Thor Heyerdahl (1914 to 2002) was a Norwegian adventurer and ethnographer. He trained in biology.
In 1947 he crossed the Pacific from South America to Polynesia on the Kon-Tiki, a raft he built himself. In 1970 he sailed the papyrus reed boat Ra II from Morocco to Barbados. He wanted to show that ancient peoples could have crossed oceans.
Most scientists rejected his diffusionist ideas, meaning the idea that civilisation spread mainly by travel from a few centres.
His book Early Man and the Ocean (1979) collects his research on early navigation. The Thor Heyerdahl Archives are on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.
Books
The book on this site by or about Thor Heyerdahl.
Early Man and the Ocean
Thor support his theories about prehistoric voyagers traveling across the southern Atlantic to Mexico.
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