HEYERDAHL'S KON-TIKI THEORY — JONKER 545 



immigrating Peruvian Indians, or that the growing of the imported 

 maize failed. At least he does not permit the absence of maize to 

 upset his theory, illustrating the point with the following parallel: 

 If a burglar had somewhere lost his gloves with incriminating finger- 

 prints, he cannot very well be excused on the basis that he did not 

 also leave his coat, hat, and shoes behind him. 



In my opinion the absence of maize in Polynesia may also be ad- 

 duced as evidence against the canoe expedition by Polynesians to Peru 

 as suggested by Buck, St. John, and others; it is assumed that they 

 carried home the sweet potato, which they also used as food during the 

 voyage. Similarly, corn is easy to carry along and to put under cul- 

 tivation, and the same also holds for the originally American beans 

 belonging to the genus Phaseolus. It is known, however, that Spanish 

 missionaries from Peru grew beans in Tahiti soon after Captain 

 Cook's first voyage. These beans, however, were not accepted as a 

 popular food by the natives. In Merrill's opinion (1950, 1954), the 

 explanation lies in the probability that the Polynesians in those days 

 were not a seed- or grain-eating people. For that reason, according to 

 Buck's concept, they did bring back sweetpotatoes from their expedi- 

 tions to Peru but neither corn nor beans. 



From the discussions above, it appears that Heyerdahl's arguments 

 borrowed from the botanical evidence are not particularly strong. 

 Wlien we except the coconut, which, because of its early pantropical 

 distribution and the fact that its area of origin is unknown, must be 

 regarded as unsuitable evidence, only a single food plant remains — 

 that is, the sweet potato. And even if this is to be considered an 

 originally American plant, a hypothesis that is open to doubt, it is 

 merely an indication of a pre-Columbian contact between South 

 America and Polynesia. This plant does not offer any conclusive 

 proof as to the direction in which the contact took place. 



The bottle gourd may have reached Polynesia in pre-Columbian 

 times by quite another route and consequently its present distribution 

 does not support Heyerdahl's theories. The Polynesian species of 

 cotton appear to be autochthonous and endemic. Other botanical 

 arguments brought forward by Ileyerdahl are based on the opinions 

 of a comparatively small number of authors, occasionally by a single 

 author. These opinions are not shared by specialists in the field of 

 tropical American or Polynesian vegetation and ethnobotany. Some- 

 times these opinions have been founded on incorrect or doubtful data. 

 Consequently, we must conclude that Heyerdahl's botanical evidence 

 can hardly stand. It does not offer his theory any real support. In 

 particular, the absence of nearly all the originally South American 

 food plants in Polynesia before the arrival of the European navigators 

 is significant. The food plants observed during the first voyage of 



