On April 28, 1947, a raft called "Kontiki" left port in Peru and entered the east-west current to begin a great voyage.
On this simple raft, there were only six people and one bird. Their goal was to plan to spend 30 days drifting tens of thousands of nautical miles, crossing the Pacific Ocean and reaching the Polynesian Islands in completely unpowered conditions, thus testing an anthropological theory.
This is a documentary novel written by the Danish modern explorer Thor Heyerdahl based on real experiences, "The Lone Raft Is Heavy Ocean". When the novel was published in 1950, it immediately caused a sensation, and it was reprinted more than ten times, and translations in various languages were published in 67 countries around the world. Some countries have also made this book a must-read extracurricular book for secondary school students.
Their voyage was made into the film Kon-tiki, which won the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary Film in 1951. In 2012, the new version of the movie "Lone Raft Heavy Ocean" was released worldwide. It was the most invested and home-grossing film in Norwegian history and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Why did the original slightly bland sailing trip cause a huge sensation around the world? In particular, this novel, eight years after the release of the Chinese edition, the famous poet Haizi was lying on the track at Shanhaiguan, carrying four books, one of which was "Lone raft heavy ocean", and his famous verse: "Facing the sea, spring and warm flowers" is said to be inspired by this story.
Perhaps, the secret lies in the fact that this is not only a storybook that records ocean exploration, but also a story of how human beings have used courage and faith to expand their understanding of the frontier again and again, and forge one great epic after another.
In 1937, the day after their marriage, Thor Heyerdahl took his wife on a museum expedition to a small island in the Polynesian archipelago in the South Pacific called FatoHeva. They eat and live with the local natives and survive in the most primitive way.
By chance, Thor Heyerdahl heard the old man of Polynesia tell the story of the sun god Tiki who led his ancestors from a great power on the other side of the sea to the islands where they now live. Heyerdahl suddenly remembered that the ancient stone statues in the forest were quite similar to the remains of the human beings in South America who worshipped the sun god. Could it be that the ancestors of these islands migrated not from Asia in the west, as historians recognize, but from south America in the east?
If this ancient legend is true, it would subvert the existing understanding of human origin and migration. This is an unprecedented major issue.
In the years that followed, Thor Heyerdahl devoted himself to the study of the problem, completing his thesis "A Study of the Prehistoric Relations of Polynesia and the Americas." In it, he made a shocking assertion that the first inhabitants of the Pacific Islands crossed the ocean in the 5th century.
But academics scoff at this view, almost all of them fiercely opposed, because according to common sense, the choppy Pacific Ocean is a chasm that ancient humans could not cross, and they could not cross the Pacific Ocean by non-modern means of navigation.
Heyerdahl was not intimidated by academic authority, nor did he blindly deny his own judgment, but decided to reproduce the travels of the ancients, make a raft in the original way, rely on ocean currents and sails from South America to the South Pacific Islands, and prove his point with examples
Overcoming all odds, he gathered five volunteers, modeled exactly on the style of the ancient Indians, and built a raft out of wood from the Andes and named it "kon-tiki", the legendary leader of the first South Americans to reach Polynesia and the name of the sun god of the ancient Inca era.
On the way, when some of his companions were almost crushed by the scorching sun, storm, terrifying waves, and sharks, and begged to fix the raft with wire, Heyerdahl resolutely threw the only bundle of wire into the sea, as a sign that the ship was broken.
The vast sea, the lone raft bravely marched. But the difficulties they face are also unprecedented.
There was a shortage of food and fresh water in the sea, and soon the water they brought from the shore deteriorated and could not be drunk. The team members chewed the water in the raw fish to quench their thirst; cut the fish into pieces, wrapped in a piece of bridle and twisted, and squeezed out the juice; dug a hole in the side of the big fish, and the fish's lymph gland fluid would gradually fill the hole and drink it in one bite; chew the ancient plus leaves containing cocaine to reduce the feeling of thirst, and even drink seawater in an emergency without getting sick.
