Experimental archaeology

Why would a group of sensible middle-aged men – some married and with children – risk sailing a “floating haystack”, as Heyerdahl himself called the boat, with no better backup than an onboard radio? The answer is curiosity.

The design for the papyrus boats was borrowed from Egyptian crypts.

Heyerdahl was the kind of archaeologist who would look more out of place in a university lecture theater that in an Indiana Jones movie. A man with a taste for ancient mysteries and daring theories, he liked coming up with ideas which went against the common sense of the academia, and putting them to test personally.

Twenty-three years before the Ra expeditions, he drifted with the currents 8,000 kilometers from South America to Polynesia on the balsa wood raft “Kon-Tiki”. The goal was to prove his theory that there was some truth behind the Polynesian legend of fair-skinned bearded people, who came on rafts from the east.

Despite the expedition being a flawed scientific proof, it became a huge public event. Thor’s account became a worldwide bestseller, while the documentary on the journey won an Academy Award.

Now the famous Norwegian was following the same lines of experimental archaeology to back his theory that long before Columbus, or even the Vikings, there may have been travel between the Old World and the Americas. “Ra” was built from materials and with technologies available to shipbuilders from the age of the pharaohs. The design was based on sculpted murals and scale models discovered in ancient Egyptian crypts.

Posing as ancient slaves, Egyptian students towed the “Ra II”. (RIA Novosti / STF)

Of course, much in the “Ra” expeditions was done for the sake of publicity. The boats were built on a plain in direct view of the Giza pyramids, making a perfect picture-postcard. The second one was towed over wooden rollers by dozens of students of an Egyptian college reminiscent of the ancient slaves. The disorganized crowd did a bad job, and when the journalists had taken enough pictures, two modern tow-trucks finished it in no time.

This love for flashy displays actually did harm to Heyerdahl’s plans. The public was convinced that he meant to prove that ancient Egyptians were behind the great Mesoamerican civilization, which was not the case.

Indeed, Thor did speculate over similarities between the cultures, but the idea behind “Ra” was to show that somebody, maybe the Egyptians, or the great Phoenicians traders, or someone else from the many nations of the Mediterranean, had everything necessary to cross the Atlantic. It took two attempts, but in the end Heyerdahl made his point.

A diverse crew for a unique journey

Heyerdahl’s fascination with the legends of mysterious seafaring folk bringing knowledge across continents to enrich locals led some opponents to accuse him of being a white supremacist. Such ideas had been widely accepted by the scientific community two centuries ago, but in the 1970s people dismissed them as politically incorrect.

However the crew of the papyrus boats was unlike anything one would expect from someone looking down on other races or nations. The men Thor selected for the experiment were an experiment in their own.

Thor Heyerdahl was a skilled carpenter himself, which helped a lot during the expeditions. (RIA Novosti / Yury Senkevich, STF)

An American ex-Navy radio operator and navigator worked side-by-side with a Soviet doctor with experience in space medicine. A world-renown Italian mountaineer and explorer took an equal share of perils and labour with an unknown carpenter from the Burundi tribe from Chad, who had never seen sea before the journey. The crew also included a Mexican anthropologist of Spanish origin and an Egyptian scuba diver and martial artist. For the second expedition Heyerdahl added a dedicated camera operator from Japan and found in Morocco a substitution for the African carpenter, who couldn’t take part. And there was also a mascot – a monkey called Safi, who was given to Thor by the wife of a Moroccan pasha.

The crew members were also amateurs in sailing, with the notable exception of American Norman Baker. They had to learn about maritime travel on the go, at the same time struggling with the limitations and quirks of the boat unlike anything Atlantics saw for millennia.

Thor assembled the mixed and unprepared crew to show that people of different origin, experience and beliefs can work together, if there is a large enough goal to inspire them.

Fate had its hand in bringing all those people together too. For instance, Thor called the Mexican scientist Santiago Geneves on a one week notice to replace his colleague, who suddenly fell ill, because during their single encounter Santiago joked he’d go with the Norwegian if given the chance. The Russian participant, Yury Senkevich, joined it after Heyerdahl sent a special request to the Soviet Academy of Sciences asking for a doctor who spoke a foreign language and had a sense of humor (which, some said, was an euphemism for “not a stiff-necked communism preacher”).

Of course, not everything went as smooth as they all hoped. When the initial thrill went down and the pressure of being in a fragile, flammable boat in the middle of nowhere set in, as expected the crew had ups and downs in their relationship. But in the end the symbolical gathering transformed into a group of close friends befit for the UN flag, under which both “Ra” and “Ra II” sailed. And eight years later, when Heyerdahl built and sailed yet another reed boat, three members of the original Ra expeditions were onboard.

Close-up on the sea

Academic skepticism over Heyerdahl’s proof (“could have done” and “did” are far from being one and the same) and praise from the general public over the double adventure was expected. Yet what came as a surprise was the role that the papyrus boats played in raising environmental awareness.

Floating just over the water, the crew had great opportunities to observe the ocean, and what they saw was a shocking level of pollution. They constantly encountered clumps of oil, plastic bags, and bottles covered with seashells. The middle of the Atlantic sometimes looked like a junkyard.

Peruvians use traditional reed boats today, and even children know how to build them. For the second expedition, Thor hired several craftsmen from Lake Titicaca.

As a result of their initial report, the second expedition had a specific mission to measure pollution levels. Heyerdahl reported their findings to the UN as well as to officials of more than 20 nations, while alarming pictures and footage circulated the world. Thanks in part to these efforts, the UN banned dumping waste oil from tankers into the sea.

Thor became a convinced green activist, and now every second year the Norwegian Shipowners’ Association awards a prize in his name to people and organizations fighting to eradicate ocean pollution.

Heyerdahl may have not put his name on par with world’s great naturalists and anthropologists. But even if his daring theories were false, he made a spectacular example with his way of proving them, and likely inspired many children to dedicate their adult lives to science thanks to Thor’s books and films.