"From where?" I asked, and was curious to hear the old man's reply. The observation prompted Heyerdahl to ask Tei Tetua from whence his people had come, to which he replied "the east": The fact that cats seem to display some sense of keen intellect probably caused the natives to name the new arrivals poto after the Polynesian word for smart, poto. In Samoa, pusi is an English derivative that was adopted with the newly arrived cat. In Polynesia, toa is the word for "brave." Cats are not native to Polynesia, but somehow feline icons are found in their primitive sculptures and figures.
In the Mayan language, toh is the name for the puma. 'The ccoa was an important figure in the Andean cultures.
Two quadrupeds!.A cat?.Felines yes, but not rats (173). To our surprise, the reliefs of two human figures with hands above their heads appeared, and between them, two large quadrupeds in profile, each with an eye, a mouth, erected ears, and a tail. It was in this setting, surrounded by the ruins of the formerly glorious Marquesan civilization, that Heyerdahl first developed his theories regarding the possibility of trans-oceanic contact between the pre-European Polynesians, and the peoples and cultures of South America.ĭuring several exchanges with an elderly Marquesan man who lived in Uia with them, Heyerdahl determined that, although prior to the arrival of Europeans, cats were not to be found in Polynesia, the Marquesans were nonetheless familiar with the creatures, and indeed, certain of the carved tiki figures seemed very much to represent felines: There, they made their thatch-covered stilted home in the valley of Uia.ĭevelopment of Heyerdahl's Ideas about the Origins of the Polynesians Finding that civilization, albeit on a vastly reduced scale, was still present there, they decided to cross over the island's mountainous interior to settle in one of the small, nearly abandoned, valleys on the eastern side of the island. On the occasion of their honeymoon, Thor Heyerdahl and his first wife Liv, determined to escape from civilization, and to "return to nature." The couple arrived at Fatu Hiva in 1937, in the valley of Omo'a. In proving that non-European cultures had the technology to cross the world before Europeans did, Heyerdahl also challenged ethnocentric notions of cultural and racial superiority.įatu Hiva: Back to Nature is the name of a book, published in 1974, by Thor Heyerdahl, detailing his experiences and reflections during a one-and-a-half-year stay on the Marquesan island of Fatu Hiva in 1937-1938. While his voyages did not conclusively prove that such exchange actually took place, alongside other evidence, such as similarities in the archeological record and in mythology, it makes it highly likely. Heyerdahls's voyages across the Atlantic and across the Pacific proves that pre-Columbian exchange between Africa, Europe and the Americas and between the Americas and the islands of the Pacific is historically probable and that the ancient world was more aware of the global interdependence of human life than has usually been assumed.
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