The Tigris Expedition

by Heyerdahl, Thor

  52. No lack of seafood, as marine life was attracted to the silent and broad-bottomed reed ship. The ink of a squid tested by Detlef; Yuri dries fish and savors a piece of dolphin; Asbjorn with basketful of rainbow runners; flying fish were picked up on deck; turtles were caught at sea with remora fishes attached to the breastplate; the red grouper was a surprise gift from a passing trawler.

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  Captions for the preceding four pages

  52. The sail gave us speed and steering possibilities. Norman on the yardarm of the mainsail; the crew maneuvers the sail above the forward cabin and the deck table.

  54. Rowing in the ocean adds to the sailing speed and keeps the sailors fit, in this case Detlef and the author. Under our bottom a huge remora has attached itself to the reed bundles next to a submerged board which helps the rudder oars to reduce our leeway.

  55. A dangerous calm trapped Tigris in a current bound for a forbidden coast.

  56. Waiting for wind. Inside the bamboo cabins, we sleep on asphalt-covered boxes containing our personal property; radio operator Norman hands the microphone to Yuri, who speaks to a Russian ham station, asking help from his Foreign Office to persuade South Yemen to give us a landing permit for the forbidden island of Soco-tra.

  of the Indus civilization, and their cotton clothing was made from a plant first cultivated, and on a loom first invented, by them. Even the grain used for their bread was the species first grown by those pioneering benefactors of whom they had hardly heard. They had been satisfied with this inheritance and had added nothing for four millennia until now when they were about to absorb the twentieth-century way of fife.

  A man was sitting by his grass-house hand-pressing dung from his hoofed animals into small tidy cakes which he piled up to sundry for fuel. I asked why he and so many other men in his tribe painted their hair and their big bushy beards red. We were merely told that this was their custom.

  There was berdi and khassab along all creeks and dikes, and we saw both plants harvested for the building of complete reed huts as well as for the thatching of adobe homes. Most houses, and all towns, were built of sun-baked adobe bricks. The prototype of all old inhabited towns was clearly Mohenjo-Daro, right down to the characteristic brick-covered drains.

  The art of adobe is as old as civilization in the Indus Valley, and in Mesopotamia and Egypt too. Where not already introduced by these culture founders, it was spread by the Arabs later, for it is a simple and ingenious building process perfectly suitable to a rainless land where no other building material is found.

  We stopped to see village people in the Indus Valley making their adobe blocks. They made them in the same large size and in the same wooden frames I had already seen used in Iraq and Mexico, and when the mixture of selected soil, straw and water began to dry they removed them from the frames and baked the blocks in the sun. Independent invention of such a simple procedure would not be at all surprising in desert countries hke those along the North African coast from Egypt to Morocco, but it is surprising to find adobe blocks used by the foimders of Mexican civihzation on the jungle coast across the Atlantic. Adobe was used by the Olmecs, the unidentified founders of American civilization, when they built their sun-oriented temple-pyramid in the coastal swamps at La Venta, where timber and reeds abounded. And adobe blocks were also used by the pre-Incas of Peru when they built their pyramids along the coast in the form of sun-oriented ziggurats with temples on top. The Cerro Colorado pyramid on the north coast of Peru covers four thousand square yards of ground and some six million adobe blocks

  had to be manufactured before the early architects could erect this colossal structure. Despite a complete contrast in climate and environment, the founders of pre-Columbian civilization in the rain forests of Mexico and deserts of Peru were used to building houses in Old World style from adobe bricks.

  When we saw donkeys and camels bringing Indus Valley cotton to market, I could not help thinking again of early Mexico and Peru. As far as science has been able to ascertain, cotton cultivation that produced a useful species with spinnable lint was begun in the Indus Valley plain and spread to Egypt. Yet, extensive fields of cultivated cotton were found by the Spaniards when they reached Mexico and Peru. Until today it has remained a puzzle to scientists that the vertical-frame loom with two-warp beams, found by the Spaniards in use among the Incas, was identical with that which had been used in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Even the most pecuhar, ornamented spinning whirls of pottery, used for preparing the yam, are sometimes indistinguishable and scholars have pointed out that the final fabrics were in certain cases made into clothing also described as identical on both sides of the Atlantic.

