Thus both my suspicions and my attention were turned more and more away from the Old World, where so many had searched and none had found, and over to the known and unknown Indian civilizations of America, which no one hitherto had taken into consideration. And on the nearest coast due east, where today the South American republic of Peru stretches from the Pacific up into the mountains, there was no lack of traces if one only looked for them. Here an unknown people had once lived and established one of the world’s strangest civilizations, till suddenly, long ago, they had vanished as though swept away from the earth’s surface. They left behind them enormous stone statues carved in the image of human beings, which recalled those on Pitcairn, the Marquesas, and Easter Island, and huge pyramids built in steps like those on Tahiti and Samoa. They hewed out of the mountains, with stone axes, stone blocks as large as railway cars and heavier than elephants, transported them for miles about the countryside, and set them up on end or placed them on top of one another to form gateways, huge walls, and terraces, exactly as we find them on some of the islands in the Pacific.
The Inca Indians had their great empire in this mountain country when the first Spaniards came to Peru. They told the Spaniards that the colossal monuments that stood deserted about the landscape were erected by a race of white gods which had lived there before the Incas themselves became rulers. These vanished architects were described as wise, peaceful instructors, who had originally come from the north, long ago in the morning of time, and had taught the Incas’ primitive forefathers architecture and agriculture as well as manners and customs. They were unlike other Indians in having white skins and long beards; they were also taller than the Incas. Finally they left Peru as suddenly as they had come; the Incas themselves took over power in the country, and the white teachers vanished forever from the coast of South America and fled westward across the Pacific.
Now it happened that, when the Europeans came to the Pacific islands, they were quite astonished to find that many of the natives had almost white skins and were bearded. On many of the islands there were whole families conspicuous for their remarkably pale skins, hair varying from reddish to blonde, blue-gray eyes, and almost Semitic, hook-nosed faces. In contrast to these the genuine Polynesians had golden-brown skins, raven hair, and rather flat, pulpy noses. The red-haired individuals called themselves urukehu and said that they were directly descended from the first chiefs on the islands, who were still white gods, such as Tangaroa, Kane, and Tiki. Legends of mysterious white men, from whom the islanders were originally descended, were current all over Polynesia. When Roggeveen discovered Easter Island in 1722, he noticed to his surprise what he termed “white men” among those on shore. And the people of Easter Island could themselves count up those of their ancestors who were white-skinned right back to the time of Tiki and Hotu Matua, when they first came sailing across the sea “from a mountainous land in the east which was scorched by the sun.”
As I pursued my search, I found in Peru surprising traces in culture, mythology, and language which impelled me to go on digging ever deeper and with greater concentration in my attempt to identify the place of origin of the Polynesian tribal god Tiki.
And I found what I hoped for. I was sitting reading the Inca legends of the sun-king Virakocha, who was the supreme head of the mythical white people in Peru. I read:
.... Virakocha is an Inca (Ketchua) name and consequently of fairly recent date. The original name of the sun-god Virakocha, which seems to have been more used in Peru in old times, was Kon-Tiki or Illa-Tiki, which means Sun-Tiki or Fire-Tiki. Kon-Tiki was high priest and sun-king of the Incas’ legendary ‘white men’ who had left the enormous ruins on the shores of Lake Titicaca. The legend runs that the mysterious white men with beards were attacked by a chief named Cari who came from the Coquimbo Valley. In a battle on an island in Lake Titicaca the fair race was massacred, but Kon-Tiki himself and his closest companions escaped and later came down to the Pacific coast, whence they finally disappeared oversea to the westward....
I was no longer in doubt that the white chief-god Sun-Tiki, whom the Incas declared that their forefathers had driven out of Peru on to the Pacific, was identical with the white chief-god Tiki, son of the sun, whom the inhabitants of all the eastern Pacific islands hailed as the original founder of their race. And the details of Sun-Tiki’s life in Peru, with the ancient names of places round Lake Titicaca, cropped up again in historic legends current among the natives of the Pacific islands.
But all over Polynesia I found indications that Kon-Tiki’s peaceable race had not been able to hold the islands alone for long. Indications that seagoing war canoes, as large as Viking ships and lashed together two and two, had brought Northwest Indians from the New World across the sea to Hawaii and farther south to all the other islands. They had mingled their blood with that of Kon-Tiki’s race and brought a new civilization to the island kingdom. This was the second Stone Age people that came to Polynesia, without metals, without the potter’s art, without wheel or loom or cereal cultivation, about 1100 A.D.
So it came about that I was excavating rock carvings in the ancient Polynesian style among the Northwest Coast Indians in British Columbia when the Germans burst into Norway in 1940.
Right face, left face, about face. Washing barracks stairs, polishing boots, radio school, parachute—and at last a Murmansk convoy to Finnmark, where the war-god of technique reigned in the sun-god’s absence all the dark winter through.
Peace came. And one day my theory was complete. I must go to America and put it forward.
