On Expeditions and Polynesian Colonisation...... Kon Tiki and Easter Island

“Borders? I have never seen one. But I have heard they exist in the minds of some people.” – Thor Heyerdahl

Thor Heyerdahl is one of history’s most famous explorers.  The Kon-Tiki expedition was a 1947 journey by balsawood raft across the Pacific Ocean from South America to the Polynesian islands, led by Heyerdahl. The raft was named Kon-Tiki after the Inca sun god, Viracocha, for whom "Kon-Tiki" was said to be an old name.

Heyerdahl believed that people from South America could have settled Polynesia in pre-Columbian times. His aim in mounting the Kon-Tiki expedition was to show, by using only the materials and technologies available to those people at the time, that there were no technical reasons to prevent them from having done so. Although the expedition carried some modern equipment, such as a radio, watches, charts, sextant, and metal knives, Heyerdahl argued they were incidental to the purpose of proving that the raft itself could make the journey.

Kon-Tiki is also the name of Heyerdahl's book; upon which an award-winning documentary film chronicling his adventures was based, as well as the 2012 dramatised feature film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.  He later completed similar achievements with the reed boats Ra, Ra II and Tigris, through which he championed his deep involvement for both the environment and world peace.

Walking round the Kon Tiki Museum in Oslo recently, I was captivated by the story of the expedition, how it came into being, the sometimes unlikely chain of events. I had a copy of Heyerdahl's book for a good while before I eventually sent it, along with a number of other books which I selected whilst pruning my collections at Winterborne K, to a charity shop.  My trip to Oslo and the museum re-kindled that instinct that caused me to buy the book originally.  There are numerous editions with a variety of dust jacket designs.   I easily found a second-hand copy and read it. 

What I thought:
I thoroughly enjoyed Heyerdahl's account.  It was so very readable.  I was amazed at the courage and resourcefulness of the six men...….. and the parrot!  Of course they would neither have seen themselves as courageous, or particularly resourceful although it was fascinating the way they managed to source everything they needed and the support of foreign politicians, dignitaries and naval services.   There was almost a Swallows and Amazons feel to an adult escapade!  They survived the crossing with some tales to tell, and the account of their landing on the other side of their 4000 mile sailing was heart in the mouth but humorous too.  For something different, a read out of your normal boxes, try this book.


Also in the Museum there is a section given over to Easter Island.  The connection between Heyerdahl and Easter Island centres around his investigations into the mystery of the Easter Island giant statues, or moai, (created by the early Rapa Nui people)  how they made, how they were oved and what was the origin of the native legend that the statues walked.  Easter Island is one of the most remote places in the world and Heyerdahl wanted to determine whether the island had been originally colonised by people who sailed from South America across 2,000 miles of ocean. 

Returning to the island over thirty years later Heyerdahl investigated the ruins of the island’s unique statues: monolithic human figures carved from rock, and experimented with techniques that could have allowed a pre-industrial culture to create and move such enormous figures. Heyerdahl wrote a unique history of Easter Island, based on his own research, and an interpretation of the mystery of the island’s statues that presents an individual view of world history. 

I have wanted to visit Easter Island ever since I saw a fascinating TV documentary by David Attenborough, entitled The Lost Gods of Easter Island  .  Attenborough’s documentary starts with a small wooden carving which he buys at auction and which he identifies as being one of a pair, that are figured in a publication that links the carving he acquired to another, and which he tracks down to a Museum in Russia (from memory), both being associated with Captain Cook.  Now is the time to revisit this documentary……
  

In the course of scrolling around the internet I found a novel called Easter Island by Jennifer Vanderbes.  Checked it out.  Here is the Amazon blurb:  

Set on the cusp of World War One, and in the 1970s, EASTER ISLAND tells the passionate, heart-breaking and ultimately redemptive story of two remarkable women.

Elsa, an Edwardian Englishwoman, is forced by circumstance to leave the man she loves and agree to a marriage of convenience. The marriage enables her to fulfil her great dream: to visit Easter Island and to study its mysterious history. But as Elsa becomes bewitched by the island and engrossed in her work, she fails to notice that her beloved sister Alice is becoming caught up in desires of her own, that will threaten not only their work, but also their lives. 

Sixty years later, Dr Greer Faraday, recently widowed, makes her own journey to the island. Born into a different time and country, Greer nevertheless shares Else's passion for this strange and haunting place. Troubled by unhappy secrets, Greer takes solace in her work, making an island of herself. But as the two women's stories begin to entwine and passions are played out, both Greer and Else must struggle against what society expects of them, and what fate has planned...

This title was a lucky find.  It has archaeology, biology, anthropology ………….. themes that interest me very much.  It is also a book that keeps you turning the page, and a rather clever ending I did not see coming.

False Mermaid

False Mermaid by Erin Hart

Amazon says:  AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR ERIN HART DELIVERS A SEARING NEW NOVEL OF SUSPENSE, BRILLIANTLY MELDING MODERN FORENSICS AND IRISH MYTH AND MYSTERY IN THIS CHARGED THRILLER.

