or social ideas. It was during such a visit that they certainly received the sweet potato. "
It’s not improbable that the Polynesians could’ve sailed to the coast of South America, but it is improbable that they originated IN South America as Hyerdahl proposed.
Why couldn’t it be anything other than a coincidence? Hell, Igfugao Bulol (Rice god sculptures) look similar to the Chemamull that i’ve seen, but no one in their right mind would claim the Mapuche made it all the way to the Philippines.
In addition to the sound speakings the others have laid on, you should also remember that only hapless amateurs and outright quacks these days attempt to use visual similarity of artifacts as their prime method of cultural association. That method has been shot down as hopelessly biased because it can be manipulated to confirm whatever previously-assumed theory the writer wants to support. Just like Heyerdahl. There are proper ways of using artifacts to test cultural contact, but they deal with methods of fabrication rather than surface visual similarities.
Experts are people who have studied their subjects thoroughly, unlike Heyerdahl. They also can produce independently confirmable evidence. All the evidence today says that cultural contact went west to east, not the other way around.
I’m also curious where this genetic evidence of similarity you speak of is coming from. It wouldn’t be put out by experts, would it? And if it isn’t, why would you bother to offer it or defend it?
