biography
pronunciation:
[hiyerdahl]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1914–2002)
|
| biography:
| Anthropologist, born in Larvik, S Norway. After studying at Oslo, he served with the free Norwegian forces in World War 2. In 1947 he set out to prove, by sailing a balsa raft (the Kon-Tiki) from Peru to Tuamotu I in the S Pacific, that the Peruvian Indians could have settled in Polynesia. His success in the venture, and his archaeological expedition to Easter I, won him popular fame and several awards. In 1970 he sailed from Morocco to the West Indies in a papyrus boat, Ra II, and made the journey from Iraq to Djibouti in a reed boat, the Tigris, in 1977–8. Among his many publications are The Maldive Mystery (1986), Pyramids of Tucume (1995, jointly), and Green was the Earth on the Seventh Day (1996). |
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