Ra ii thor heyerdahl biography

Norwegian anthropologist and adventurer (1914–2002)

For the Norwegian frigate, see HNoMS Thor Heyerdahl. For the cruiseferry formerly named MS Thor Heyerdahl, see MS Vana Tallinn.

For the ship built in 1930, see Thor Heyerdahl (ship).

Thor HeyerdahlKStJ (Norwegian pronunciation:[tuːrˈhæ̀ɪəɖɑːɫ]; 6 October 1914 – 18 April 2002) was a Norwegian adventurer and ethnographer with a background in biology with specialization in zoology, botany and geography.

Heyerdahl is notable for his Kon-Tiki expedition in 1947, in which he drifted 8,000 km (5,000 mi) across the Pacific Ocean in a primitive hand-built raft from South America to the Tuamotu Islands. The expedition was supposed to demonstrate that the legendary sun-worshiping red-haired, bearded, and white-skinned "Tiki people" from South America drifted and colonized Polynesia first, before actual Polynesian peoples.

His hyperdiffusionist ideas on ancient cultures had been widely rejected by th