Thorsby believes that DNA obtained from tiny bone samples from the skulls could provide important answers about Easter Island’s first inhabitants. However, 12 of the skulls belong to the University of Oslo’s Schreiner Collections. Today, most of these items are held by the Kon-Tiki Museum. Heyerdahl also brought to Norway human skulls and skeletal remains of people who lived on the island centuries ago. After a year of archaeological excavation on the remote Pacific island, the hold of the expedition ship, MS Bjelland, was filled not only with hundreds of cave stones, sculptures and other cultural artefacts. In brief, it centres on some rather contentious ‘souvenirs’ from one of Thor Heyerdahl’s expeditions: human skulls brought back from Easter Island in 1955–1956. The ‘case’ is complex and has been ongoing for a long time. Up until now, Thorsby has given brief answers when the magazine has been in touch: “We are in the middle of a process and various assessments. Seventy years after the Kon-Tiki expedition, the theory has still not been confirmed. Thorsby is professor emeritus at the University of Oslo’s Department of Immunology and one of the people who have continued working on Heyerdahl’s Easter Island theory. Oslo, 9 September 2019: The Magazine Research Ethics (Forskningsetikk) receives a text message: “I have received your e-mail. The prevailing theory is that Easter Island’s first inhabitants came from Asia via other Polynesian islands around 1200 CE, while native Americans arrived after Europeans had ‘discovered’ the island in 1722. His theories are pretty much torn to shreds by the rest of the scientific community. Heyerdahl’s success with Kon-Tiki is met by a tidal wave of criticism. Heyerdahl later publicised a theory that Indigenous people from the Americas were the first to settle on Easter Island, the world’s most isolated inhabited island, which lies at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle, some 3,700 km from the nearest mainland, Chile. Thor Heyerdahl and his crew had proved that native people from South American could have sailed to the Pacific islands on rafts made of balsa wood. Many experts consider it highly unlikely that Heyerdahl’s expedition will reach its destination, but after 101 days at sea, the Kon-Tiki raft runs aground at Raroia, a small coral atoll in French Polynesia. According to the legend, Kon-Tiki Viraccocha sailed from Peru towards the west on a vast balsawood raft. Heyerdahl bases this theory on archaeological finds, observations of plant life and sea currents, and a legend of Kon-Tiki Viraccocha, the God of all Creation in pre-Inca and Inca mythology. The expedition is the result of a controversial theory that Heyerdahl has been ruminating on for ten years: Polynesia was not populated only by people arriving from the west, but also by native peoples from South America. The skipper is 33-year-old Thor Heyerdahl. The objective is to reach Polynesia, an area of the Pacific Ocean dotted with islands and archipelagos. Peru, 28 April 1947: A balsawood raft sets sail from Callao in Peru with a crew of six.
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