A documentary tracks a 21st-century Thor Heyerdahl's disastrous voyage across the North Atlantic.
When German adventurer Dominque Görlitz set out from New York harbor in July of 2007 to prove that a voyage in a traditional Bolivian reed boat from New Jersey to the Azores is possible, he attracted quite a bit of sceptical, if not downright snarky press. Now a new documentary airing on the National Geographic channel Saturday, May 9, 2009 at 10 pm ET/PT, shows that the Cassandras who warned that the expedition was an awful big risk for negligible scientific returns were, without giving too much away, pretty much on the money.
The show is called Lost in the Atlantic, which might give you some sense of how things turned out for Görlitz and the crew of 40-foot Abora III (Abora is said to have been a powerful deity among Canary Islanders and Görlitz has used the name for two previous iterations of reed boats he piloted across the Mediterranean). But if nothing else, the 45 minute special is a strangely gripping look at how dubious experimental archaeology in the open ocean can make for high drama, as in the life or death variety.
The theories underpinning Görlitz's quest are warmed over notions first brought to public attention by Thor Heyerdahl, the famed Norwegian explorer. Heyerdhal sailed reed boats from South America to Polynesia, and from North Africa to Barbados, all in an effort to show that trans-oceanic voyages were possible in prehistory. Heyerdahl's achievements are legendary, and while mainstream archaeology has rejected his views that, for instance, South Americans settled Polynesia (there is actually good evidence that Polynesians visited South America), his exploits inspired millions of people to take an interest in nautical archaeology. Not a few bona fide archaeologists will say that Heyerdahl was their initial inspiration....
Read entire article at http://www.archaeology.org
The show is called Lost in the Atlantic, which might give you some sense of how things turned out for Görlitz and the crew of 40-foot Abora III (Abora is said to have been a powerful deity among Canary Islanders and Görlitz has used the name for two previous iterations of reed boats he piloted across the Mediterranean). But if nothing else, the 45 minute special is a strangely gripping look at how dubious experimental archaeology in the open ocean can make for high drama, as in the life or death variety.
The theories underpinning Görlitz's quest are warmed over notions first brought to public attention by Thor Heyerdahl, the famed Norwegian explorer. Heyerdhal sailed reed boats from South America to Polynesia, and from North Africa to Barbados, all in an effort to show that trans-oceanic voyages were possible in prehistory. Heyerdahl's achievements are legendary, and while mainstream archaeology has rejected his views that, for instance, South Americans settled Polynesia (there is actually good evidence that Polynesians visited South America), his exploits inspired millions of people to take an interest in nautical archaeology. Not a few bona fide archaeologists will say that Heyerdahl was their initial inspiration....