Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki Theory and 

 Its Relation to Ethnobotany 



By F. P. JONKER 



Professor of Special Botany 

 University of Utrecht, Netherlands 



It is well known that in the year 1947 an expedition conducted 

 by the Norwegian biologist and ethnologist Thor Heyerdahl crossed 

 the eastern Pacific by balsa raft. The voyage started in Peru and 

 after 101 days reached the Polynesian island of Karoia. Inspiring 

 this voyage was Heyerdahl's theory that the Polynesian islands had 

 been populated not from a western direction, i.e., from the Malaysian 

 area by way of Micronesia or Melanesia, but that Polynesia had been 

 reached by two successive waves of immigrants from America. Ac- 

 cording to this concept, the first immigrants reached Polynesia by 

 balsa raft about A.D. 500 from South America; the second wave 

 arrived more than 500 years later by double canoes, perhaps from 

 Asia but using British Columbia as a temporary steppingstone. This 

 theory, consequently, assumes that the first wave of immigrants, iden- 

 tified by Heyerdahl with a pre-Inca population of Peru, crossed the 

 eastern Pacific. To support this concept, he utilized arguments from 

 mythology, language, and culture, referring especially to buildings 

 and to such monoliths (megaliths) as statues representing human 

 figures. 



The principal objection originally expressed against this theory 

 was that these Peruvian Indians were no navigators. They possessed 

 boats made of totora reed [Scirpus totara (Nees et Meyen) Kunth), 

 in which they sailed on Lake Titicaca, and rafts of the very light 

 balsa wood, Ochroma lagopus Sw., by which they navigated the 

 coasts. It was conunonly believed, however, that these rafts would 



1 Slightly modified and translated by the author from his "Heyerdahl's Kon-Tlkl Theorie 

 en de Ethnobotanie," delivered as his inaugural address as professor of special botany at 

 tho University of Utrecht, Netherlands, on Nov. 21, 1960 ; the original Dutch version was 

 separately printed In Amsterdam as of that date. 



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