Scandinavian
Ancestry
Tracing Roots to Azerbaijan
by
Thor Heyerdahl
From:
Summer 2000 (8.2)
Scandinavian Ancestry
Tracing Roots to Azerbaijan
by
Thor Heyerdahl
Above: Thor Heyerdahl with Peruvian children who still construct traditional
boats made of reeds, the principle material that enabled early migrations on
trans-oceanic voyages. Courtesy: Thor Heyerdahl.
Archeologist and historian Thor Heyerdahl, 85, has visited Azerbaijan on several
occasions during the past two decades. Each time, he garners more evidence to
prove his tantalizing theory - that Scandinavian ancestry can be traced to the
region now known as Azerbaijan.
Heyerdahl first began forming this hypothesis after visiting Gobustan, an
ancient cave dwelling found 30 miles west of Baku, which is famous for its rock
carvings. The sketches of sickle-shaped boats carved into these rocks closely
resemble rock carvings found in his own native Norway.
Above: Determined to prove that early man could have crossed the ocean in reed
boats, Thor Heyerdahl sailed a reed boat named Ra 2 for 3,270 sea miles (6,100
kilometers) in 57 days in 1970. Courtesy: Thor Heyerdahl
Years later, the explorer stumbled upon another correlation between Norway and
Azerbaijan. Norwegian mythology tells that the Scandinavian god Odin moved with
his people to Norway from a land called Aser, in order to avoid Roman
occupation. A 13th-century historian's description of Aser's origination matches
that of Azerbaijan: east of the Caucasus mountains and the Black Sea.
Is this story mythology or history? During his most recent visit to Azerbaijan
in May 1999, Heyerdahl elaborated his point of view at a public forum. Here is
his speech with personal notations added by Heyerdahl himself just prior to our
going to press.
Above: Heyerdahl's route that he made with a balsa wood raft Kon-Tiki in 1947 to
prove that early transoceanic migrations were possible. Source: "Thor
Heyerdahl, the Explorer", Oslo: J.M. Stenersens Forlag, 1994.
_____
I think as science advances, it will become more and more evident that we have
more in common with each other than any of us realized a few decades ago. This
afternoon I visited the Gobustan caves. From the first time I saw the carvings
out there [several years ago], I was attracted to the petroglyphs that feature
reed ships. On the way back from Gobustan, I was told that I was supposed to
speak tonight. I was told that I should speak about my relationship with
Azerbaijan and how it began. I had barely half an hour to prepare myself for
this topic, but I hope you will give me half an hour so I can tell you what I've
been thinking.
The first time I came to Azerbaijan was in 1981 [He also visited in 1994, 1997
and 1999]. There weren't very many visitors from outside the Iron Curtain who
came here back in those days. My invitation came from Azerbaijan's Academy of
Sciences. I started thinking about why the Academy of Sciences in Azerbaijan
would invite me and it dawned on me that I was in a very unique situation at the
time because I was both a member of the New York Academy of Sciences and had
received an Honorary Doctorate from the Soviet Academy of Sciences. I didn't
believe in barriers between nations. I believed in people, not political
parties.
Above: In the ancient caves of Gobustan which date back at least 5,000 years,
cave drawings depict two different kinds of boats that were used for early
navigation. Heyerdahl is convinced that people living in the area now known as
Azerbaijan settled in Scandinavia around 100 AD. Gobustan is located about 30
miles southwest of Baku.
At that time I was fighting with scientists all over the world - both in the
East and the West - because I believed that there had been peaceful contact
between nations much longer than we, who consider ourselves civilized, ever
realized. I believe there was contact by ships along the rivers and oceans long
before civilization began. Earlier this century, nobody believed that people
could navigate with the kinds of vessels that men were using 5,000 years ago. So
I was fighting with scientists from all over the world - on both sides of the
Iron Curtain - for my theory of ocean migration. I spent most of my time
answering attacks in scientific publications. I had friends in Russia who sent
me translations of these attacks. I answered back and my defense was published
in Russian. Of course, it took quite a bit of time.
Above: Roman inscription at Gobustan indicating that Roman troops were in the
region around 97 AD.