American pathologist Nora Gavin fled to Ireland three years ago, hoping that distance from home would bring her peace. Though she threw herself into the study of bog bodies and the mysteries of their circumstances, she was ultimately led back to the one mystery she was unable to solve: the murder of her sister, Triona. Nora can't move forward until she goes back-back to her home, to the scene of the crime, to the source of her nightmares and her deepest regrets. Determined to put her sister's case to rest and anxious about her eleven-year-old niece, Elizabeth, Nora returns to Saint Paul, Minnesota, to find that her brother-in-law, Peter Hallett, is about to remarry and has plans to leave the country with his new bride. Nora has long suspected Hallett in Triona's murder, though there has never been any proof of his involvement, and now she believes that his new wife and Elizabeth may both be in danger. Time is short, and as Nora begins reinvestigating her sister's death, missed clues and ever-more disturbing details come to light. What is the significance of the "false mermaid" seeds found on Triona's body? Why was her behavior so erratic in the days before her murder? Is there a link between Triona's death and that of another young woman? Nora's search for answers takes her from the banks of the Mississippi to the cliffs of Ireland, where the eerie story of a fisherman's wife who vanished more than a century ago offers up uncanny parallels. As painful secrets come to light, Nora is drawn deeper into a past that still threatens to engulf her and must determine how much she is prepared to sacrifice to put one tragedy to rest . . . and to make sure that history doesn't repeat itself.

Searing novel of suspense this book is most definitely not!

De silva

The Wood for the Trees by Richard Fortey

Renowned natural historian Richard Fortey bought four acres of beech and bluebell wood and began a deep investigation into its fauna and flora. His enthusiasm for his new wonderland is infectious

From a detailed review in the Guardian: "It is hard to think of a more treasured aspect of the British landscape than woodland, which is surprising when you consider how far we seem to have wandered from the trees. We have lower levels of woodland cover (13%) than our EU neighbours yet the forest continues to thrive in the national psyche, as demonstrated by the outcry in 2011 that halted government plans to privatise England’s state-owned woods and forests.  We love the off-the-lead freedom to wander these ever-changing yet timeless spaces, to briefly decentralise ourselves from the world and experience nature’s otherness in counterpoint to day-to-day life. Public outrage at the proposed sell-off wasn’t just about the effect it would have on a favourite view or psychological retreat, however – the very character of the country seemed under threat. In its defence, protestors evoked everyone from Robin Hood to Winnie the Pooh.  

                          

So our connection to woodland is deep-rooted. It is historical, cultural and personal, ingrained from millennia of habitation, dependency and usage. The Wood for the Trees, follows Fortey as he focuses on our woodland connections and affections, using one small wood to capture a wider story of the British landscape.

 

In 2011, after retiring from his role as a senior palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum, and following a windfall from presenting a TV series, Fortey purchased four acres of prime beech and bluebell wood. Located in the Chiltern Hills, a mile from his hometown of Henley-on-Thames, Grim’s Dyke Wood is the very patch that had John Stuart Mill so enraptured two centuries ago. Though it has changed in the intervening years, it is still a glorious spot – Fortey’s initial intention was to use the wood as a way to “escape into the open air”, to record a rich ecology of living wildlife following a career locked away in dusty museums studying dead things. His particular sphere of expertise whilst at the NHM was the extinct marine arthropod class of Trilobites.  He soon realised, however, that any portrait of the place would be incomplete without its human histories, too.

“I needed to explore the development of the English countryside,” he writes. “I was moved by a compulsion to understand half-forgotten crafts …plans were made to fell timber, to follow the journey from tree to furniture … in short, the wood became a project.”

What follows then is, in one sense, an expanded diary of this project over the arc of a year, except Fortey is not just any retiree keeping notes on a new hobby. His remarkable scientific knowledge, intense curiosity and love of nature mean entries erupt with the same richness and variety as the woods they describe.

Because of his scientific background he is able to draw on the full range of expertise from within the biological and archaeological disciplines.  From recipes for ground elder soup to musings on bumblebee varieties or gruesome tales of murder, Fortey’s enthusiasm for his new wonderland is infectious and illuminating. His style echoes the Selborne naturalist Gilbert White and his approach is proudly old school. He makes clear his distaste for “fuzzy” romanticism and the intruding emotions of the observer, but he too is romantic at times, not least in his resolve to collect things found in, or created from, his patch of wood. Mouse-gnawed cherry stones, glass made from flint, fallen birds’ eggs are among the things he preserves in a cabinet made from his own timber. 

Of course, collections are the trade of scientists and curators too, and it’s clear old habits die hard. With some help from colleagues at the Natural History Museum Fortey begins a deep analysis of the wood and its inhabitants – trees, insects, animals, plants and minerals. He starts with the substrate, slicing buried flint and putting it under a microscope to identify its origins, and ends up on a cherry picker in the canopy, all in the name of cataloguing the wood’s many mice, moths, bats, beetles, butterflies, crane flies, spiders, parasitic wasps, orchids, centipedes, millipedes and weird and wonderful fungi. On a personal note,  I found the section on truffles astonishingly enlightening.  He made truffle-hunting seem so straightforward and far less hitty-missy than I had come to believe.  Fortey has a talent for imagery:  Flat-backed millipedes “look as if they were assembled from some kind of kit that clicks together to make miniature armoured trains”; the Lithobius variegatus centipede’s striped legs stick out “like oars from a Viking ship, bent on pillage”.


Interwoven with these records are peripatetic investigations into human stories, from this patch’s iron age incarnation through Henley’s boom as a thriving river town supplying timber to the capital, up to the recent snapping up and fencing off of surrounding land by oligarchs and bankers. Along the way, Fortey unearths his wood’s changing fortunes and its significant ties to local estates, country houses and notable families. Taking a broader view of British history, he reveals how its survival and ecological richness have been due to its usefulness in providing the things we need – food, fuel, coppice, charcoal, chair legs, tent pegs and brushes.

And therein lies the conundrum. The future of British woodlands and their wildlife is precariously balanced, threatened by everything from climate change to the consumer preference for cheap imported woods. In this deep and interesting book, Fortey warns that without a return to hands-on management, a renewed sense of value and increased human engagement, our native woods are doomed to become empty “rural decoration” left “to age to a kind of senility that would benefit only wood-eating beetles”. Young trees need to replace the old, he writes; “new light needs to flood in”. Not only do we still need the trees, but they need us, too.