thumb|Thor Heyerdahl
'''Thor Heyerdahl''' (Noors antropoloog. 

Hij probeerde met een aantal bijzondere en opvallende expeditiereizen aan te tonen dat vertegenwoordigers van heel oude culturen al met elkaar in contact kunnen zijn geweest, zoals de eskimo's en de indianen.

In 1999 werd Thor Heyerdahl uitgeroepen tot 'Noor van de eeuw'. 

==Studies en interesse==
Heyerdahl studeerde van Oslo. Tijdens een poging, samen met zijn vrouw Liv, een jaar op een natuurlijke wijze te leven op het geïsoleerde eiland Fatu Hiva van de Marquesaseilanden (ook de Markiezeneilanden genoemd) in de Stille Oceaan, raakte hij geïnteresseerd in de cultuur van Polynesië. 

Wat hem vooral intrigeerde was een overeenkomst tussen de legendarische Polynesiër Tiki en een held uit de voor-Incatijd, Kon-Tiki. Deze laatste was volgens een oude legende in circa 500 Zuid-Amerika ontvlucht omdat hij slachtoffer van een massamoord dreigde te worden. De Noor besloot te bewijzen dat migranten uit Zuid-Amerika zich in die tijd reeds in Polynesië hadden kunnen vestigen.

In de Tweede Wereldoorlog deed Heyerdahl dienst bij de Noorse paratroepen. Daarna begon hij zijn eerste expeditiereis voor te bereiden.

==De expedities==
thumb|De Kon-Tiki in het gelijknamige museum in Oslo
Op 28 april 1947 begon hij met vijf mede-opvarenden zijn zeereis van Incamodel. Hij deed 101 dagen over deze reis, waarin ze, afhankelijk als ze waren van de stroming en de wind, al meanderend 6880 km aflegden. Ze landden uiteindelijk op het Raroia Rif ten zuiden van de Marquesaseilanden.

In 1953 volgde een expeditie naar de Galápagoseilanden en van 1955-1956 naar Paaseiland. 

thumb|De Ra II
In de jaren zestig experimenteerde hij met de bouw van een boot van Egyptisch papyrusriet van circa 17 meter lengte., die hij naar de Egyptische zonnegod ''Ra'' noemde. Hij construeerde de boot naar oud-Egyptisch ontwerp en wilde ermee bewijzen dat men met de middelen die men toen had een oceaan kon oversteken. 

In 1969 mislukte een poging om met 6 mede-opvarenden in de ''Ra I'' de overtocht te maken. Ze bleven steken op slechts 1000 km van het einddoel. Het lukte Heyerdahl wel in 1970, met de papyrusboot ''Ra II''. Daarmee voer hij in 56 dagen van Marokko naar Barbados, wat hij op 12 juli bereikte. De Ra II is te bezichtigen in het Kon-Tikimuseum te Oslo. 

In Djibouti. Uit protest tegen de oorlog in de Hoorn van Afrika verbrandde Heyerdahl daar het vaartuig eigenhandig. 

Van 1982 tot en met 1984 leidde hij een expeditie naar de Maldiven, van 1986 tot 1988 naar Paaseiland en in 1988 tenslotte naar Peru.

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|birth_date        = October 6, 1914
|birth_place       = Larvik
|death_date        = April 18, 2002
|death_place       = Colla Micheri, Italy
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|citizenship       = 
|nationality       = Norwegian
|ethnicity         = 
|field             = ethnographer <br/> adventurer
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}}'''Thor Heyerdahl''' (Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer with a scientific background in zoology and geography. Heyerdahl became famous for his ''Kon-Tiki'' expedition, in which he sailed 4,300 miles (8,000 km) by raft  from South America to the Tuamotu Islands. 

==Early years==
As a young child, Thor Heyerdahl established a strong interest in zoology. He created a small museum in his childhood home, with a ''Vipera berus'' as the main attraction. He studied Zoology and Geography at Oslo University. At the same time he studied privately Polynesian culture and history, consulting the then world's largest private collection of books and papers on Polynesia, owned by Bjarne Kroepelin, a wealthy wine merchant in Oslo. This collection was later purchased by the Oslo University Library from Kroepelin's heirs and was attached to the Kon-Tiki Museum research department. After seven terms and consultations with experts in Berlin, a project was developed and sponsored by his zoology professors, Kristine Bonnevie and Hjalmar Broch. He was to visit some isolated Pacific island group and study how the local animals had found their way there. Right before sailing together to the Marquesas Islands he married his first wife, Liv, whom he had met shortly before enrolling at the university, and who had studied economics there.