One day
I received a very surprising letter from Professor Keldish, President of the
Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow. He was quite famous on both sides of the
Iron Curtain as he had sent the first Sputnik into space. He invited me to come
to Moscow and defend my own theory in front of the Soviet scientists. I accepted
the invitation and went alone to Moscow. It was a great moment for me to address
the entire Academy, in a part of the world that was not very popular in my part
of the world at that time.
President
Keldish himself organized the questions and it was a very fair and honest
discussion. Before I left, I was given an Honorary Doctor's Degree from
Lomonosov University in Moscow. Doctor Keldish asked me: "Why don't you
collaborate with Russia and people from the Soviet part of the world in some of
your expeditions in the future?"
Left: Thor Heyerdahl in 1994 at the Gobustan caves in Azerbaijan. Courtesy:
Statoil
Now let me explain my own background as a scientist, because it wasn't everyone
that President Keldish invited to come to Moscow. The reason was boats like
those carved on the cave walls in Gobustan.
I had been educated in Oslo University in biology. As a student, I went on an
archeological expedition to an island in the middle of the Pacific called
Fatu-Hiva in Polynesia. I was to study how life had arrived at this island,
which had come straight up from the bottom of the ocean. Millions of years ago
the island had just been boiling lava. But when the first European explorers
came, there were all sorts of plants and animals and even human beings. Of
course, the study of zoology includes human beings as well. This was back in
1938.
It caused me to wonder: how did early people travel across the ocean? Europeans
never discovered a single uninhabited island in any ocean. Every single island
that could have been inhabited already was. All the thousands of islands in the
Pacific and also all those in the Indian Ocean were populated. The islands in
the Atlantic - the Canary Islands and the Caribbean Islands - were also
populated. And so this is how I became interested in early navigation.
Doubting the Historians
Scientists
at that time insisted that no American Indian could have left America before
Columbus, and no people could have reached America before Columbus except via
the Bering Straits in the Arctic. This is where I learned how important it is
for scientists to collaborate across different branches of science. I had my
university training in biology, geography and physical anthropology. I had
biological proof that someone must have brought certain plants from South
America to Polynesia - for instance, the sweet potato, which only grew in South
America. It could not have drifted alone across the ocean without the help of
man.
Left: Thor Heyerdahl and wife Jacqueline Beers looking at book about antiquities
in Azerbaijan at the Academy of Science during their 1999 visit to Azerbaijan.
Courtesy: Statoil
Historians and anthropologists told me that in South America they had only rafts
before the Europeans came. And so that's how I decided to construct a raft like
I imagined the South American Indians had done, and sail with friends from Peru
to Polynesia. This voyage on the "Kon Tiki" in 1947 was my first
experience with a small vessel on the open ocean. From then on, I began
organizing archeological excavations. My first was in 1952 to the Galapagos
Islands. The next was to Easter Island in 1955-56. That was the first time I saw
carvings of those large sickle-shaped ships. They were the same type as those in
ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. I started to suspect that people of early
civilizations in North Africa might have been able to cross the Atlantic long
before Columbus did.
We Europeans usually think that we have discovered everything, but that's not
correct. We're realizing that everywhere there were people who came before us.
My anthropological training has made me understand more and more how much alike
people are, regardless of nationality, race or physical features.
I've also come to the conclusion that we err if we believe that we are much
different from people who lived 5,000 years ago. I think that we can say with
assurance that we are born with the same genes as people 5,000 years ago were.
We start at zero for each new generation. We accumulate technical knowledge, but
our intelligence or mental characteristics don't change.
With this in mind, I came to the conclusion that the Egyptians who built the
pyramids left behind art and technology of an incredibly high level. They would
not have continued to build boats made of reeds if they had considered such
vessels to be primitive and ineffective. So, I decided that there must be
something wrong with our scientific theories. All the literature that I had read
at the university had said that boats made of balsam wood would absorb water and
sink.
So I went on to prove that these scientific theories were wrong. The Kon Tiki
raft kept afloat for 101 days until we arrived in Polynesia. In Egypt it was
said at the Papyrus Institute that papyrus reed would absorb water and sink
after two weeks. Again, I decided to trust the ancient pharaohs more than modern
scientists who have never even seen a papyrus ship. That's how I came to build
my first reed boat. Together, with an international crew of seven people, we
sailed for two months. The reed boat was still afloat.