Sailing through the ocean, they were also attacked by various ferocious creatures. The big wave lifted the shark up, higher than the simple raft, and it opened its sharp mouth to pounce on them, and in a few seconds, the shark seemed to swim directly on the raft. The octopus's feet are extremely long and can reach every corner of the raft. Each of them was armed with a large knife, ready to be circumvented by the octopus's feet at night, cutting off its feet as they were dragged out of their sleeping bags. They also had to take harpoons and fight cruel and gluttonous sharks on the edge of the raft. At night, there were also big dolphins climbing up to the raft, making the team members wake up wet.
There is also the loneliness and loneliness between the endless sea and the sky, which is often more unbearable. The fresh salty smell in the air, the clean turquoise that surrounded them, seemed to wash away their bodies and souls. To someone on a raft, all questions of life and death seem false. Only the boundless sea that surrounds you is real. And the sea sometimes ignored this small raft, as if to think that it was a natural object, and sometimes became a terrible enemy, using the terrifying waves to stop them from advancing.
But eventually, the raft reached a small island in the Polynesian archipelago. Except for the parrot who likes to explode Spanish and swear, who died in a sea storm, all 6 people landed safely and later returned to the civilized world safely.
In fact, we always underestimate the human desire to survive and the courage and wisdom inspired by this desire. Great deeds are not only accomplished by strength, but also by unswerving faith.
Many people still insist on their own views in the face of the ridicule of most people, and in order to prove themselves, they choose to personally prove that their assumptions are correct, even if the process is extremely dangerous, so the book tells such a truth: you think that something is worth doing, do it, even if it sounds extremely absurd, as long as you start to do it, you will find that things are not so difficult.
Although the voyage was measured from a simple pragmatic point of view, they merely proved the behavior of ancient humans and did not produce new value. But rather than the stereotypes that linger in people's minds, such expeditions are a strong symbol of human indomitable spirit and have a powerful appeal.
Before starting the voyage, most anthropologists and historians considered it nonsense. Because it has a hard wound: even Easter Island, the easternmost island in Polynesia, is thousands of kilometers away from the west coast of South America. This voyage is also challenging for today's ships, not to mention that there is no modern electronic equipment or geographical knowledge to refer to, and the only navigational tools are only the early ancestors of the primitive raft.
Thor Heyerdahl, a Norwegian with the same name as the Norse mythical god of thunder, was ridiculed by his peers and decided in one fell swoop: Who says you can't sail the ocean on a raft? I'm going to punch them in the face with action. So he planned to build rafts according to the ancient laws of the Indians, and sailed to the Polynesian Islands entirely by sea breeze and currents.
This voyage was Heyerdahl's rebellion against old authority and a stale body of knowledge, and under the inspiration of this spirit, more inventions and creations were born through obstacles.
This voyage is Heyerdahl's most persistent love for nature and human history, and inspired by this spirit, we will have a deeper understanding of the earth and society in which we live.
This voyage is also the best manifestation of the fearless heroism of Heyerdahl and the team members, and under the inspiration of this spirit, human beings will never rest on their laurels and bravely break through the boundaries of development.
After completing this feat in human history, Heyerdahl's pace of exploration has not stopped.
From 1953 to 1978, Heyerdahl led a Norwegian archaeological expedition to the Galapagos Islands, proving that South American Indians had been on the island long before Europeans; leading the Norwegian archaeological team to sail to Easter Island and the eastern Pacific Ocean to obtain major archaeological discoveries.
He also set his sights on Eurasia, leading the team to build the reed boat (papyrus boat) "Sun", across the Atlantic Ocean, proving that ancient Mediterranean civilizations may have spread to the Americas in this way; the Sumerian reed ship "Tigris", a maritime expedition around the Arabian Peninsula, proving the maritime connection between the three ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Indus Valley.
These great expeditions have been written into books such as "The Secret of Easter Island", "The Expedition of the Sun Grass Boat", "Green Sabbath" and other books, which have set off a continuous boom around the world.
On 18 April 2002, Norwegian biologist, navigator and anthropologist Tor Heyerdahl died in Italy at the age of 87.
On April 27, 2006, Heyerdahl's grandson, 28-year-old Olaf Heyerdahl, crossed the Pacific Ocean on the "tangaroa" raft and returned to the path his grandfather had taken 60 years earlier.
