When it is time for you to do the right thing, make a big move that involves absolutes or to accept responsibility for some of your actions and move on, the Tarot deck will reveal the Justice Card in your reading.
There is little you will be able to back out of once you set the course demanded by the Tarot's Justice. She sits on an unadorned stone seat, wearing the red robes of a servant to the court and a simple crown on her head.
Hanging between two gray stone pillars, a cloth behind her obscures a golden sky. In her left hand is a scale, evenly balanced. In her right hand is a sword held upright.
The robe and crown denote her status as a servant above the reprimands of authority but beholden to the law. The scales represent opposing arguments, both sides of the story, the possibilities of what will happen depending on the choices you make. The sword represents the finality of the decision you will make – the sword will cut the possibilities of other things happening.
...
Meaning in Past, Present and Future Positions
Each Tarot reading finds cards landing in positions representing your past, present and future. When the Justice card lands in the past position, the foundation of your current situation can be traced to a decision you made a while ago.
Be it marriage, divorce, having children or leaving home for college, think as to what it might have been. The choice that you made then was the definite beginning of a new chapter of your life and a severance with your past.
Justice does not weigh in on whether you made a bad choice or a good choice. This card only weighs in to certify that your choice indicated an absolute break from the many possibilities life was offering you.
In the present position, the Justice card represents a situation facing you that requires a decision. The card alone does not indicate the specific nature of the decision you are being moved to make.
It could be a decision involving your educational future, your love life, the path a good friendship might be taking, the purchase or selling of real estate, taking a particular job – it could be something epic in your life plan or something that appears to be a small decision in the scheme of things.
The presence of the Justice card in your Tarot reading indicates that your coming decision is an irreversible one and that your free will in making it will be a force that pours a foundation on which the rest of your life may be setting.
Be it marriage, divorce, having children or leaving home for college, think as to what it might have been. The choice that you made then was the definite beginning of a new chapter of your life and a severance with your past.
Justice does not weigh in on whether you made a bad choice or a good choice. This card only weighs in to certify that your choice indicated an absolute break from the many possibilities life was offering you.
In the present position, the Justice card represents a situation facing you that requires a decision. The card alone does not indicate the specific nature of the decision you are being moved to make.
It could be a decision involving your educational future, your love life, the path a good friendship might be taking, the purchase or selling of real estate, taking a particular job – it could be something epic in your life plan or something that appears to be a small decision in the scheme of things.
The presence of the Justice card in your Tarot reading indicates that your coming decision is an irreversible one and that your free will in making it will be a force that pours a foundation on which the rest of your life may be setting.
When the Justice card appears in the future position of your Tarot reading, the things that you are working on in your life now are inevitably leading you toward having to make a big decision. We think of many things in life as solid, but no matter how firm they are, most things are fleeting or transitory.
The deepest friendships of our youth are affected by geography and the shift of what we choose to do with our lives. These shifts are imperceptibly slow, but it is as if they do not actually change until we notice that they are changing; by then they are too far removed from what they once were to ever be again as we lived them. The Tarot is telling you to get ready for a big change no matter how minor a decision you are about to make.
Card Combinations
The cards that are placed into your reading influence one another. Each card informs other parts of the reading and is strongest in impacting the cards dealt closest to it. When Justice appears in a reading with The Magician card, someone who is trying to get you to make a decision is misleading you. It is important to get all the facts. When The High Priestess is paired with Justice, someone close to you has all the answers to give you the best advice possible at this time, but you will have to approach this person.
As resolute as the Justice card is in indicating that a coming decision is bound to have an impact, it can be a maddening riddle regarding what the decision will be – is the card indicating the decision to make an appointment for another Tarot reading next month or the decision to move in with your boyfriend early next year?
As resolute as the Justice card is in indicating that a coming decision is bound to have an impact, it can be a maddening riddle regarding what the decision will be – is the card indicating the decision to make an appointment for another Tarot reading next month or the decision to move in with your boyfriend early next year?
If there are many cards from the same suit in your reading, this is a good indicator of what Justice is declaring as your coming impactful decision. Pentacles are cards that underscore the material plane. Lots of these cards in a reading with Justice indicate a big financial decision is looming.
When the suit of Swords figures prominently in your reading and the Justice card is present, the coming impactful decision will definitely be announced to those that will be feeling its effects. If the suit of Cups is all over your reading along with Justice, the decision you make regarding a love relationship will shape the rest of your life.
A reading that sees the Justice card in the presence of many cards from the suit of Wands indicates that a business or creative decision made soon will have a measurable impact on your career for years to come.
