[matrix]

Ironic!

It is also interesting that few realize that another Norwegian, Roald Amundsen, was first to the South Pole, while everybody remembers Scott who died in the attempt.

Just think how many remarkable people little Norway has produced, Ibsen, Greig, Hennie, Hyerdahl, among others.

[CatoRenasci]

bump for Kon Tiki

I saw the original in the museum in Oslo, along with the Viking ships. Way cool.

[APBaer]

"In the Footsteps of Heyerdahl"

"Footsteps"?
He walked on water?

[warchild9]

On a sad note, in the past month, I've had three recent college graduates ask me who Thor Heyerdahl was. They really know their sports, though...

[Billthedrill]

A BTT for real adventure.

OK, I can see how the ancient Egyptians might have made it across on reed boats, but how did they avoid the merchant ships on automatic pilot, huh?

Hah. I thought you might find that hard to answer...

[Democratic_Machiavelli]

bump for the Kon-Tiki and her successors and bump for the mighty Thor! My favorite adventurer.

[backhoe]

My parents knew "Tor," and I met him when I was a very small boy, years & years ago on Saint Simons Island, Georgia. He was quite a man.

[RightWhale]

Speaking of Big Men:

Chuck Yeager flew his last military flight this week. He's retired now, sort of.

[Destro]

As described in my book Black Spark, White Fire, Greek archaeologist Theodore Spyropoulos discovered one such monument in 1971, near the Greek city of Thebes. The so-called Pyramid of Amphion is an immense, terraced, pyramid-like structure, honey-combed with shafts, tunnels and stairways. Heavily weathered and overgrown with trees and bushes, it lay undetected for centuries, mistaken for an ordinary hill.

I must have some sort of psychic power. I posted pictures of these Greek pyramids on FreeRepublic here two weeks ago. Check them out.

[Destro]

I read your book Richard and it was poor scholarship. Africa gave Greece some tools (in statue making and geographic mathamatics) just like the Phoenicians gave the Greeks their alphabet but she never gave them the spark that led to Greek civilization (All the Phoenicians managed to do with their alphabet was to record business transactions)

What your book should have asked is why was it the Greeks and not the Egyptians that created the modern human way of thinking? If they did have an Egyptian origin, how did they overcome the burden of that stunted dead-end civilization?

There is evidence that before the arrival of Indo-European Greek speakers the aborigines of what would become Greece might have come not from Egypt but from Libya and any similarity might be due to the fact that the original Egyptians also may have been cattle herders from around Libya. I have read that may be why the ancient Canary Islanders also had what seems somewhat like Egyptian traditions (mummies, step pyramids).

That is probably a more accurate explanation than the Egyptians being colonizers, something that there is no evidence of them ever doing.

[SunkenCiv]

Not a ping, just a GGG update.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[REPANDPROUDOFIT]

We had to read Kon Tiki in High School and I still remember it vividly. Does anyone know if schools still require it? Probably not. I think it would make a good birthday present for my 12 year old grandson.

[Sam Cree]

Loved reading Kon Tiki as an adolescent, along with a couple Cousteau autobiographies that were out in those days. What a romantic thing an *Explorers Club* is.

If I remember right, Heyerdahl was something of a luddite.

[REPANDPROUDOFIT]

BTTT