The Outstanding Achievement of Thor Heyerdahl and How it Changed the World – Part I

When the early Europeans began sailing around the world, one of the biggest problems they ran into was avoiding scurvy, a disease caused by a deficiency of vitamin C, and fatal, if untreated. It was first noted in 1550 BC, as a relatively rare and mysterious ailment, striking on land during long campaigns and overland journeys when fresh provisions failed. By the time of the Crusades, this “land scurvy” had become a curse in Egypt. As described in the twelfth century, “Soldiers with violent pains in the feet and ankles, their gums became swollen, their teeth loose and useless, while their hips and shin bones first turn black and putrefied that finally lead to an easy and peaceful death claimed them from their suffering.”
    It began with a general feeling of fatigue, followed by flagging spirits and then unbearable joint pain. While misdiagnosed and misunderstood, it took its toll on long marches of troops across vast deserts such as in Egypt or other areas, especially where citrus was unavailable for long periods of time. By the 13^th century, during the 7^th Crusade, Jean Joinville wrote: “the disorder soon increased so much in the army that the barbers were forced to cut away very large pieces of flesh from the gums to enable their patients to eat.”

The Age of Sail ushered in long sea voyages, sometimes taking several years sailing around the world 

At sea, scurvy set in on long voyages or when crews ran out of fresh food supplies. While the disease takes approximately six weeks to set in, on more than month long voyages, it struck down entire crews. There are stories of Spanish galleons found floating, staffed only by the dead. The disease was nicknamed “purpura nautica” for the purplish bruises that served as the first indication of its occurring.
    It has been estimated that as many as two million sailors died of scurvy between 1500-1800 AD, among those were Vasco de Gama in 1499 claiming 116 to 170 men. In 1520, Magellan’s round the world journey was wracked by scurvy, claiming most of the men not left to fend for themselves on a distant shore or killed by natives in the final battle. His voyage returned with only 18 out of the 230 men who originally set sail.
    As a result of this historical knowledge, most theorists claim that Lehi’s voyage had to have stopped off at various islands or ports in order to replenish food supplies and water. However, while this was a standard practice among European mariners during the Age of Sail, it was not the only way to deal with such matters, which included having sufficient Vitamin C on board a long voyage—for once the European mariners learned the cause of scurvy, means were developed to offset the danger by carrying fruit juices and citrus, such ass oranges, lemons and grapefruit on long voyages, and supplementing this with kiwis and guavas while at sea.
    In addition, theorists, by extension and not understanding the factors involved in deaths at sea on long voyages, believe that such voyages require stops for food period! However, that too, is a fallacy. It was Thor Heyerdahl, in the mid 1940s who understood how to compensate for acquiring food on such voyages, when planning his Kon-Tiki expedition. He set sail on the 28th April 1947 when Thor was 33, to prove to the world that long distance oceanic voyaging without any sophisticated equipment, and without planned stopovers for replenishment of food supplies, was possible. 
    In the 1940s among all anthropological scientists, as well as even today among a stubbornly large number, believed that all significant migrations of man around the planet occurred only by land, especially to the Americas over a route across a Siberian Land Bridge (even though the glacial dates now known do not support such a route). Thus, when Heyerdahl broke with tradition and suggested man arrived in the New World via ship, he was black-listed and ridiculed by other anthropologists.

The raft Kon-Tiki drifting with the currents from South America to Polynesia 

However, Heyerdahl believed that man had utilized favorable ocean currents and prevailing winds many times in the past, either for trade purposes or when unfavorable events such as war or natural catastrophes forced people to leave their homeland. While Heyerdahl proved his views through the Kon-Tiki expedition, his main value to the argument of immigration via boat has been seldom considered.
    The Norwegian adventurer and ethnographer with a background in zoology, botany, and geography, showed that slow moving sailing rafts would foster marine growth, creating their own ecosystem. Fish would shelter in the shadows of the hull and attract bigger fish, while birds would stop to rest in the rigging and would often find tasty morsels hiding amongt the weed growth along the waterline. This wide range of wildlife provided the hunter with a veritable larder of food during a relaxing sail down wind and down current.
    While the Kon-Tiki crew took provisions, they found it not difficult to also catch plentiful numbers of fish, particularly flying fish (left), “dolphin fish,” yellowfin tuna, bonito and shark. As Heyerdahl wrote of his voyage, “There was not a day on our whole voyage on which fish were not swimming round the raft and could easily be caught. Scarcely a day passed without flying fish coming on board of their own accord. It even happened that large bonitos, delicious eating, swam on board with the masses of water that came from astern and lay kicking on the raft when the water had vanished down between the logs as a sieve. To starve to death on such a drift voyage would have been impossible.”
    Obviously, this is something the Lord would have known long before Heyerdahl, and could well have instructed Nephi to incorporate a type of larder collection of his own on the design and construction of his own ship—after all, speed was not the essential ingredient, but sturdy and survivability. As long as Nephi’s ship was drifting with the current, fish would have been plentiful about his vessel.

Flying Fish were in abundance on board Kon-Tiki, easily caught and made for tasty eating 

The Exocoetidae are a family of marine fish in the order Beloniformes class Actinopterygii, known colloquially as flying fish. About 64 species are grouped in seven to nine genera and are found in all of the oceans of the world and are commonly located in the epipelagic zone, or top layer of the ocean to a depth of about 600 feet. While they cannot fly in the same way as a bird does, flying fish can make powerful, self-propelled leaps out of water where their long wing-like fins enable gliding for considerable distances above the water's surface. The Exocet missile is named after them, as variants are launched from underwater, and take a low trajectory, skimming the surface, before striking their prey. 
   Numerous morphological features give these flying fish the ability to leap above the surface of the ocean. One such feature is fully broadened neural arches, which allows a provides a rigid and sturdy vertebral column that is beneficial in flight, giving it aerodynamic advantages and increasing its direction in flight of about 160-feet, staying aloft for 30 seconds or more. Using updrafts and the leading edge of waves, can propel the flying fish over distances of up to 1300 feet at speeds of 40 miles an hour. It is typical for such fish to often accidentally land on the decks of smaller vessels.
    The point is, that these fish are everywhere, and often fly onto slow-moving boats and ships. In the case of Kon-Tiki, they often flooded the deck during its three-month voyage on the open sea, drifting at the mercy of the winds and currents. That the vessel eventually reached Polynesia proved that such drift voyaging was possible. It is also obvious that Heyerdahl’s drift voyage teaches us that Nephi would not have had to “island-hop” across the Pacific as so many writers theorize who do not understand the workings of the sea in such situations.
    In addition, water collection could have been accomplished in many ways, including chewing thirst-quenching moisture out of raw fish. And if the fish is large, it is a fairly simple matter to cut holes in its side, which soon become filled with ooze from the fish’s lymphatic glands—it does not taste all that good, but certainly quenches one’s thirst. 
   Again, it is obvious the Lord knows all such things and could have instructed Nephi on the mountain where he went often to receive special instruction of the Lord (1 Nephi 18:3). In addition, while we are just now beginning to understand the “rivers of the ocean,” that is the currents that move in the seas of the world, the Lord has always known, having organized them initially, and such instruction could simply have been where and how to find both food and water, the latter from capturing rain from squalls and storms at sea.
(See the next post, “The Outstanding Achievement of Thor Heyerdahl and How it Changed the World – Part II,” for more on the Heyerdahl Kon-Tiki voyage and how it changed our understanding of ocean voyages)