The Justice card has a special relationship with the Aces of each suit. Be it the Ace of Pentacles, Swords, Cups or Wands, the presence of any Ace in a reading with the Justice card gives the decision you are about to make a special blessing – a little luck in your corner as you severe the path to the past and move forward on your journey.
Other Articles About Tarot Cards in the Major Arcana
- The Fool
- The Magician
- The High Priestess
- The Empress
- The Emperor
- The Hierophant
- The Lovers
- The Chariot
- Strength
- The Hermit
- Wheel of Fortune
- The Hanged Man
- Death
- Temperance
- The Devil
- The Tower
- The Star
- The Moon
- The Sun
- Judgment
- The World
Thor Heyerdahl (Norwegian pronunciation: [tuːr ˈhæ̀ɪəɖɑːl]; 6 October 1914 – 18 April 2002) was a Norwegian adventurer and ethnographer with a background in zoology, botany and geography.
_Ngọc Lịch Bửu Phiêu_https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2998899140229565&set=ecnf.100003285240786&type=3&theater
Heyerdahl is notable for his Kon-Tiki expedition in 1947, in which he sailed 8,000 km (5,000 mi) across the Pacific Ocean in a hand-built raft from South America to the Tuamotu Islands.
The expedition was designed to demonstrate that ancient people could have made long sea voyages, creating contacts between societies.
This was linked to a diffusionist model of cultural development. Heyerdahl made other voyages to demonstrate the possibility of contact between widely separated ancient peoples, notably the Ra II expedition of 1970, when he sailed from the west coast of Africa to Barbados in a papyrus reed boat. He was appointed a government scholar in 1984.
In May 2011, the Thor Heyerdahl Archives were added to UNESCO's "Memory of the World" Register. At the time, this list included 238 collections from all over the world.
The Heyerdahl Archives span the years 1937 to 2002 and include his photographic collection, diaries, private letters, expedition plans, articles, newspaper clippings, original book, and article manuscripts. The Heyerdahl Archives are administered by the Kon-Tiki Museum and the National Library of Norway in Oslo.
Heyerdahl was born in Larvik, Norway, the son of master brewer Thor Heyerdahl (1869–1957) and his wife, Alison Lyng (1873–1965). As a young child, Heyerdahl showed a strong interest in zoology, inspired by his mother, who had a strong interest in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. He created a small museum in his childhood home, with a common adder (Vipera berus) as the main attraction.
He studied zoology and geography at the faculty of biological science at the University of Oslo. At the same time, he privately studied Polynesian culture and history, consulting what was then the world's largest private collection of books and papers on Polynesia, owned by Bjarne Kroepelien, a wealthy wine merchant in Oslo. (This collection was later purchased by the University of Oslo Library from Kroepelien's heirs and was attached to the Kon-Tiki Museum research department.)
After seven terms and consultations with experts in Berlin, a project was developed and sponsored by Heyerdahl's zoology professors, Kristine Bonnevie and Hjalmar Broch. He was to visit some isolated Pacific island groups and study how the local animals had found their way there.
Just before sailing together to the Marquesas Islands in 1936, Heyerdahl married his first wife, Liv Coucheron-Torp (1916–1969[dubious – discuss]), whom he had met shortly before enrolling at the university, and who had studied economics there. The couple had two sons: Thor Jr and Bjørn. The marriage ended in divorce.
After the Occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany, he served with the Free Norwegian Forces from 1944, in the far north province of Finnmark.
In 1949, Heyerdahl married Yvonne Dedekam-Simonsen (1924–2006). They had three daughters: Annette, Marian and Helene Elisabeth. They were divorced in 1969.
Heyerdahl blamed their separation on his being away from home and differences in their ideas for bringing up children. In his autobiography, he concluded that he should take the entire blame for their separation.
In 1991, Heyerdahl married Jacqueline Beer (born 1932) as his third wife. They lived in Tenerife, Canary Islands, and were very actively involved with archaeological projects, especially in Túcume, Peru, and Azov until his death in 2002.
He had still been hoping to undertake an archaeological project in Samoa before he died. Heyerdahl died on 18 April 2002 in Colla Micheri, Liguria, Italy, where he had gone to spend the Easter holidays with some of his closest family members.
The Norwegian government gave him a state funeral in Oslo Cathedral on April 26, 2002. He is buried in the garden of the family home in Colla Micheri. He was an atheist.
Fatu Hiva - The events surrounding his stay on the Marquesas, most of the time on Fatu Hiva, were told first in his book På Jakt etter Paradiset (Hunt for Paradise) (1938), which was published in Norway but, following the outbreak of World War II, was never translated and remained largely forgotten.