The Buduma fishermen from Lake Chad in Central Africa, who built this reed ship,
were not used to ocean waves. The rope lashings busted and we started losing
reeds. The problem was that half of the reeds were not floating with the rest of
the ship. We were sitting there watching the reeds float behind us. When we
arrived off the coast of the U.S., I decided that we should not take any risks
with human life, but we should try again. For one month we had been swimming
underneath the vessel and trying to tie it back together with ropes. In the end
we had 17 sharks swimming alongside us, so we had to discontinue our repairs. So
I told my men, "Are you going to come? We'll start again next year."
So we attempted to make the trip again and crossed the Atlantic from Morocco to
Barbados in 1970, with the papyrus ship Ra II and with all the same crew, plus a
Japanese cameraman.
On both these Atlantic trips, I experimented not only with the vessel, but also
with the crew. I mixed people - black as black as you can get, with yellow and
white - along with representatives of all the existing main religions, including
atheism. There was one person from North America and one from Soviet Russia, one
Arab and one Jew.
We lived together so well that they all came with me again when I sailed another
reed ship in the Indian Ocean in 1977-78. That reed ship, the Tigris, was
larger, which made room for more nationalities. We sailed down the river Tigris
up to the Persian Gulf, up to Pakistan, the Indus Valley, then reversed our
direction and sailed across the Indian Ocean and came back to the entrance of
the Red Sea, where we could meet the modern world. The 11 of us were from 11
nations, from all different political inclinations, all major religions, and we
all lived together in peace for five months in the tight quarters of a reed
ship.
We received messages from the United Nations that we shouldn't push any further
because there was a war being waged on both sides of the Red Sea, where
millennia ago peaceful Sumerians and the people from the Indus Valley had traded
with Egyptians. We sent a telegram to the United Nations and recommended that
they halt weapons delivery to people who had been fighting only with swords
until Westerners had come and were making profit from perpetrating wars more
catastrophic than ever.
Visiting Azerbaijan
And so, after those three expeditions on three different oceans, I was invited
to visit Azerbaijan. I came here because I had established good contacts with
scientists in this country, and I had learned that you had something quite
sensational at Gobustan. I came to Azerbaijan as a guest of the Academy of
Sciences in Azerbaijan to see the petroglyphs in Gobustan.
The President of the Academy was driving around with me to see this country and
its beautiful nature and to meet local people - scientists as well as farmers. I
learned about his family connections the day before I left - he was the brother
of the President of Azerbaijan. That's how my friendship with your country
started.
Due to this friendship that I have with Azerbaijan, when Statoil from Norway
came here, I was invited to join the delegation because I knew so many people
here. And that's when I became interested in the fact that you have two types of
boat petroglyphs in Gobustan.
On my first visit, I came to study the reed ships that are similar to the boats
of the ancient Mediterranean. But on my second visit, I learned that the people
in Azerbaijan call themselves Azeri. I remembered from my school days that we
have legends in Norway woven into Norwegian history in such an intricate way
that we don't know where history starts and mythology ends. But the documented
history of Norway dates back more than 800 years. Traditions about the original
homeland of our ancestors were recorded in the 18th century in Ireland and say
that we are descendants of the land of the Aser.
Early Scandinavian History
We learn of the line of royal families in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. But we
didn't take these stories about our beginnings seriously because they were so
ancient. We thought it was just imagination, just mythology. The actual years
for the lineage of historic kings began around the year 800 AD. So we learned
all the kings in the 1,000 years that followed and did not interest ourselves in
earlier names.
But I remember from my childhood that the mythology started with the god named
Odin. From Odin it took 31 generations to reach the first historic king. The
record of Odin says that he came to Northern Europe from the land of Aser. I
started reading these pages again and saw that this was not mythology at all,
but actual history and geography.
Snorre, who recorded these stories, started by describing Europe, Asia and
Africa, all with their correct names, Gibraltar and the Mediterranean Sea with
their old Norse names, the Black Sea with the names we use today again, and the
river Don with its old Greek name, Tanais. So, I realized that this has nothing
to do with the gods who lived with the Thunder god Thor among the clouds.
