A Better Savage than the Savages
Thor Heyerdahl's Early Ethnographical Attempts and their Importance for the Development of the ‘Kon-Tiki Theory’
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9074653 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Victor Melander, Victor Niels Love Melander (Schlumberger (Ireland), corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 54 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 379-396 |
| Publication date | 2019-07-03 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Pacific History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-3344 • E-ISSN: 1469-9605 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00223344.2018.1561253 |
| OpenAlex | W2909438977 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
In this paper Thor Heyerdahl's early attempts at ethnography and his first contact with Polynesian archaeology are discussed. It is argued that Heyerdahl, prior to his first Pacific expedition to the Marquesas Islands in 1937, carried with him a romanticized perception of the Polynesian people, imagining them to be the last living ‘natural men’. This perception was shattered during his expedition, and the disappointing contrast between the imagined reality and the lived reality led Heyerdahl to separate the contemporary Polynesian population from the Polynesian archaeological record. It is further argued that this separation between contemporary Polynesians and the Polynesian archaeological record would form the foundation for the dual migration wave hypothesis Heyerdahl later launched with his ‘Kon-Tiki theory’
Archaeology · Ethnography · Ethnology · Polynesians · Population · Sociology · Anthropology · Demography · History · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |