Thor Heyerdahl's 100th Birthday Marked by a Google Doodle

Google on Monday is celebrating the 100th birth anniversary of Thor Heyerdahl with an animated doodle. The Norwegian 'ethnographer and adventurer' Thor Heyerdahl was most famous for his 8,000km 'Kon-Tiki' voyage across the Pacific Ocean.

Born on October 6 1914, the subject of Monday's Google doodle Thor Heyerdahl as an ethnographer was trained in biology, botany, zoology and geography at the University of Oslo. Ethnography, is the systematic study of people and cultures where the researcher observes a society from the point of view of the subject of the study.

Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki expedition is the best known of his distinguished career, with the ethnographer showing just why the appellation 'adventurer' was appropriate for him. Sailing 8,000km in a handmade raft from South America to the Tuamotu Islands, Thor Heyerdahl aimed to demonstrate that ancient cultures could have made contact with each other across vast geographical distances with long sea voyages.

The Kon-Tiki expedition was later used as basis for the diffusionist model of cultural development, also known as 'trans-cultural diffusion', where languages, ideas, religions, and technologies spread from one culture to another. Monday's Google doodle on Thor Heyerdahl features tribal motifs, and also depicts 2 of the adventurer's most famous expeditions - with the raft on the left probably meant to represent the one used on the Kon-Tiki expedition, whilst on the right is a 'moai', an ancient monumental statue on Easter Island (Rapa Nui) that appears to be in the process of excavation.

Notably, Google's Thor Heyerdahl doodle on Monday is visible only in some parts of the world, including Russia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, most of Europe, the United Kingdom, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Northern Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Argentina. Also on this day in 2012, Google celebrated Francisco Gabilondo Soler's 105th birth anniversary, with a doodle exclusively for Mexico.

For more Google doodles, visit this page.

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