Thor Heyerdahl - Legacy

Legacy

• Heyerdahl's expeditions were spectacular and caught the public imagination. Although much of his work remains unaccepted within the scientific community, Heyerdahl increased public interest in ancient history and anthropology. He also showed that long distance ocean voyages were possible with ancient designs. As such, he was a major practitioner of experimental archaeology. He introduced readers of all ages to the fields of archaeology and ethnology.

• In 1954 William Willis sailed alone from Peru to American Samoa on the small raft Seven Little Sisters.

• Kantuta Expeditions, repeated expeditions of Kon-Tiki by Eduard Ingris.

• Heyerdahl's grandson, Olav Heyerdahl, retraced his grandfather's Kon-Tiki voyage in 2006 as part of a six-member crew. The voyage, organized by Torgeir Higraff and called the Tangaroa Expedition, was intended as a tribute to Heyerdahl, an effort to better understand navigation via centerboards ("quara") as well as a means to monitor the Pacific Ocean's environment.

• A book about the Tangaroa Expedition by Torgeir Higraff was published in 2007. The book has numerous photos from the Kon-Tiki voyage 60 years earlier and is illustrated with photographs by Tangaroa crew member Anders Berg (Oslo: Bazar Forlag, 2007). "Tangaroa Expedition" has also been produced as a documentary DVD in English, Norwegian, Swedish and Spanish.

• The Thor Heyerdahl Institute was established in 2000. Heyerdahl himself agreed to the founding of the institute and it aims to promote and continue to develop Heyerdahl's ideas and principles. The institute is located in Heyerdahl's birth town in Larvik, Norway.

• In Larvik, the birthplace of Heyerdahl, the municipality began a project in 2007 to attract more visitors. Since then, they have purchased and renovated Heyerdahl's childhood home, arranged a yearly raft regatta in his honour at the end of summer and begun to develop a Heyerdahl centre.

• Paul Theroux, in his book The Happy Isles of Oceania, criticizes Heyerdahl for trying to link the culture of Polynesian islands with the Peruvian culture. However, recent scientific investigation that compares the DNA of some of the Polynesian islands with natives from Peru suggests that there is some merit to Heyerdahl's ideas and that while Polynesia was colonized from Asia, some contact with South America also existed.