2
AN EXPEDITION IS BORN
Among Specialists — The Turning Point —
At the Sailors’ Home —
Last Resource — Explorers Club —
The New Equipment — I Find a Companion —
A Triumvirate —
One Painter and Two Saboteurs —
To Washington —
Conference at the War Department —
To Q.M.G. with Desiderata-
Money Problems —
With Diplomats at UN —
We Fly to Ecuador
An Expedition Is Born
SO IT HAD BEGUN, BY A FIRE ON A SOUTH SEA ISLAND, where an old native sat telling legends and stories of his tribe. Many years later I sat with another old man, this time in a dark office on one of the upper floors of a big museum in New York.
Round us, in well-arranged glass cases, lay pottery fragments from the past, traces leading into the mists of antiquity. The walls were lined with books. Some of them one man had written and hardly ten men had read. The old man, who had read all these books and written some of them, sat behind his worktable, white-haired and good-humored. But now, for sure, I had trodden on his toes, for he gripped the arms of his chair uneasily and looked as if I had interrupted him in a game of solitaire.
“No!” he said. “Never!”
I imagine that Santa Claus would have looked as he did then if someone had dared to affirm that next year Christmas would be on Midsummer Day.
“You’re wrong, absolutely wrong,” he said and shook his head indignantly to drive out the idea.
“But you haven’t read my arguments yet,” I urged, nodding hopefully toward the manuscript which lay on the table.
“Arguments!” he repeated. “You can’t treat ethnographic problems as a sort of detective mystery!”
“Why not?” I said. “I’ve based all the conclusions on my own observations and the facts that science has recorded.”
“The task of science is investigation pure and simple,” he said quietly. “Not to try to prove this or that.”
He pushed the unopened manuscript carefully to one side and leaned over the table.
“It’s quite true that South America was the home of some of the most curious civilizations of antiquity, and that we know neither who they were nor where they vanished when the Incas came into power. But one thing we do know for certain—that none of the peoples of South America
got over to the islands in the Pacific.”
He looked at me searchingly and continued:
“Do you know why? The answer’s simple enough. They couldn’t get there. They had no boats!”
“They had rafts,” I objected hesitatingly. “You know, balsa-wood rafts.”
The old man smiled and said calmly:
“Well, you can try a trip from Peru to the Pacific islands on a balsa-wood raft.”
I could find nothing to say. It was getting late. We both rose. The old scientist patted me kindly on the shoulder, as he saw me out, and said that if I wanted help I had only to come to him. But I must in future specialize on Polynesia or America and not mix up two separate anthropological areas. He reached back over the table.
“You’ve forgotten this,” he said and handed back my manuscript. I glanced at the title, “Polynesia and America; A Study of Prehistoric Relations.” I stuck the manuscript under my arm and clattered down the stairs out into the crowds in the street.
That evening I went down and knocked on the door of an old flat in an out-of-the-way corner of Greenwich Village. I liked bringing my little problems down here when I felt they had made life a bit tangled.
A sparse little man with a long nose opened the door a crack before he threw it wide open with a broad smile and pulled me in. He took me straight into the little kitchen, where he set me to work carrying plates and forks while he himself doubled the quantity of the indefinable but savory-smelling concoction he was heating over the gas.
“Nice of you to come,” he said. “How goes it?”
“Rottenly,” I replied. “No one will read the manuscript.”
He filled the plates and we attacked the contents.
“It’s like this,” he said. “All the people you’ve been to see think it’s just a passing idea you’ve got. You know, here in America, people turn up with so many queer ideas.”
“And there’s another thing,” I went on.
“Yes,” said he. “Your way of approaching the problem. They’re specialists, the whole lot of them, and they don’t believe in a method of work which cuts into every field of science from botany to archaeology. They limit their own scope in order to be able to dig in the depths with more concentration for details. Modern research demands that every special branch shall dig in its own hole. It’s not usual for anyone to sort out what comes up out of the holes and try to put it all together.”
He rose and reached for a heavy manuscript.
“Look here,” he said. “My last work on bird designs in Chinese peasant embroidery. Took me seven years, but it was accepted for publication at once. They want specialized research nowadays.”
Carl was right. But to solve the problems of the Pacific without throwing light on them from all sides was, it seemed to me, like doing a puzzle and only using the pieces of one color.
We cleared the table, and I helped him wash and dry the dishes.
“Nothing new from the university in Chicago?”
“No.”
“But what did your old friend at the museum say today?”
“He wasn’t interested, either,” I muttered. “He said that, as long as the Indians had only open rafts, it was futile to consider the possibility of their having discovered the Pacific islands.”
The little man suddenly began to dry his plate furiously.
“Yes,” he said at last. “To tell the truth, to me too that seems a practical objection to your theory.”
I looked gloomily at the little ethnologist whom I had thought to be a sworn ally.
“But don’t misunderstand me,” he hastened to say. “In one way I think you’re right, but in another way it’s so incomprehensible. My work on designs supports your theory.”
“Carl,” I said. “I’m so sure the Indians crossed the Pacific on their rafts that I’m willing to build a raft of the same kind myself and cross the sea just to prove that it’s possible.” “You’re mad!”
My friend took it for a joke and laughed, half-scared at the thought.
“You’re mad! A raft?”
He did not know what to say and only stared at me with a queer expression, as though waiting for a smile to show that I was joking.