==Fatu Hiva==
right|thumb|''[[Fatu Hiva (book)|Fatu Hiva'' <br/>Penguin edition, 1976 <br/>The original b/w photo is printed in the book with the caption "Feeling like a king, I could actually put an ancient Marquesan royal crown on my head for the occasion. Or was I the first hippy?"]]
The events surrounding his stay on the Marquesas, most of the time on Fatu Hiva'' (George Allen & Unwin, 1974). The young couple left Norway in 1936 and stayed about a year in the South Seas.

==The Kon-Tiki Expedition==

In the Kon-Tiki Expedition, Heyerdahl and five fellow adventurers went to Inca rafts, and by native legends and archaeological evidence suggesting contact between South America and Polynesia.  After a 101 day, 4,300 mile (8,000 km) journey across the Pacific Ocean, ''Kon-Tiki'' smashed into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands on August 7, 1947.

Kon-Tiki demonstrated that  it was possible for a primitive raft to sail the Pacific with relative ease and safety, especially to the west (with the wind). The raft proved to be highly maneuverable, and fish congregated between the two balsa logs in such numbers that ancient sailors could have possibly relied on fish for hydration in the absence of other sources of fresh water. Inspired by ''Kon-Tiki'', other rafts have repeated the voyage. Heyerdahl's book about the expedition, ''Kon-Tiki'', has been translated into over 50 languages. The documentary film of the expedition, itself entitled ''Kon-Tiki'', won an Academy Award in 1951. 

Anthropologists continue to believe, based on linguistic, physical and genetic evidence, that Polynesia was settled from west to east, migration having begun from the Asian mainland. There are controversial indications, though, of some sort of South American/Polynesian contact, most notably in the fact that the South American sweet potato served as a dietary staple throughout much of Polynesia. Heyerdahl attempted to counter the linguistic argument with the analogy that, guessing the origin of African-Americans he would prefer to believe that they came from Africa, judging from their skin colour, and not from England, judging from their speech.

===Heyerdahl's theory of Polynesian origins===

Heyerdahl claimed that in Incan legend there was a sun-god named Con-Tici Viracocha who was the supreme head of the mythical fair-skinned people in Coquimbo Valley. They had a battle on an island in Lake Titicaca, and the fair race was massacred. However, Kon-Tiki and his closest companions managed to escape and later arrived on the Pacific coast. The legend ends with Kon-Tiki and his companions disappearing westward out to sea.

When the Spaniards came to Peru, Heyerdahl asserted, the Incas told them that the colossal monuments that stood deserted about the landscape were erected by a race of white gods who had lived there before the Incas themselves became rulers. The Incas described these "white gods" as wise, peaceful instructors who had originally come from the north in the "morning of time" and taught the Incas' primitive forefathers architecture as well as manners and customs. They were unlike other Native Americans in that they had "white skins and long beards" and were taller than the Incas. The Incas said that the "white gods" had then left as suddenly as they had come and fled westward across the Pacific. After they had left, the Incas themselves took over power in the country.

Heyerdahl said that when the Europeans first came to the Pacific islands, they were astonished that they found some of the natives to have relatively light skins and beards. There were whole families that had pale skin, hair varying in color from reddish to blonde, and almost Semitic, hook-nosed faces. In contrast, most of the Polynesians had golden-brown skin, raven-black hair, and rather flat noses. Heyerdahl claimed that when Jakob Roggeveen first discovered Easter Island in 1722, he supposedly noticed that many of the natives were white-skinned. Heyerdahl claimed that these people could count their ancestors who were "white-skinned" right back to the time of Tiki and Hotu Matua, when they first came sailing across the sea "from a mountainous land in the east which was scorched by the sun." The ethnographic evidence for these claims is outlined in Heyerdahl's book ''Aku Aku: The Secret of Easter Island''. 

Heyerdahl proposed that Tiki's American Indians. Easter Islanders are of Polynesian descent.

