"Civilization grew in the beginning from the minute that we had communication - particularly communication by sea that enabled people to get inspiration and ideas from each other and to exchange basic raw materials"
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Heyerdahl is selling a romance of civilization that’s also a rebuke to the tidy, landlocked story most textbooks prefer. For an explorer who built reed boats and crossed oceans to prove points with his body, “communication by sea” isn’t metaphorical flourish; it’s an argument from lived spectacle. He frames civilization not as an internal miracle of “great men” or isolated genius, but as a network effect: culture accelerates the moment people can reliably reach strangers, trade, imitate, and argue.
The intent is quietly polemical. By placing the origin of civilization at the advent of communication, he demotes conquest and kingship and promotes contact. The subtext is anti-parochial: if ideas and “basic raw materials” circulate, then purity myths collapse. Civilizations aren’t sealed jars; they’re busy ports. That’s a pointed stance for the 20th century, when archaeology and anthropology were still shaking off diffusion-versus-isolation debates, and when nationalist narratives loved to claim indigenous exceptionalism or pristine beginnings.
It also reveals Heyerdahl’s signature bias: he’s happiest when the sea gets to be the engine of history. “Minute” is doing work here, overstating for effect to make interconnection feel like a switch being flipped. The line compresses centuries of messy development into a clean causal chain because he wants the reader to feel an almost modern truth: infrastructure shapes imagination. Build routes, and you don’t just move goods; you manufacture possibility.
The intent is quietly polemical. By placing the origin of civilization at the advent of communication, he demotes conquest and kingship and promotes contact. The subtext is anti-parochial: if ideas and “basic raw materials” circulate, then purity myths collapse. Civilizations aren’t sealed jars; they’re busy ports. That’s a pointed stance for the 20th century, when archaeology and anthropology were still shaking off diffusion-versus-isolation debates, and when nationalist narratives loved to claim indigenous exceptionalism or pristine beginnings.
It also reveals Heyerdahl’s signature bias: he’s happiest when the sea gets to be the engine of history. “Minute” is doing work here, overstating for effect to make interconnection feel like a switch being flipped. The line compresses centuries of messy development into a clean causal chain because he wants the reader to feel an almost modern truth: infrastructure shapes imagination. Build routes, and you don’t just move goods; you manufacture possibility.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ocean & Sea |
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