Travel to South America

The Inca Trail, Cusco & Machu Picchu, 3rd: Includes the Vilcabamba Trek & Lima City Guide

Format: Paperback
Author: Richard Danbury
ReleaseDate: 01 November, 2005
Publisher: Trailblazer Publications
Rating:

Sidebar Information Erroneous/Out of Date
97) and thought readers would find it helpful to know that the information in the sidebar is significantly out of date. As the author of "The Complete Guide to Easter Island" (Easter Island Foundation, 2004), I recently read with keen interest the sidebar "The Incas and Easter Island" in the 2005 edition of "The Inca Trail" (p. In one case, it is completely erroneous.

While it is true that Thor Heyerdahl compared Inca and Easter Island stonework and, while they are superficially similar, its vitally important to distinguish between the solid stone masonry of the Inca and the rock-filled veneer of Easter Island ahu (platform) construction. Moreover, only one ahu on Easter Island (at Vinapu) really significantly resembles Inca stonework and, besides, the earliest available date for Peruvian polygonal block masonry is after 1440 ce, while that for comparable stonework on Easter Island is c. 1200 ce, so the parallel isn't particularly robust.

More crucially, when the author says that "Heyerdahl spectacularly proved that it is possible to float from Peru to Easter Island on a raft when in 1948 he did just that aboard his reed raft, Kon Tiki", the reader should know that Heyerdahl's expedition did not go to Easter Island. Nor was Easter Island the expedition's intended destination. The Kon-Tiki raft actually beached in the Tuamotus, 2000 miles northwest of Easter Island.

True, Heyerdahl proved that a raft could drift from South America westward into the Pacific, but rarely given much attention is the fact that the Kon-Tiki raft had to be towed 50 nautical miles out to sea by a tug boat before beginning his long and courageous journey because of the strong Humboldt Current off the Peruvian coast. Hardly representative of the way ancient Peruvian seafarers would have dealt with the daunting task, assuming they even could have.

Finally, to say that it is sad that Heyerdahl's theories have never been accepted by mainstream scientists makes it sound as if he's a misunderstood maverick who will one day be vindicated -- yet I'm constrained to point out that his theories and methods are understood unequivocally and few lament the loss of, say, the Ptolemaic view of the cosmos, precisely because it was wrong and still is. The problem with Heyerdahl's theories isn't just that no Peruvian evidence has turned up on Easter Island but that an overwhelming array of other evidence -- linguistic, socio-cultural, osteological, and genetic -- proves conclusively that the Easter Islanders are the direct descendants of Polynesians. Heyerdahl tried to assert that two waves of settlers -- one Polynesian, another South American -- visited Easter Island (a theory he tried to bolster by references to Easter Island legends which have turned out to be unsupported by scientific fact). But this was emphasized only after the evidence indicating Polynesian origins proved impossible to refute. And while the presence of the sweet potato on Easter Island clearly suggests some form of South American contact, the prevailing theory is that eastern Polynesians visited South America and returned, spreading the sweet potato as they migrated further eastward across the Pacific.

So, if I may be so bold, when the author says that Heyerdahl's theory is an "intriguing possibility", it's really neither. Even a possibility must be grounded in some plausible facts and Heyerdahl's theories don't hold up to scrutiny. There continues to remain some unanswered "mysteries" about Easter Island (though far fewer than most tabloids and "ancient astronaut" authors would have us believe) -- but Heyerdahl's defunct theories aren't among them.

This may all seem like a small matter but, when it comes to Easter Island, the more accurate we can get, the better!.

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Related products:
click image or link for details on these South America travel books.

	Cuzco Region of Peru - Machu Picchu Map by ITMB (Travel Reference Map)
	Lonely Planet Peru
	Frommer's Peru (Frommer's Complete)