Aku Aku (Paperback)

by Thor heyerdahl (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Pocket (September 3, 1977)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671819186
• ISBN-13: 978-0671819187
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,022,747 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sticking By His Convictions, August 25, 2002

By	Peter Kenney (Birmingham, Alabama, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The expedition to Easter Island in 1955-56 on a Greenland trawler was really another opportunity for Heyerdahl to test his theory that the first wave of immigrants to Polynesia came via Peru and Easter Island on balsa rafts. The seaworthiness of the latter had already been proven on the Kon-Tiki expedition in 1952.

On the Easter Island expedition Heyerdahl and his 22 companions discovered that the island had once been wooded before the first inhabitants deforested it. Furthermore, according to carbon dating, these earliest settlers had apparently arrived about 380 A.D. which was much earlier than previously assumed by other archaeologists. Interviews with some Easter Islanders suggested that the island's oral tradition contained stories of migration from places to the East. Of course the biggest mystery of Easter Island was the origin of the huge statues of long-eared men.

AKU-AKU was a great adventure story and to me the most inspiring aspect of it was Heyerdahl himself. He has set the standard for sticking by his convictions against all odds from his original expedition to Polynesia with his young bride in 1937 to his death on April 18, 2002. Heyerdahl at the very least has injected much life into a stodgy academic discipline.

The natives of Easter Island by the way are called Rapanui and today a total of about 2000 Rapanui still live on the island while many others have emigrated to mostly Chile , Tahiti and North America.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Senor Kon Tiki solves the mystery, or was it the Mayor?, November 21, 2001

By	Carlton Eash (Paso Robles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

When you finish this book you will know how the great statues were made, transported, and erected. You will find that the natives of Easter Island still know how to do these and many other ancient things. But the real mystery of Easter Island is not the long eared statues, but the Aku Aku. The book is a humorous chronicle of the unexpected scientific discoveries made by the team. It reads like an adventure novel complete with the most interesting characters. You will love the Mayor who knows everything, his brothers and his pal Lazurus. You will learn how and why the natives bake chicken. You will cringe as Thor descends hundreds of feet down shear rock faces, in the dark, hovers above the crashing waves just below his feet, enters unlit haunted caves and slithers in to the solution of the mystery of the strange stones of the Aku Aku. None of it is fiction.

I have read this book many times and just introduced my eleven year old son to it. Now I find I must buy all the rest of Heyerdahl's adventures for him. Much more enlightening than Harry Potter.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Senor Kon Tiki solves the mystery, or was it the Mayor?, November 21, 2001

By	Carlton Eash (Paso Robles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

When you finish this book you will know how the great statues were made, transported, and erected. You will find that the natives of Easter Island still know how to do these and many other ancient things. But the real mystery of Easter Island is not the long eared statues, but the Aku Aku. The book is a humorous chronicle of the unexpected scientific discoveries made by the team. It reads like an adventure novel complete with the most interesting characters. You will love the Mayor who knows everything, his brothers and his pal Lazurus. You will learn how and why the natives bake chicken. You will cringe as Thor descends hundreds of feet down shear rock faces, in the dark, hovers above the crashing waves just below his feet, and enters unlit haunted caves and slithers in to the solution of the mystery of the strange stones of the Aku Aku. None of it is fiction.

I have read this book many times and just introduced my eleven year old son to it. Now I find I must buy all the rest of Heyerdahl's adventures for him. Much more enlightening than Harry Potter.