  This is not all. Of recent years botanists have had something to add. A modem chromosome study has shown that there was something very special about the cotton cultivated by ancient peoples of Mexico and Peru; it was not at all the same species that grew wild in America and which in fact did not produce spinnable lint. The chromosomes of all Old World cottons were different from those of the wild American species, and the pre-Columbian cotton domesti-cators in Mexico and Peru had somehow obtained the Old World cotton, crossed it with the wild local cotton and obtained a perfectly spinnable product that had the chromosomes of both species combined in a hybrid with double chromosome niunber, the only species with both types of chromosomes combined. The botanists now leave the question open for the students of human culture to answer: How did the spinnable Old World cotton, the one with the chromosomes of the species first cultivated by the Indus people, get into the hands of the culture founders of Mexico and Peru? If seeds had been carried by the wind or by birds, an American Indian must have recognized them for what they were and planted them in his fields before any plants had time to grow wild, and with the idea that if the lint grew longer than that of wild cotton he could invent

  the spinning wheel to make yam, and the loom to work yam into cloth.

  There is something amusing about the desperate desire of so many historians and anthropologists to reserve the first possible crossings of the Atlantic to the Spaniards and the Vikings. That is, to the Europeans who only reached the Canary Islands two thousand years after the Phoenicians who got there from Asia Minor on successive voyages of exploration and colonization. There is almost a touch of rehgious fanaticism in the attempts by the western world to see America as a European creation, completely protected by sea until the local barbarians were foimd by civlhzed Christian pioneers. We should try to be more openminded. The art of navigation, literacy, even the symbol of the cross and the religion we carried to America, we had first obtained from Asia.

  With our heads bursting with historic data and new impressions, with a photographic harvest of the most spectacular Arab forts any of us had ever seen and with Sani tempting us untiringly to visit ever more mosques and Moslem marvels, we suddenly found ourselves squeezed barefoot and exhausted in among the packed crowds of another historic sanctuary. To the sound of drums and the smell of incense he elbowed us in for a glimpse of a sacred cofiBn; this was the thirteenth-century tomb at Shawan of Shabaz Qulanda, who had brought Islam to the area. A man with remarkably long arms was standing high up, collecting paper flowers from a crowd who could not get close enough to the coflfin. My curiosity was aroused when he began to walk through the crowd as on stilts, and I forced myself into the vacuum behind him to see how he did it; but to my surprise his trousers reached almost to the floor. A strange joke in a tomb, I thought, a man riding on someone's shoulder, both covered up by a cloak. But then I saw the largest human feet I had seen in my life and the largest hands; indeed even the head was abnormally big, with huge eyes and lips. In the somber atmosphere of the old tomb it was as if a legendary giant was slowly staggering about with us, and I followed him around three times before I took courage and invited him outside into the sunlight. When he offer
ed me his hand it was like grabbing a ham. He stooped to get out through the temple gate, and when we gathered around him to get his measurement he stood a good seven feet ten inches barefoot. We saw many remarkably tail people in the Indus Valley, but never anyone hke him.

  For such a flying visit I thought we had done quite well in Pakistan, until we got back to the National Museum in Karachi, when the museimi director, Taswir Hamidi, asked me if we had been to Hassan Wahan. We had not even heard of the place.

  Hassan Wahan was a village on a lake connected with the Indus River not far from Mohenjo-Daro, where people still made pottery of Mohenjo-Daro type and led a Hfe very much as in that city. But there was also a large number of wooden ships on the lake, where the descendants of an ancient people Hved. The fishermen who owned these boats adhered to a very pecuhar custom: they hved on board with their famihes and all their possessions and never left their floating homes. The museum director had himself spoken to a man more than a hundred years old who had never been ashore.

