44 Facts About Thor Heyerdahl

Thor Heyerdahl made other voyages to demonstrate the possibility of contact between widely separated ancient peoples, notably the Ra II expedition of 1970, when he sailed from the west coast of Africa to Barbados in a papyrus reed boat.

Thor Heyerdahl died on 18 April 2002 in Colla Micheri, Italy, while visiting close family members.

In May 2011, the Thor Heyerdahl Archives were added to UNESCO's Memory of the World Register.

The Thor Heyerdahl Archives are administered by the Kon-Tiki Museum and the National Library of Norway in Oslo.

Thor Heyerdahl created a small museum in his childhood home, with a common adder as the main attraction.

Thor Heyerdahl studied zoology and geography at the faculty of biological science at the University of Oslo.

Thor Heyerdahl was to visit some isolated Pacific island groups and study how the local animals had found their way there.

Thor Heyerdahl was 22 years old and she was 20 years old.

Thor Heyerdahl blamed their separation on his being away from home and differences in their ideas for bringing up children.

In 1991, Thor Heyerdahl married Jacqueline Beer was born on 1932 and as his third wife.

Thor Heyerdahl had still been hoping to undertake an archaeological project in Samoa before he died.

Many years later, having achieved notability with other adventures and books on other subjects, Thor Heyerdahl published a new account of this voyage under the title Fatu Hiva.

Thor Heyerdahl had nearly drowned at least twice in childhood and did not take easily to water; he said later that there were times in each of his raft voyages when he feared for his life.

The expedition published two large volumes of scientific reports and Thor Heyerdahl later added a third.

In Easter Island: The Mystery Solved, Thor Heyerdahl offered a more detailed theory of the island's history.

Thor Heyerdahl described these "Tiki people" as being a sun-worshipping fair-skinned people with blue eyes, fair or red hair, tall statures, and beards.

Thor Heyerdahl further said that these people were originally from the Middle East, and had crossed the Atlantic earlier to found the great Mesoamerican civilizations.

Thor 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.

Thor Heyerdahl claimed that when Jacob Roggeveen discovered Easter Island in 1722, he supposedly noticed that many of the natives were white-skinned.

Thor 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".

Thor Heyerdahl argued that the monumental statues known as moai resembled sculptures more typical of pre-Columbian Peru than any Polynesian designs.

Thor Heyerdahl described these later "Native American" migrants as "Maori-Polynesians" who were supposedly Asians who crossed over the Bering land bridge into Northwest America before sailing westward towards Polynesia.

Thor Heyerdahl associated them with the Tlingit and Haida peoples and characterized them as "inferior" to the Tiki people.

Thor Heyerdahl's hypothesis was part of early Eurocentric hyperdiffusionism and the westerner disbelief that "stone-age" peoples with "no math" could colonize islands separated by vast distances of ocean water, even against prevailing winds and currents.

Thor Heyerdahl rejected the highly skilled voyaging and navigating traditions of the Austronesian peoples and instead argued that Polynesia was settled from boats following the wind and currents for navigation from South America.

In 1969 and 1970, Thor Heyerdahl built two boats from papyrus and attempted to cross the Atlantic Ocean from Morocco in Africa.

Apart from the primary aspects of the expedition, Thor 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 co-operate and live peacefully.

Thor Heyerdahl built yet another reed boat in 1977, Tigris, which was intended to demonstrate that trade and migration could have linked Mesopotamia with the Indus Valley civilization in what is Pakistan and western India.

Thor Heyerdahl made four visits to Azerbaijan in 1981,1994,1999 and 2000.

Thor Heyerdahl was convinced that their artistic style closely resembled the carvings found in his native Norway.

Thor Heyerdahl believed that natives migrated north through waterways to present-day Scandinavia using ingeniously constructed vessels made of skins that could be folded like cloth.

On Thor Heyerdahl's visit to Baku in 1999, he lectured at the Academy of Sciences about the history of ancient Nordic Kings.

Thor Heyerdahl accepted Snorri's story as literal truth, and believed that a chieftain led his people in a migration from the east, westward and northward through Saxony, to Fyn in Denmark, and eventually settling in Sweden.

In September 2000 Thor Heyerdahl returned to Baku for the fourth time and visited the archaeological dig in the area of the Church of Kish.

Thor Heyerdahl investigated the mounds found on the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean.

Thor Heyerdahl believed that these finds fit with his theory of a seafaring civilization which originated in what is Sri Lanka, colonized the Maldives, and influenced or founded the cultures of ancient South America and Easter Island.

Thor Heyerdahl's discoveries are detailed in his book The Maldive Mystery.

Thor Heyerdahl was the recipient of numerous medals and awards.

Thor Heyerdahl received 11 honorary doctorates from universities in the Americas and Europe.

In subsequent years, Thor Heyerdahl was involved with many other expeditions and archaeological projects.

Thor Heyerdahl remained best known for his boatbuilding, and for his emphasis on cultural diffusionism.

Thor Heyerdahl died on 18 April 2002 aged 87 from a brain tumor in Colla Micheri, Liguria, where he had gone to spend the Easter holidays with some of his closest family members.

Thor Heyerdahl showed that long-distance ocean voyages were possible with ancient designs.

Thor Heyerdahl himself agreed to the founding of the institute and it aims to promote and continue to develop Thor Heyerdahl's ideas and principles.