Many years later, having achieved notability with other adventures and books on other subjects, Heyerdahl published a new account of this voyage under the title Fatu Hiva (London: Allen & Unwin, 1974).
The story of his time on Fatu Hiva and his side trip to Hivaoa and Mohotani is also related in Green Was the Earth on the Seventh Day (Random House, 1996).
Kon-Tiki expedition - The Kon-Tiki in the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo, Norway - In 1947 Heyerdahl and five fellow adventurers sailed from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands, French Polynesia in a pae-pae raft that they had constructed from balsa wood and other native materials, christened the Kon-Tiki.
The Kon-Tiki expedition was inspired by old reports and drawings made by the Spanish Conquistadors of Inca rafts, and by native legends and archaeological evidence suggesting contact between South America and Polynesia.
The Kon-Tiki smashed into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotus on 7 August 1947 after a 101-day, 4,300-nautical-mile (5,000-mile or 8,000 km) journey across the Pacific Ocean.
Heyerdahl had nearly drowned at least twice in childhood and did not take easily to water; he said later that there were times in each of his raft voyages when he feared for his life.
Kon-Tiki demonstrated that it was possible for a primitive raft to sail the Pacific with relative ease and safety, especially to the west (with the trade winds).
The raft proved to be highly manoeuvrable, and fish congregated between the nine balsa logs in such numbers that ancient sailors could have possibly relied on fish for hydration in the absence of other sources of fresh water.
Other rafts have repeated the voyage, inspired by Kon-Tiki. Heyerdahl's book about The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the South Seas has been translated into 70 languages. The documentary film of the expedition entitled Kon-Tiki won an Academy Award in 1951.
A dramatised version was released in 2012, also called Kon-Tiki, and was nominated for both the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 85th Academy Awards and a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 70th Golden Globe Awards. It was the first time that a Norwegian film was nominated for both an Oscar and a Golden Globe.
Anthropologists continue to believe that Polynesia was settled from west to east, based on linguistic, physical, and genetic evidence, migration having begun from the Asian mainland.
There are controversial indications, though, of some sort of South American/Polynesian contact, most notably in the fact that the South American sweet potato is served as a dietary staple throughout much of Polynesia.
Blood samples taken in 1971 and 2008 from Easter Islanders without any European or other external descent were analysed in a 2011 study, which concluded that the evidence supported some aspects of Heyerdahl's hypothesis.
This result has been questioned because of the possibility of contamination by South Americans after European contact with the islands. However, more recent DNA work (after Heyerdahl's death) contradicts the post-European-contact contamination hypothesis, finding the South American DNA sequences to be far older than that.
Heyerdahl had attempted to counter the linguistic argument with the analogy that he would prefer to believe that African-Americans came from Africa, judging from their skin colour, and not from England, judging from their speech.
Theory on Polynesian origins - Heyerdahl claimed that in Incan legend there was a sun-god named Con-Tici Viracocha who was the supreme head of the mythical fair-skinned people in Peru. The original name for Viracocha was Kon-Tiki or Illa-Tiki, which means Sun-Tiki or Fire-Tiki.
Kon-Tiki was high priest and sun-king of these legendary "white men" who left enormous ruins on the shores of Lake Titicaca. The legend continues with the mysterious bearded white men being attacked by a chief named Cari, who came from the Coquimbo Valley.
They had a battle on an island in Lake Titicaca, and the fair race was massacred. However, Kon-Tiki and his closest companions managed to escape and later arrived on the Pacific coast. The legend ends with Kon-Tiki and his companions disappearing westward out to sea.
When the Spaniards came to Peru, Heyerdahl asserted, the Incas told them that the colossal monuments that stood deserted about the landscape were erected by a race of white gods who had lived there before the Incas themselves became rulers.
The Incas described these "white gods" as wise, peaceful instructors who had originally come from the north in the "morning of time" and taught the Incas' primitive forebears architecture as well as manners and customs.
They were unlike other Native Americans in that they had "white skins and long beards" and were taller than the Incas. The Incas said that the "white gods" had then left as suddenly as they had come and fled westward across the Pacific. After they had left, the Incas themselves took over power in the country.
Heyerdahl said that when the Europeans first came to the Pacific islands, they were astonished that they found some of the natives to have relatively light skins and beards.
There were whole families that had pale skin, hair varying in colour from reddish to blonde. In contrast, most of the Polynesians had golden-brown skin, raven-black hair, and rather flat noses.
Heyerdahl claimed that when Jacob Roggeveen discovered Easter Island in 1722, he supposedly noticed that many of the natives were white-skinned.