Snorre said that the homeland of the Asers was east of the Black Sea. He said
this was the land that chief Odin had, a big country. He gave the exact
description: it was east of the Black Sea, south of a large mountain range on
the border between Europe and Asia, and extended southward towards the land of
the Turks. This had nothing to do with mythology, it was on this planet, on
Earth.
Then came the most significant point. Snorre says: "At that time when Odin
lived, the Romans were conquering far and wide in the region. When Odin learned
that they were coming towards the land of Asers, he decided that it was best for
him to take his priests, chiefs and some of his people and move to the Northern
part of Europe."
The Romans are human beings, they are from this planet, they are not mythical
figures. Then I remember that when I came to Gobustan, I had seen a stone slab
with Roman inscriptions. I contacted the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan. I
was taken to the place, and I got the exact wording of the inscription.
There's a very logical way of figuring out when this was written. It had to be
written after the year 84 AD and before the year 97 AD. If this inscription
matched Snorre's record, it would mean that Odin left for Scandinavia during the
second half of the 1st century AD. Then I counted the members of the generations
of kings, every king up to the grandfather of the king that united Norway into
one kingdom, because such information is available - around 830 AD.
In anthropology we reckon 25 years per generation for ruling kings. In modern
times, a generation may extend up to 30 years, but on average the length of a
generation in early reigns is 25 years. When you multiply 31 generations by 25
years, you come exactly back to the second half of the 1st century AD. So there
is proof that these inscriptions carved by the Romans in stone coincide with the
written history written almost 1,800 years ago in Iceland.
We all know that the Northern people are called Caucasian. Here is where
history, archeology, geography and physical anthropology come together.
The more I research the topic, the more evidence I find that this part of the
planet has played a much more significant role than anybody ever suspected. I am
working on a book at present together with a colleague, and we are halfway
through it describing our observations.
Blond-Haired Mummies
In the meantime we have contacts with the Academies of Sciences in 11 nations.
We do not want to leave anything out. The most surprising discovery was when we
contacted Communist China. They had discovered blond-haired mummies in the Karim
Desert deep inside China, so perfectly preserved in the cold climate and salty
earth that you could see the color of the skin and hair. The Chinese
archeologists were surprised because these mummies were not Mongoloids at all;
they suspected instead that they were Vikings.
But it didn't make sense to me that Vikings should be deep inside the deserts of
China. When the Chinese archeologists conducted radio-carbon dating, they
determined that the mummies were of Nordic type dating from 1,800 to 1,500 years
BC. But the Viking period started around 800 AD. It then became obvious that
these mummies were not Vikings who had come to China. Here was a missing link.
And again the Caucasus enters into the picture as a mutual migratory center.
But this is not the end of the story. These mummies were dressed in cloth that
had been woven, and the colors and the woven pattern were of a very specific
type. The Chinese themselves studied the mummies and then invited American
experts to study the clothing who determined that the weave and coloring were
typical of the Celts of Ireland. But this made no sense at all. Then we
contacted Ireland to get their sagas, and their written saga says that their
ancestors were Scythians. So, again, their roots come back here to the Caucasus.
This is only the beginning, because this is as far as we have obtained
documentation from the Academies of Sciences with which we are in contact. I
will not go into detail further, but I have also found archeological evidence
that is so striking that there can no longer be any doubt.
My conclusion is that Azerbaijan has been a very important center, sending
people in many directions and attracting people from many directions. You have
had metals that made the Romans want to come here. But you have been very
central in the evolution of civilization, and more than anything, this is proven
by the petroglyphs in Gobustan.
One thing is clear: navigation occurred before civilization. We used to believe
that civilization came first, and once people had developed a high enough level
of civilization, then they started to build boats. This just isn't true. On the
contrary, it was when people built ocean-going vessels - that enabled them to
contact each other so that they could trade and learn from each other. It was
through contact and peaceful cooperation that civilization developed.
From Azerbaijan International (8.2) Summer 2000.
© Azerbaijan International 2000. All rights reserved.
Reproduced gratefully from: