Early Man and the Ocean Quotes

“An outsider may wonder how deep a specialist must dig his hole before he realizes that he has lost sight of the horizon...”
― Thor Heyerdahl, Early Man and the Ocean: A Search for the Beginnings of Navigation & Seaborne Civilizations

“When specialization becomes so narrow that an archaeologist digging in tropic Ecuador is deemed incompetent on archaeology in tropic Mexico, then the reverse must be also the case, and it seems apparent that specialists are not the best people to draw broad conclusions. Unfortunately, too few universities are so far prepared to educate students to become specialists in horizontal research, i.e., train them to acquire an academic ability to piece together the fragments that vertical research brings forth from its deep trenches.”
― Thor Heyerdahl, Early Man and the Ocean: A Search for the Beginnings of Navigation & Seaborne Civilizations

“We are critical of the priests who burned the paper books of the Aztecs because contemporary Europe looked down upon the non-Christian Americans and wanted to destroy their heathen beliefs. But we ourselves have so little esteem for these same beliefs that although the most important ones were recorded by the early Spaniards, we reject them as the fables of primitive nations.”
― Thor Heyerdahl, Early Man and the Ocean: A Search for the Beginnings of Navigation & Seaborne Civilizations