THE KON TIKI EXPEDITION

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26524, 12 September 1951, Page 8

THE KON TIKI EXPEDITION

Theory Discounted By Dr. Roger Duff

COMMENT ON DR GILBERT ARCHEY’S VIEWS

The views of Dr. Gilbert Archey on the Kon Tiki expedition were commended yesterday by Dr. Roger Duff, Director of the Canterbury Museum, and one of New Zealand’s leading authorities on the Polynesians. Dr. Archey, according to a report in yesterday’s issue of “The Press,” said that the theory that the Polynesian race populated the Pacific Islands from Indonesia had not been shaken by the Kon Tiki raft voyage. “Kon Tiki,” the book describing the expedition, written by Thor Heyerdahl, has been widely read in New Zealand. Since the first three copies of the book were received by the Canterbury Public Library in June of last year 189 subscribers have taken the book out. There are now nine copies in the library and when an inquiry was made yesterday, all these were out on loan or waiting to be called for. The leading students of Polynesian culture history, notably Sir Peter Buck and Dr. H. D. Skinnpr, of the Otago Museum, had not accepted the Kon Tiki theory, but the authorities on the subject had apparently not realised the effect of the book on the reading public, said Dr. Duff. The three main weaknesses in the Kon Tiki theory, according to Dr. Duff, were: the ensuring of adequate water and provisions for a 100-day voyage: the improbability of the Polynesians’ supposed South American ancestors setting out from a continent in search of unknown islands; and the lack of cultural links between Polynesia and South America.

In spite of Mr Heyerdahl’s claims of the plenitude of fish and the adequacy of the rainfall for the greater part of the voyage he did not believe primitive mariners could have survived the trip, said Dr. Duff.

Trip Into Unknown “Why should a party of Indians have any reason to believe that there were islands off the coast of a continent like South America?” he asked. It was completely opposed to human history for a race to plunge into an unknown exploration such as that envisaged by Mr Heyerdahl. The generally-held theory of the origin of the Polynesians, he pointed out, envisaged an “islandhopping” migration, which was much more plausible. Mr Heyerdahl had given some examples of what he considered cultural analogies between Polynesians and the ancient inhabitants of South America. To the student of these things Mr Heyerdahl’s arguments were not valid, said Dr. Duff. He could multiply Mr Heyerdahl’s instances many times with comparisons between Polynesian and Indonesian cultures. The only difficulty with the Indonesian theory—and the main prop of the Kon Tiki theory—was the kumera. He had always understood that the kumera originally came from Peru and was unaware that “botanists had not agreed that the kumera was a wild plant of South America” (as Dr. Archey was reported to have said). Apart from the kumera, however, all the evidence pointed to the Polynesians being of Indonesian rather 'than of American origin. “I have never heard of this ‘legend’,” said Dr. Duff, when asked to comment on Mr Heyerdahl’s statement that “New Zealand legends declare that the sweet potato was brought over the sea in vessels which were not canoes but consisted of ‘wood bound together with ropes’.” Maori tradition was quite clear on this point: the sweet potato came in the 1350 fleet, the Maoris even remembering the names of those who brought it in the canoes, said Dr. Duff “What Mr Heyerdahl has done is to remind us that winds and currents do decide the course of primitive migrations and that the mere distance between islands may give an erroneous picture.” said Dr. Duff. The Maoris were the outstanding example of this, having come to New Zealand not from E l i.*’.T on l’ a ’ or New Caledonia but from Tahiti, much further away.