He did not get one. I saw now that in practice no one would accept my theory because of the apparently endless stretch of sea between Peru and Polynesia, which I was trying to bridge with no other aid than a prehistoric raft.
Carl looked at me uncertainly. “Now we’ll go out and have a drink,” he said. We went out and had four.
My rent became due that week. At the same time a letter from the Bank of Norway informed me that I could have no more dollars. Currency restrictions. I picked up my trunk and took the subway out to Brooklyn. Here I was taken in at the Norwegian Sailors’ Home, where the food was good and sustaining and the prices suited my wallet. I got a little room a floor or two up but had my meals with all the seamen in a big dining room downstairs.
Seamen came and seamen went. They varied in type, dimensions, and degrees of sobriety but they all had one thing in common—when they talked about the sea, they knew what they were talking about. I learned that waves and rough sea did not increase with the depth of the sea or distance from land. On the contrary, squalls were often more treacherous along the coast than in the open sea. Shoal water, backwash along the coast, or ocean currents penned in close to the land could throw up a rougher sea than was usual far out. A vessel which could hold her own along an open coast could hold her own farther out. I also learned that, in a high sea, big ships were inclined to plunge bow or stern into the waves, so that tons of water would rush on board and twist steel tubes like wire, while a small boat, in the same sea, often made good weather because she could find room between the lines of waves and dance freely over them like a gull. I talked to sailors who had got safely away in boats after the seas had made their ship founder.
But the men knew little about rafts. A raft—that wasn’t a ship; it had no keel or bulwarks. It was just something floating on which to save oneself in an emergency, until one was picked up by a boat of some kind. One of the men, nevertheless, had great respect for rafts in the open sea; he had drifted about on one for three weeks when a German torpedo sank his ship in mid-Atlantic.
“But you can’t navigate a raft,” he added. “It goes sideways and backward and round as the wind takes it.”
In the library I dug out records left by the first Europeans who had reached the Pacific coast of South America. There was no lack of sketches or descriptions of the Indians’ big balsa wood rafts. They had a square sail and centerboard and a long steering oar astern. So they could be maneuvered.
Weeks passed at the Sailors’ Home. No reply from Chicago or the other cities to which I had sent copies of my theory. No one had read it.
Then, one Saturday, I pulled myself together and marched into a ship chandler’s shop down in Water Street. There I was politely addressed as “Captain” when I bought a pilot chart of the Pacific. With the chart rolled up under my arm I took the suburban train out to Ossining, where I was a regular week-end guest of a young Norwegian married couple who had a charming place in the country. My host had been a sea captain and was now office manager for the Fred Olsen Line in New York.
After a refreshing plunge in the swimming pool city life was completely forgotten for the rest of the week end, and when Ambjörg brought the cocktail tray, we sat down on the lawn in the hot sun. I could contain myself no longer but spread the chart out on the grass and asked Wilhelm if he thought a raft could carry men alive from Peru to the South Sea islands.
He looked at me rather than at the chart, half taken aback, but replied at once in the affirmative. I felt as much lightened as if I had released a balloon inside my shirt, for I knew that to Wilhelm everything that had to do with navigation and sailing was both job and hobby. He was initiated into my plans at once. To my astonishment he then declared that the idea was sheer madness.
“But you said just now that you tho
ught it was possible,” I interrupted.
“Quite right,” he admitted. “But the chances of its going wrong are just as great. You yourself have never been on a balsa raft, and all of a sudden you’re imagining yourself across the Pacific on one. Perhaps it’ll come off, perhaps it won’t. The old Indians in Peru had generations of experience to build upon. Perhaps ten rafts went to the bottom for every one that got across—or perhaps hundreds in the course of centuries. As you say, the Incas navigated in the open sea with whole flotillas of these balsa rafts. Then, if anything went wrong, they could be picked up by the nearest raft. But who’s going to pick you up, out in mid-ocean? Even if you take a radio for use in an emergency, don’t think it’s going to be easy for a little raft to be located down among the waves thousands of miles from land. In a storm you can be washed off the raft and drowned many times over before anyone gets to you. You’d better wait quietly here till someone has had time to read your manuscript. Write again and stir them up; it’s no good if you don’t.”
“I can’t wait any longer now; I shan’t have a cent left soon.”
“Then you can come and stay with us. For that matter, how can you think of starting an expedition from South America without money?”
“It’s easier to interest people in an expedition than in an unread manuscript.”
“But what can you gain by it?”
“Destroy one of the weightiest arguments against the theory, quite apart from the fact that science will pay some attention to the affair.”
“But if things go wrong?”
“Then I shan’t have proved anything.”
“Then you’d ruin your own theory in the eyes of everyone, wouldn’t you?”
“Perhaps, but all the same one in ten might have got through before us, as you said.”
The children came out to play croquet, and we did not discuss the matter any more that day.
The next week end I was back at Ossining with the chart under my arm. And, when I left, there was a long pencil line from the coast of Peru to the Tuamotu islands in the Pacific. My friend, the captain, had given up hope of making me drop the idea, and we had sat together for hours working out the raft’s probable speed.
Kon-Tiki Page 2
