Thor Heyerdahl

Also known as Dr Thor Heyerdahl, T. Heyerdahl, Th. Heyerdahl

Norwegian anthropologist and adventurer (1914-2002)

AI overview

Thor Heyerdahl was a Norwegian anthropologist and adventurer who conducted daring ocean voyages to test his theories about ancient human migration and contact between distant civilizations. His most famous expedition was the 1947 Kon-Tiki voyage across the Pacific Ocean on a primitive raft, which demonstrated that ancient peoples could have traveled vast distances using simple technology and helped spark public interest in questions about early human history.

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Wikidata facts

Instance of: human
Given name: Thor
Gender: male
Citizenship: Norway
Place of birth: Larvik
Place of death: Colla Micheri
Spouse: Jacqueline Beer
Occupation: researcher
Educated at: University of Oslo
Languages spoken: Italian
Religion: atheism
Award: Medal of St. Hallvard
Academic degree: Doctor of Philosophy
Doctoral advisor: Kristine Bonnevie
Field of work: ethnography
Image: Thor Heyerdahl 2000.jpg
Number of children: 5

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Commons category: Thor Heyerdahl
date of birth: 1914-00-00
date of death: 2002-04-18
topic's main category: Category:Thor Heyerdahl
member of: Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
manner of death: natural causes
name in native language: Thor Heyerdahl
P6944: Thor Heyerdahl
influenced by: Kristine Bonnevie
relative: Christopher Heyerdahl

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Encyclopedic overview

Thor Heyerdahl KStJ ( Norwegian pronunciation: [tuːr ˈhæ̀ɪəɖɑːɫ]; 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 the scientific community, even before the expedition.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Thor Heyerdahl” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

Thor Heyerdahl

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