  I was itching to go inland again and visit Hassan Wahan, but Tigris was waiting for us in an incredibly polluted harbor; the ocean was our challenge, not a lake, and we had to get back on board, hoist sail and leave Asia. But the friendly Pakistani archaeologist had more to tell me that made me forget the surviving river dwellers. He fully agreed that the early Indus people had contact with Mesopotamia; and showed me objects in his museum that left us in no doubt. Among them he pointed out what he called a "Gil-gamesh" motif on an Indus Valley seal, where the famihar Mesopo-tamian hero stands bushy-haired between two erect lions. Gil-gameshl The legendary King of Uruk, who sailed to Dilmun to visit the land of his earhest progenitors. The fame of the Gilgamesh myth had spread beyond Bahrain and had reached the Indus.

  To me there was no longer any doubt. I agreed with those scholars who identified the Indus region with Meluhha. Meluhha could be nothing else. Dilmun, Makan and Meluhha belonged together. With oxn: ma-gur we had visited all three. And we were ready to embark on further adventures.

  Chapter 10

  FROM ASIA TO AFRICA; FROM MELUHHA TO PUNT

  D

  EPARTURE from Asia. A cold wind from the north blew through the fissures in the cane wall as I woke up at early dawn and checked that everybody had come on board during the night. This wind was good. The men were all there, back from the last shore leave probably for a long time. How long, nobody knew.

  There was never a dead moment in Karachi harbor. Ships everywhere, and small boats moving between them aU night. At dawn Pakistani fishermen passed us in small dhows and saluted with broad smiles. They were amazed at our ship. Soon the harbor authorities came on board with the necessary port clearance papers.

  **Next port of call?"

  "Unknown."

  **We have to know."

  **Then put down Bombay."

  A family who claimed Persian ancestry, owners of the shipping agency Cowasjee & Sons, arrived with friends in a small yacht and threw us a line. They had volunteered to tow us out of port. As we started to move, the smell of rotten eggs came up through the two open slots in our bottom. The same thing had happened as we

  rowed out of Muscat. Modern harbors are incredibly polluted. We were ah-aid of the eflFect on ropes and reeds. Perhaps some of the outer berdi were fermenting. Fortunately we knew from our departure from Muscat that this horrible stench would disappear as soon as the reeds were washed clean by salt ocean waves.

  We counted thirty-eight ships at anchor at the mouth of the harbor. Jason was one of them, and Captain Hansen was on the bridge. With his bullhorn he wished us bon voyage, and told us he had come back the day before from another mission to the swampy mangrove labyrinth of the Indus delta. They had gone to salvage a Greek ship grounded in the swamps, but pirates had already stripped the vessel completely before Jason arrived.

  Clear of the anchorage we hoisted our sails. Our helpful companions recovered their towline and returned to port. The last words the bearded skipper of the yacht shouted back was a generous ojffer to purchase Tigris after use. If we cabled him whenever and wherever our voyage ended, he would send a ship to fetch the reed ship for exhibition.

  Thick smog covered the view of the big city beyond the anchorage. In the last few years Karachi had grown from a mere 700,000 inhabitants to well over five miUion. There was a sheen of surface oil far out to sea. Two porpoises were rolling up through the slick. A Httle mouse came peeping up between the reed bundles and then ran into hiding. Perhaps it was the one we had carried with us since we left the Garden of Eden.

  We could still see the masts of the anchored ships, like a simken forest along the horizon behind us, when the north wind died completely. Steering problems ensued. The wind came back in faint gusts, but from the south. The bow turned back toward Karachi. We had to row to get about. By now we had at least learned enough to hold our own against the wind. The day passed and the distant forest of masts oflF Karachi was still there, though displaced far toward the west. A tidal current dragged us eastward in the direction of the Indus delta. As night came we saw all the Hghts from the anchored ships and the city glow behind. We threw out the sea anchor for whatever it was worth.