Heyerdahl claimed that these people could count 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".
The ethnographic evidence for these claims is outlined in Heyerdahl's book Aku-Aku: The Secret of Easter Island. Tiki people - Heyerdahl proposed that Tiki's neolithic people colonised the then uninhabited Polynesian islands as far north as Hawaii, as far south as New Zealand, as far east as Easter Island, and as far west as Samoa and Tonga around 500 AD.
They supposedly sailed from Peru to the Polynesian islands on pae-paes—large rafts built from balsa logs, complete with sails and each with a small cottage.
They built enormous stone statues carved in the image of human beings on Pitcairn, the Marquesas, and Easter Island that resembled those in Peru. They also built huge pyramids on Tahiti and Samoa with steps like those in Peru.
But all over Polynesia, Heyerdahl found indications that Tiki's peaceable race had not been able to hold the islands alone for long. He found evidence that suggested that seagoing war canoes as large as Viking ships and lashed together two and two had brought Stone Age Northwest American Indians to Polynesia around 1100 AD, and they mingled with Tiki's people.
The oral history of the people of Easter Island, at least as it was documented by Heyerdahl, is completely consistent with this theory, as is the archaeological record he examined (Heyerdahl 1958).
In particular, Heyerdahl obtained a radiocarbon date of 400 AD for a charcoal fire located in the pit that was held by the people of Easter Island to have been used as an "oven" by the "Long Ears", which Heyerdahl's Rapa Nui sources, reciting oral tradition, identified as a white race that had ruled the island in the past (Heyerdahl 1958).
Heyerdahl further argued in his book American Indians in the Pacific that the current inhabitants of Polynesia migrated from an Asian source, but via an alternative route. He proposes that Polynesians travelled with the wind along the North Pacific current. These migrants then arrived in British Columbia.
Heyerdahl called contemporary tribes of British Columbia, such as the Tlingit and Haida, descendants of these migrants. Heyerdahl claimed that cultural and physical similarities existed between these British Columbian tribes, Polynesians, and the Old World source.
Controversy - Heyerdahl's theory of Polynesian origins has not gained acceptance among anthropologists. Physical and cultural evidence had long suggested that Polynesia was settled from west to east, migration having begun from the Asian mainland, not South America.
In the late 1990s, genetic testing found that the mitochondrial DNA of the Polynesians is more similar to people from south-east Asia than to people from South America, showing that their ancestors most likely came from Asia.
Anthropologist Robert Carl Suggs included a chapter titled "The Kon-Tiki Myth" in his 1960 book on Polynesia, concluding that "The Kon-Tiki theory is about as plausible as the tales of Atlantis, Mu, and 'Children of the Sun.' Like most such theories, it makes exciting light reading, but as an example of scientific method it fares quite poorly."
Anthropologist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis also criticised Heyerdahl's theory in his 2009 book The Wayfinders, which explores the history of Polynesia.
Davis says that Heyerdahl "ignored the overwhelming body of linguistic, ethnographic, and ethnobotanical evidence, augmented today by genetic and archaeological data, indicating that he was patently wrong."
A 2009 study by Norwegian researcher Erik Thorsby suggested that there was some merit to Heyerdahl's ideas and that, while Polynesia was colonised from Asia, some contact with South America also existed.
Some critics suggest, however, that Thorsby's research is inconclusive because his data may have been influenced by recent population contact.
However, more recent work[when?] indicates that the South American component of Easter Island people's genomes pre-dates European contact: a team including Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas (from the Natural History Museum of Denmark) analysed the genomes of 27 native Rapanui people and found that their DNA was on average 76 per cent Polynesian, 8 per cent Native American and 16 per cent European.
Analysis showed that: "although the European lineage could be explained by contact with white Europeans after the island was 'discovered' in 1722 by Dutch sailors, the South American component was much older, dating to between about 1280 and 1495, soon after the island was first colonised by Polynesians in around 1200."
Together with ancient skulls found in Brazil – with solely Polynesian DNA – this does suggest some pre-European-contact travel to and from South America from Polynesia.
In 1955–1956, Heyerdahl organised the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to Easter Island. The expedition's scientific staff included Arne Skjølsvold, Carlyle Smith, Edwin Ferdon, Gonzalo Figueroa and William Mulloy.
Heyerdahl and the professional archaeologists who travelled with him spent several months on Easter Island investigating several important archaeological sites.
Highlights of the project include experiments in the carving, transport and erection of the notable moai, as well as excavations at such prominent sites as Orongo and Poike.
