Other editions of book Fatu Hiva

"Thor Heyerdahl wrote these words when he was twenty-three years old, living in the Marquesas Islands. At the time, he intended never to return to civilization. FATU-HIVA is the record of an early-life experiment, the exciting, high-spirited adventure of a great scientist who followed in the footsteps of Gauguin in search of a Garden of Eden -- man in his primitive naturalness."

A young Heyerdahl spent 1936 with his bride, Liv, on Fatu-Hiva in the Marquesas Islands. They wanted to escape civilization & live strictly according to nature. Without medical supplies, they came within inches of losing their lives, but they also found the serenity they were seeking. They built a bamboo cabin & lived off the land, struggling against myriad diseases. They lived to tell of hazardous inter-island voyages, their idyllic month-long stay with the last surviving Polynesian cannibal, their mixed relations with the islanders, their failures & successes in an entirely natural world. Fatu-Hiva was a turning point in Heyerdahl's life. It was there that he began to pick up a trail that would lead to the Kon-Tiki expedition. Ancient stone figures, the presence of such flora as the pineapple & local legends all pointed to an early migration from South America. At the time, this theory was considered outrageous. Heyerdahl would later prove it not only possible, but likely.