  We had noticed that both bow and stem had sagged slightly during our stay in Pakistan. Carlo took charge of the job of tightening all mast stays, and the ropes holding the cabins to deck, and the flexible reed ship straightway resumed perfect lines. All the men

  were in the best of spirits, although most of us had indeed been in better shape physically. Our two outboard seats were constantly occupied. Asbjom and Norris were the worst affected. I got sudden kidney pains, and Norman had a new attack of his mysterious fever, causing Yuri to suspect malaria, although Norman had been the one who had been taking pills regularly. Norman had such self-control during his repeated spells of fever that nobody knew for sinre, until it was confirmed by a laboratory analysis after the voyage, that Norman had actually had malaria. The atmosphere was still markedly one of joy and laughter, the visits to Ormara and Mohenjo-Daro had been great stimuli to us all, while imknown adventures lured ahead. We were all equally eager to get into the ocean and away from land, to which we gave the blame for our temporary troubles. I would never have recalled that a few mosquitoes followed us into the ocean, but for the one that remained hke a pressed flower in the fourth book of my diary, on the page recording our departure from Asia.

  During the night a good sailing wind from the north came back. AU hghts from ships and land sank behind us. Huge swells indicated interference from a strong current, and there was soon a smell of greenery over the ocean, as from a jungle. The insect-ridden wilderness of the Indus delta was beyond the horizon, but this problematic area, which kept the salvage vessel Jason busy, was eventually left behind on our portside. We tried to steer away from it, but the delta was wide enough to be with us for a couple of days at least. So far we simply steered to get clear of all coasts and into the open ocean.

  We did not trust the coming of the northeast monsoon. We knew it had failed to blow for the second year in succession. The harbor authorities in Karachi had also told us that in these parts the worst period for storms and treacherous weather was the last days of January and the first half of February. We were to find that they were right. We had left anchorage on February 7.

  The second day at sea the northerly wind increased in strength and, lifted on our way by hissing waves, we sailed away from east-em Pakistan and the northwestern coast of India. Next day we lowered the topsail as the wind strength rose to half gale. The mainsail split, and we lashed on two rowing oars beside the rudder oars to help steady our course. Sharks began to join us.

  On February 10 we had a lull before the storm. The wind blew

  faintly from the east. We mended the mainsail and began to discuss where to steer next. With this wind the risk of being cast onto the coast of India was greatly reduced. We all wanted to send comforting messages to our families, but Norman was unable to contact anyone with our consorti
um transceiver, though with his own amateur set he picked up one radio ham in Germany and ^aother in the United States. To our surprise, both reported having heard that we had decided to sail from Karachi eastward and finally across the Pacific to South America. Crazy! Ridiculous 1 This was just about the only thing we could not do. We could perhaps reach the Far East, but never cross the Pacific in the opposite direction of the KonrTiki voyage. AU those who had tried had failed, but all those who had followed in Kon-Tikts wake had succeeded, and even reached Austraha.^*

  For a while the false reports about our intended itinerary infuriated everyone on board as we struggled to sail south with an unsteady easterly wind. It was not the first time news media ashore had fabricated reports about our voyage. The reason was perhaps that the London-based television consortium with exclusive ri^ts to our stories had scant success in distributing the reports we tried to send them with their transceiver, and yet had stopped Norman from telling anything to the hams who heard him. When we had happily waded ashore in Ormara Bay, the news media reported our shipwreck. German papers had carried the horrible news that the Japanese member of Tigris crew had been eaten by a shark and that the expedition leader had therefore been forced to end the experiment.

  To clear up all the confusion ashore and to soothe the growing

  * I had always tried to make the point that, though certain primitive craft were seaworthy, not even a reed ship could succeed in doing what the early Spanish caravels foimd impossible: force an old-fashioned sailing craft eastward along the equator to tropical America. The Pacific Ocean fills half the surface of our planet, and in this unsheltered hemisphere ocean currents and trade winds are rigorously propelled by the rotation of the earth. In the entire tropical belt, sea and air, set in nonstop movement from Peru and Mexico to Indonesia and the China Sea, are too strong to permit aboriginal mariners to reach America across the Pacific, except in subarctic latitudes, or to enter the mid-Pacific, except from the American side. For eastbound voyagers from the Indus Valley, China would be the end of the line. Any effort by us to sail our primitive reed craft from Asia through the mid-Pacific island area would have failed, just as it would have failed Chinese junks and as it did fail all Spanish and Portuguese caravels and later replicas of prehistoric jimks that have tried in modem times to sail due east from China.