The expedition published two large volumes of scientific reports (Reports of the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to Easter Island and the East Pacific) and Heyerdahl later added a third (The Art of Easter Island). Heyerdahl's popular book on the subject, Aku-Aku was another international best-seller.
In Easter Island: The Mystery Solved (Random House, 1989), Heyerdahl offered a more detailed theory of the island's history. Based on native testimony and archaeological research, he claimed the island was originally colonised by Hanau eepe ("Long Ears"), from South America, and that Polynesian Hanau momoko ("Short Ears") arrived only in the mid-16th century; they may have come independently or perhaps were imported as workers.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2998899140229565&set=ecnf.100003285240786&type=3&theater
According to Heyerdahl, something happened between Admiral Roggeveen's discovery of the island in 1722 and James Cook's visit in 1774; while Roggeveen encountered white, Indian, and Polynesian people living in relative harmony and prosperity, Cook encountered a much smaller population consisting mainly of Polynesians and living in privation.
Heyerdahl notes the oral tradition of an uprising of "Short Ears" against the ruling "Long Ears". The "Long Ears" dug a defensive moat on the eastern end of the island and filled it with kindling.
During the uprising, Heyerdahl claimed, the "Long Ears" ignited their moat and retreated behind it, but the "Short Ears" found a way around it, came up from behind, and pushed all but two of the "Long Ears" into the fire.
This moat was found by the Norwegian expedition and it was partly cut down into the rock. Layers of fire were revealed but no fragments of bodies.
As for the origin of the people of Easter Island, DNA tests have shown a connection to South America,[34] critics conjecture that this was a result of recent events, but whether this is inherited from a person coming in later times is hard to know.
If the story that almost all Long Ears were killed in a civil war is true, as the islanders' story goes, it would be expected that the statue-building South American bloodline would have been nearly utterly destroyed, leaving for the most part the invading Polynesian bloodline.
Boats Ra and Ra II - The Ra II in the Kon-Tiki Museum - In 1969 and 1970, Heyerdahl built two boats from papyrus and attempted to cross the Atlantic Ocean from Morocco in Africa.
Based on drawings and models from ancient Egypt, the first boat, named Ra (after the Egyptian Sun god), was constructed by boat builders from Lake Chad using papyrus reed obtained from Lake Tana in Ethiopia and launched into the Atlantic Ocean from the coast of Morocco.
The Ra crew included Thor Heyerdahl (Norway), Norman Baker (USA), Carlo Mauri (Italy), Yuri Senkevich (USSR), Santiago Genovés (Mexico), Georges Sourial (Egypt) and Abdullah Djibrine (Chad). Only Heyerdahl and Baker had sailing and navigation experience.
After a number of weeks, Ra took on water. The crew discovered that a key element of the Egyptian boatbuilding method had been neglected, a tether that acted like a spring to keep the stern high in the water while allowing for flexibility.
Water and storms eventually caused it to sag and break apart after sailing more than 6,400 km (4,000 miles). The crew was forced to abandon Ra, some hundred miles (160 km) before the Caribbean islands, and was saved by a yacht.
The following year, 1970, a similar vessel, Ra II, was built of papyrus by Demetrio, Juan and José Limachi from Lake Titicaca in Bolivia and likewise set sail across the Atlantic from Morocco, this time with great success.
The crew was mostly the same; though Djibrine had been replaced by Kei Ohara from Japan and Madani Ait Ouhanni from Morocco. The boat became lost and was the subject of a United Nations search and rescue mission.
The search included international assistance including people as far afield as Loo-Chi Hu of New Zealand. The boat reached Barbados, thus demonstrating that mariners could have dealt with trans-Atlantic voyages by sailing with the Canary Current.[36] The Ra II is now in the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo, Norway.
The book The Ra Expeditions and the film documentary Ra (1972) were made about the voyages. Apart from the primary aspects of the expedition, Heyerdahl deliberately selected a crew representing a great diversity in race, nationality, religion and political viewpoint in order to demonstrate that at least on their own little floating island, people could co-operate and live peacefully. Additionally, the expedition took samples of marine pollution and presented their report to the United Nations.
Model of the Tigris at the Pyramids of Güímar, Tenerife - Heyerdahl built yet another reed boat, Tigris, which was intended to demonstrate that trade and migration could have linked Mesopotamia with the Indus Valley Civilization in what is now Pakistan and western India. Tigris was built in Iraq and sailed with its international crew through the Persian Gulf to Pakistan and made its way into the Red Sea.
After about five months at sea and still remaining seaworthy, the Tigris was deliberately burnt in Djibouti on 3 April 1978 as a protest against the wars raging on every side in the Red Sea and Horn of Africa. In his Open Letter to the UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, Heyerdahl explained his reasons:
Today we burn our proud ship ... to protest against inhuman elements in the world of 1978 ... Now we are forced to stop at the entrance to the Red Sea.
Surrounded by military airplanes and warships from the world's most civilised and developed nations, we have been denied permission by friendly governments, for reasons of security, to land anywhere, but in the tiny, and still neutral, Republic of Djibouti.
Elsewhere around us, brothers and neighbours are engaged in homicide with means made available to them by those who lead humanity on our joint road into the third millennium.
To the innocent masses in all industrialised countries, we direct our appeal. We must wake up to the insane reality of our time ... We are all irresponsible, unless we demand from the responsible decision makers that modern armaments must no longer be made available to people whose former battle axes and swords our ancestors condemned.
Our planet is bigger than the reed bundles that have carried us across the seas, and yet small enough to run the same risks unless those of us still alive open our eyes and minds to the desperate need of intelligent collaboration to save ourselves and our common civilisation from what we are about to convert into a sinking ship.
In the years that followed, Heyerdahl was often outspoken on issues of international peace and the environment. The Tigris had an 11-man crew: Thor Heyerdahl (Norway), Norman Baker (USA), Carlo Mauri (Italy), Yuri Senkevich (USSR), Germán Carrasco (Mexico), Hans Petter Bohn (Norway), Rashad Nazar Salim (Iraq), Norris Brock (USA), Toru Suzuki (Japan), Detlef Soitzek (Germany), and Asbjørn Damhus (Denmark).
"The Search for Odin" in Azerbaijan and Russia - Heyerdahl made four visits to Azerbaijan in 1981,1994, 1999 and 2000. Heyerdahl had long been fascinated with the rock carvings that date back to about 8th-7th millennia BCE at Gobustan (about 30 miles/48 km west of Baku).
He was convinced that their artistic style closely resembled the carvings found in his native Norway. The ship designs, in particular, were regarded by Heyerdahl as similar and drawn with a simple sickle-shaped line, representing the base of the boat, with vertical lines on deck, illustrating crew or, perhaps, raised oars.
Based on this and other published documentation, Heyerdahl proposed that Azerbaijan was the site of an ancient advanced civilisation.
He believed that natives migrated north through waterways to present-day Scandinavia using ingeniously constructed vessels made of skins that could be folded like cloth. When voyagers travelled upstream, they conveniently folded their skin boats and transported them on pack animals.
On Heyerdahl's visit to Baku in 1999, he lectured at the Academy of Sciences about the history of ancient Nordic Kings. He spoke of a notation made by Snorri Sturluson, a 13th-century historian-mythographer in Ynglinga Saga, which relates that "Odin (a Scandinavian god who was one of the kings) came to the North with his people from a country called Aser." (see also House of Ynglings and Mythological kings of Sweden).
Heyerdahl accepted Snorri's story as literal truth, and believed that a chieftain led his people in a migration from the east, westward and northward through Saxony, to Fyn in Denmark, and eventually settling in Sweden.
Heyerdahl claimed that the geographic location of the mythic Aser or Æsir matched the region of contemporary Azerbaijan – "east of the Caucasus mountains and the Black Sea".
"We are no longer talking about mythology," Heyerdahl said, "but of the realities of geography and history. Azerbaijanis should be proud of their ancient culture. It is just as rich and ancient as that of China and Mesopotamia."
In September 2000 Heyerdahl returned to Baku for the fourth time and visited the archaeological dig in the area of the Church of Kish. Revision of hypothesis -
One of the last projects of his life, Jakten på Odin, 'The Search for Odin', was a sudden revision of his Odin hypothesis, in furtherance of which he initiated 2001–2002 excavations in Azov, Russia, near the Sea of Azov at the northeast of the Black Sea.
He searched for the remains of a civilisation to match the account of Odin in Snorri Sturlusson, significantly further north of his original target of Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea only two years earlier.
This project generated harsh criticism and accusations of pseudoscience from historians, archaeologists and linguists in Norway, who accused Heyerdahl of selective use of sources, and a basic lack of scientific methodology in his work.
His central claims were based on similarities of names in Norse mythology and geographic names in the Black Sea region, e.g. Azov and Æsir, Udi and Odin, Tyr and Turkey.
Philologists and historians reject these parallels as mere coincidences, and also anachronisms, for instance the city of Azov did not have that name until over 1,000 years after Heyerdahl claims the Æsir dwelt there.
The controversy surrounding the Search for Odin project was in many ways typical of the relationship between Heyerdahl and the academic community.
