HEYERDAHL'S K0N-TIE:I THEORY — JONKER 547 



to his popular account and was published before the appearance of 

 his principal work, "American Indians in the Pacific." This coun- 

 terargument, however, did not disclose any new aspects. 



In 1955 a doctor's thesis of the University of Amsterdam, the 

 Netherlands, appeared, in which the author, Mrs. Heeren-Palm, tried 

 to prove that the origin of Polynesian civilization was principally 

 Indonesian. She dated the migration of the Polynesians out of 

 Indonesia before the introduction of textile art and rice-growing in 

 that region, and also before the influence of metal-working was notice- 

 able. According to her, by the time the first European navigators 

 reached Polynesia, relations and connections with the Indonesian 

 countries were no longer maintained. Mrs. Heeren also paid atten- 

 tion to the cultivated plants. She included a list of 30 such plants 

 grown in Polynesia before the arrival of the Europeans. The greater 

 part (14 species) of this list was borrowed from Forster (1777), and 

 of the 30, only 3, according to Mrs. Heeren, are of American origin. 

 As such she regarded the sweet potato {Ipomoea hatatas), the cotton 

 (two species of Gossi/pium) , and the so-called large gourd. The last, 

 however, was identified by Eames and St. Jolm (1943) as a true gourd, 

 i.e., a form of Lagenaria siceraria (Mol.) Standi., and not as a squash, 

 Cucurhita maxima Duch., as had been previously believed by Mrs, 

 Heeren, among others. All the known species of Cucurhita are Ameri- 

 can, but, as discussed above, the genus Lagenaria in all probability is 

 of African origin and was widely distributed in the Tropics of both 

 hemispheres as early as pre-Columbian times. The large gourd is an 

 extreme form presumably developed by the Hawaiians. 



Mrs. Heeren amply discussed the plant species that she listed and 

 showed their tropical Asiatic origin, but unfortunately a discussion of 

 the sweet-potato problem is missing. She thinks it possible, because 

 of Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki voyage and excavations in the Galapagos 

 Islands, that American Indians reached Polynesia on their balsa rafts, 

 but she absolutely rejects the hypothesis of an American origin of the 

 Polynesians. 



In 1955 and 1956 Heyerdahl visited Easter Island, and in his popular 

 account of this trip, "Aku-Aku, the Secret of Easter Island" (1958), 

 he adds two botanical arguments to his Kon-Tiki theory — the occur- 

 rence of both the sweet potato and the totora reed {Scirpus totara) 

 before the arrival of the first explorers. The former has been dis- 

 cussed above. The latter species is also found in large quantities 

 in Lake Titicaca in Peru and Bolivia. It is there used as a material 

 for building houses and other shelters, and also for rafts and boats 

 which are called "balsas," in which the natives have sailed on the 

 lake from pre-Columbian times until the present. Easter Island, 

 however, is considerably nearer the coast of South America than the 



