Subscribe in a reader
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Ancient-style reed boat tackles Atlantic
Ra II in the Kon-Tiki MuseumLike the great Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl, a German biologist and amateur anthropologist is obsessed with ancient long-distance seafaring.
But while Heyerdahl's 1947 Kon-Tiki and later Ra expeditions proved that ancients could have used trade winds and ocean currents to drift westward around the globe to South America and the South Pacific, Dominique Goerlitz wants to prove the opposite.
Goerlitz, 41, and a crew of eight plan to set sail Wednesday from New York in a prehistoric-style reed boat to show that people 6,000 to 14,000 years ago could have made the more complicated eastwardly journey from the New World to get back home again.
Ancient-style reed boat tackles Atlantic
Heyerdahl lived the last years of his life in Tenerife, building the Ethnological Park around the Pyramids of Güímar, where there is also a replica of the reed boat, Ra II. The Abora 3 expedition starts today from New York, sailing first to the Azones, on to Cadiz and then to the Canary Islands.