His theories rarely won any scientific acceptance, whereas Heyerdahl himself rejected all scientific criticism and concentrated on publishing his theories in popular books aimed at the general public.
As of 2017, Heyerdahl's Odin hypothesis has yet to be validated by any historian, archaeologist or linguist. Heyerdahl also investigated the mounds found on the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean. There, he found sun-orientated foundations and courtyards, as well as statues with elongated earlobes.
Heyerdahl believed that these finds fit with his theory of a seafaring civilisation which originated in what is now Sri Lanka, colonised the Maldives, and influenced or founded the cultures of ancient South America and Easter Island. His discoveries are detailed in his book The Maldive Mystery.
In 1991 he studied the Pyramids of Güímar on Tenerife and declared that they were not random stone heaps but pyramids. Based on the discovery made by the astrophysicists Aparicio, Belmonte and Esteban, from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias that the "pyramids" were astronomically orientated and being convinced that they were of ancient origin, he claimed that the ancient people who built them were most likely sun worshippers.
Heyerdahl advanced a theory according to which the Canaries had been bases of ancient shipping between America and the Mediterranean.
Heyerdahl was also an active figure in Green politics. He was the recipient of numerous medals and awards. He also received 11 honorary doctorates from universities in the Americas and Europe.
Thor Heyerdahl's tomb at Colla Micheri - In subsequent years, Heyerdahl was involved with many other expeditions and archaeological projects. He remained best known for his boat-building, and for his emphasis on cultural diffusionism.
He died, aged 87, from a brain tumour. After receiving the diagnosis he prepared for dying by refusing to eat or take medication. The Norwegian government granted Heyerdahl the honour of a state funeral in the Oslo Cathedral on 26 April 2002. His cremated remains lie in the garden of his family's home in Colla Micheri.
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. The Kon-Tiki Museum on the Bygdøy peninsula in Oslo, Norway houses vessels and maps from the Kon-Tiki expedition, as well as a library with about 8,000 books.
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 of 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.
Heyerdahl's grandson, Olav Heyerdahl, retraced his grandfather's Kon-Tiki voyage in 2006 as part of a six-member crew. The voyage, organised by Torgeir Higraff and called the Tangaroa Expedition, was intended as a tribute to Heyerdahl, an effort to better understand navigation via centre boards 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. Paul Theroux, in his book The Happy Isles of Oceania, criticises 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 colonised from Asia, some contact with South America also existed; however, this was only in Easter Island and nowhere else, undermining his theory of complete transcultural diffusion between the regions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Heyerdahl
Polynesians form an ethnolinguistic group of closely related people who are native to Polynesia (islands in the Polynesian Triangle), an expansive region of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean.
They trace their early prehistoric origins to Island Southeast Asia and form part of the larger Austronesian ethnolinguistic group with an Urheimat in Taiwan. They speak the Polynesian languages, a branch of the Oceanic subfamily of the Austronesian language family.
As of 2012 there were an estimated 2 million ethnic Polynesians (full and part) worldwide, the vast majority of whom either inhabit independent Polynesian nation-states (Samoa, Niue, Cook Islands, Tonga, Fiji and Tuvalu) or form minorities in countries such as Australia, Chile (Easter Island), New Zealand, France (French Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna), United Kingdom Overseas Territories (Pitcairn Islands) and the United States (Hawaii and American Samoa).
Polynesians have acquired a reputation as great navigators - their canoes reached the most remote corners of the Pacific, allowing the settlement of islands as far apart as Hawaii, Rapanui (Easter Island) and Aotearoa (New Zealand) and reaching North and South America during trade expeditions for kumara.
The people of Polynesia accomplished this voyaging using ancient navigation skills of reading stars, currents, clouds and bird movements - skills passed to successive generations down to the present day.
Main articles: Austronesian peoples and Polynesia § History of the Polynesian people
The Polynesian spread of colonization of the Pacific throughout the so-called Polynesian Triangle.
Polynesians, including Rotumans, Samoans, Tongans, Niueans, Cook Islands Māori, Tahitian Mā'ohi, Hawaiian Māoli, Marquesans and New Zealand Māori, are a subset of the Austronesian peoples.
They share the same origins as the indigenous peoples of Taiwan, Southeast Asia (especially the Philippines, Malaysia and eastern Indonesia), Micronesia, and Madagascar. This is supported by genetic, linguistic and archaeological evidence.
Chronological dispersal of the Austronesian peoples - There are multiple hypotheses on the ultimate origin and mode of dispersal of the Austronesian peoples, but the most widely accepted theory is that modern Austronesians originated from migrations out of Taiwan between 3000 and 1000 BC.
