A Hero for the Atomic Age

by Andersson, Axel

• ISBN13: 9781906165314
• ISBN10: 1906165319
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-06-24
• Publisher: Peter Lang Pub Inc

Summary

In English and many other languages the name 'Kon-Tiki¿ has become a byword for adventure and the exotic. The journey of the Kon-Tiki from Peru to Polynesia in 1947 became one of the founding myths of the postwar world. In the voyage of six Scandinavians and a parrot on a balsa raft across the Pacific Ocean the classic journey of discovery was re-invented for generations to come. Kon-Tiki spoke of heroism, freespirited rebellion against scientific dogmatism, and the promise of an attainable exotic world, while it updated these mythological staples to fit the times. After years of relentless media exploitation of the 101-day raft journey, Heyerdahl emerged with a story that helped to create a new postwar West. A Hero for the Atomic Age tells the story of how Heyerdahl managed to construct a raft that he sailed from Callao in Peru to the Tuamotu Islands in French Polynesia, and explains how he turned this physical crossing into an epic story that became imbued with a universal appeal. The book also addresses, for the first time, the controversial topic of the racist theories underlying Heyerdahl¿s pseudo-scientific argument for the existence of a white culture-bearing race that had initiated all the world¿s great civilizations.