"The direction of the heart, the past, life like a reverse brigade, a reed to sail," recalls the adventures that mankind has traveled, and every great discovery is a difficult trek. Those hundreds of millions of years of generation after generation of human ancestors, such as a long voyage, fight not for short-term explosive power, but for perseverance and perseverance from beginning to end.
Today's human beings, standing at the top of evolution, looking back at the past process, the confusion and anxiety have disappeared, and what remains in their hearts is the indifference of laughing at the ebb and flow of the tide, and the beautiful expectation of running to the greater and vastest universe.
Haizi carried the book with him in his last days (the other three are the Bible, Walden, and Conrad's Selected Novels). Why does this book "Lonely Raft Heavy Ocean" bring comfort and hope to Haizi in the last days of her life?
In fact, it is the book with the atmosphere of that era.
The book's Chinese translator, Zhu Qiping, is a well-known war correspondent for the Ta Kung Pao, who traveled thousands of miles with American warplanes and warships in the late part of World War II, personally reporting on the tragic and final victories of the Pacific War. Its direct attack on the Missouri Japanese army signed the surrender of the newsletter "Sunset", is a famous article in the history of journalism.
In the 1950s, he was asked by Peng Zigang, a fellow Ta Kung Pao newspaperman, to translate the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl's memoir " Kon-tiki expedition " , a memoir describing his journey across the Pacific.
Zhu Qiping used beautiful square characters to vividly describe the thrill of the "Kontiki" fighting with the monstrous waves of more than twenty feet in the cold and turbulent Humbert Ocean Current; the large octopus that can suffocate whales with tentacles, docile dolphins, and lazy sea turtles; the brave and tenacious efforts of adventurers to fish with harpoons when water is scarce, and to decompose thirst by squeezing the water in the flesh of the fish.
Zhu Qiping's tossing and turning in the Pacific Ocean is also different from Heyerdahl's drifting. But each has its own tragedy, each has its own shock. Is this not Zhu Qiping's "lone raft and heavy ocean"? And the "Kondiki" in his heart is to firmly believe that justice will win, peace will win, and the motherland will win.
To the anxious, depressed, and unable to find a way out for the eighties, this is not a down-to-earth book, which they see as a special transcendence.
Recall that on the surface, the eighties were full of ideals, but in fact, it was also an era full of qigong, obscure poems and Western philosophical masterpieces that were not translated and could not be understood at all, and in the most fashionable Western philosophy lectures in Beijing universities (similar to the gong report), the main speakers extinguished all the lighting equipment, lit candles and shadowed to tell everyone about Nietzsche, students of various majors listened to the blood boiling, returned to the dormitory for a long time can not sleep, thinking that they heard the most important secrets of the world.
The "heat" of the book "Lone raft" was in line with the mentality of people at that time, for all foreign advanced technologies, since we are all laymen, we are to use the spirit of laymen to defeat experts. What is the so-called spirit of the layman? Rely on mysterious powers that no one understands to defeat skilled professional opponents.
However, the professionalism in the story of "Lone raft heavy ocean" was ignored, and the amateur attitude was instead greatly appreciated. To this day, we should note that Heyerdahl's biological evidence is solid, publishers' advice is pertinent (there are no "black" publishers in the film), and tradition (even the tradition of prehistoric humans) is valuable.
Zhu Qiping said in the preface to "The Lonely Raft and the Ocean": "Whether Heyerdahl's theory is correct is another question, but his spirit of being desperate for science, not afraid of hardships and dangers, and bravely moving forward is worthy of our admiration in any case." ”
Management guru Peter Drucker simply pointed out in "Effective Supervisor": "Do the right thing first, then do the right thing". In the exploration of the unknown road, sacrifice is inevitable, not understood is also a common thing, it is precisely with the explorers are not afraid of danger, not afraid of sacrifice, the courage to chase the spirit of exploration, so that human beings in history again and again to move forward.
As the protagonist says, "The ocean is not a graben but a pathway, the best way for mankind to explore the unknown world." "When we set out into the unknown, don't ask where the road is, facing the wind is the only way. When the car rumbled, the dream began to hurt. The night fog is so thick, the openness is also turbulent, courage and faith, re-sculpting each face, but also let us see that the end of the road is a rainbow!