==Expedition to Rapa Nui (Easter Island)==
In 1955-1956, Heyerdahl organized the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to Rapa Nui (Easter Island). The expedition's scientific staff included Arne Skjølsvold, Carlyle Smith, Edwin Ferdon and William Mulloy. Heyerdahl and the professional archaeologists who traveled with him spent several months on Rapa Nui investigating several important archaeological sites. Highlights of the project include experiments in the carving, transport and erection of the famous moai, as well as excavations at such prominent sites as Orongo and Poike. The expedition published two large volumes of scientific reports (''Reports of the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to Easter Island and the East Pacific'') and Heyerdahl later added a third (''The Art of Easter Island''). The work of this expedition laid the foundation for much of the archaeological research that continues to be conducted on the island. Heyerdahl's popular book on the subject, ''Aku-Aku'' was another international best-seller.

In "Easter Island: the Mystery Solved" (Random House, 1989), Heyerdahl offered a more detailed theory of the island's history. Based on native testimony and archeological research, he claimed the island was originally colonized by Hanau eepe ("Long Ears"), from South America, and that Polynesians Hanua momoko ("Short Ears") arrived only in the mid-16th century; they may have come independently or perhaps were imported as workers. According to Heyerdahl, something happened between Admiral Roggeveen's discovery of the island in 1722 and James Cook's visit in 1774; while Roggeveen encountered white, Indian, and Polynesian people living in relative harmony and prosperity, Cook encountered a much smaller population consisting mainly of Polynesians and living in privation. 

Heyerdahl speculates there was an uprising of "Short Ears" against the ruling "Long Ears." The "Long Ears" dug a defensive moat on the eastern end of the island and filled it with kindling. During the uprising, Heyerdahl claimed, the "Long Ears" ignited their moat and retreated behind it, but the "Short Ears" found a way around it, came up from behind, and pushed all but two of the "Long Ears" into the fire.

==The Boats Ra and Ra II==

thumb|250 px|Ra II in the Kon-Tiki Museum

In 1969 and 1970, Heyerdahl built two boats from Egyptian mariners could have journeyed, by design or happenstance, to the New World in prehistoric times. 

A book, ''The Ra Expeditions'', and a film documentary were made about the voyages. 

Apart from the primary aspects of the expedition, Heyerdahl deliberately selected a crew representing a great diversity in race, nationality, religion and political viewpoint in order to demonstrate that at least on their own little floating island, people could cooperate and live peacefully. Additionally, the expedition took samples of ocean pollution and presented their report to the United Nations.

==The Tigris==

Heyerdahl built yet another reed boat, ''Tigris'', which was intended to demonstrate that trade and migration could have linked Mesopotamia with the Indus Valley Civilization in what is now modern-day Pakistan.  Tigris was built in Iraq and sailed with its international crew through the Persian Gulf to Pakistan and made its way into the Red Sea.  After about 5 months at sea and still remaining seaworthy, the ''Tigris'' was deliberately burnt in Djibouti, on April 3 1978 as a protest against the wars raging on every side in the Red Sea and Horn of Africa. In Heyerdahl's open letter [http://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai111_folder/111_articles/111_heyerdahl_tigris.html] to the Secretary of the United Nations he said in part:

:' Today we burn our proud ship... to protest against inhuman elements in the world of 1978... Now we are forced to stop at the entrance to the Red Sea. Surrounded by military airplanes and warships from the world's most civilized and developed nations, we have been denied permission by friendly governments, for reasons of security, to land anywhere, but in the tiny, and still neutral, Republic of Djibouti. Elsewhere around us, brothers and neighbors are engaged in homicide with means made available to them by those who lead humanity on our joint road into the third millennium.

:'To the innocent masses in all industrialized countries, we direct our appeal. We must wake up to the insane reality of our time.... We are all irresponsible, unless we demand from the responsible decision makers that modern armaments must no longer be made available to people whose former battle axes and swords our ancestors condemned.

:'Our planet is bigger than the reed bundles that have carried us across the seas, and yet small enough to run the same risks unless those of us still alive open our eyes and minds to the desperate need of intelligent collaboration to save ourselves and our common civilization from what we are about to convert into a sinking ship.'

In the years that followed, Heyerdahl was often outspoken on issues of international peace and the environment.
The Tigris was crewed by eleven men: Norman Baker (USA), 
Carlo Mauri (Italy), Yuri  Senkevich (USSR), Germán Carrasco (Mexico), 
Hans Petter Bohn (Norway), Rashad Nazir Salim (Iraq), Norris Brock (USA), Toru Suzuki (Japan), Detlef Zoltzek (Germany), Asbjørn Damhus (Denmark).