Using relatively advanced maritime innovations like the catamaran, outrigger boats, and crab claw sails, they rapidly colonized the islands of both the Indian and the Pacific oceans. They were the first humans to cross vast distances of water on ocean-going boats.
Polynesians are known to have definitely originated from a branch of the Austronesian migrations in Island Melanesia, despite the popularity of rejected hypotheses like Thor Heyerdahl's belief that Polynesians are descendants of "bearded white men" who sailed on primitive rafts from South America.
The direct ancestors of the Polynesians were the Neolithic Lapita culture, which emerged in Island Melanesia and Micronesia at around 1500 BC from a convergence of migration waves of Austronesians originating from both Island Southeast Asia to the west and an earlier Austronesian migration to Micronesia to the north. The culture was distinguished by distinct dentate-stamped pottery.
However, their eastward expansion stopped when they reached the western Polynesian islands of Rotuma (a part of Fiji), Samoa and Tonga by around 900 BC.
This remained the furthest extent of the Austronesian expansion in the Pacific for around 1,500 years, during which the Lapita culture in these islands abruptly lost the technology of making pottery for unknown reasons.
They resumed their eastward migrations by around 700 AD, spreading to the Cook Islands, French Polynesia, and the Marquesas. From here, they spread further to Hawaii by 900 AD, Easter Island by 1000 AD, and finally New Zealand by 1200 AD.
There are proposals that Polynesians may have also had pre-Columbian contact with the Americas. But evidence for this remains highly contentious.
Genetic studies - Best-fit genomic mixture proportions of ethnic and tribal Austronesians in Island Southeast Asia and their inferred population movements (Lipson et al., 2014) 1827 depiction of Tahitian pahi double-hulled war canoes.
Analysis by Kayser et al. (2008) discovered that only 21% of the Polynesian autosomal gene pool is of Australo-Melanesian origin, with the rest (79%) being of Austronesian origin.
Another study by Friedlaender et al. (2008) also confirmed that Polynesians are closer genetically to Micronesians, Taiwanese Aborigines, and Islander Southeast Asians, than to Papuans.
The study concluded that Polynesians moved through Melanesia fairly rapidly, allowing only limited admixture between Austronesians and Papuans.
Polynesians belong almost entirely to the Haplogroup B (mtDNA) and thus the high frequencies of mtDNA B4a1a1 in the Polynesians are the result of drift and represent the descendants of a few Austronesian females who mixed with Papuan males. The Polynesian population experienced a founder effect and genetic drift.
As a result of founder effect, the Polynesian may be distinctively different both genotypically and phenotypically from the parent population from which it is derived.
This is due to new population being established by a very small number of individuals from a larger population which also causes a loss of genetic variation.
Soares et al. (2008) have argued for an older pre-Holocene Sundaland origin in Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) based on mitochondrial DNA. The "out of Taiwan model" was challenged by a study from Leeds University and published in Molecular Biology and Evolution.
Examination of mitochondrial DNA lineages shows that they have been evolving in ISEA for longer than previously believed. Ancestors of the Polynesians arrived in the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New Guinea at least 6,000 to 8,000 years ago.
A 2014 study by Lipson et al. using whole genome data supports the findings of Kayser et al. Modern Polynesians were shown to have lower levels of admixture with Australo-Melanesians than Austronesians in Island Melanesia.
Regardless, both show admixture, along with other Austronesian populations outside of Taiwan, indicating varying degrees of intermarriage between the incoming Neolithic Austronesian settlers and the preexisting Paleolithic Australo-Melanesian populations of Island Southeast Asia and Melanesia.
Other studies in 2016 and 2017 also support the implications that the earliest Lapita settlers mostly bypassed New Guinea, coming directly from Taiwan or the northern Philippines.
The intermarriage and admixture with Australo-Melanesian Papuans evident in the genetics of modern Polynesians (as well as Islander Melanesians) occurred after the settlement of Tonga and Vanuatu.
Female dancers of the Hawaii Islands depicted by Louis Choris, c. 1816 - A portrait of Māori man, by Gottfried Lindauer - Kava ('ava) makers (aumaga) of Samoa.
A woman seated between two men with the round tanoa (or laulau) wooden bowl in front. Standing is a third man, distributor of the 'ava, holding the coconut shell cup (tauau) used for distributing the beverage.
There are an estimated 2 million ethnic Polynesians and many of mix Polynesian descent worldwide, the majority of whom live in Polynesia, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. The Polynesian peoples are shown below in their distinctive ethnic and cultural groupings (estimates of the larger groups are shown):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesians
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.