Excavating Ancient Pyramids : Once Again, Adventure Lures Heyerdahl to Peru

TUCUME, Peru —  With the vigor that first brought him to Peru 42 years ago to set sail across the Pacific in his Kon Tiki raft, Thor Heyerdahl trots up the sacred mountain to show off the 26 ancient Indian pyramids that have become his latest adventure.

“It’s not even on the map!” he exclaimed, with only slight exaggeration, as he waved his arm out toward the sepia-toned adobe ruins. When he learned of the Tucume (TOO-koo-may) site and approached Peru’s Foreign Ministry for permission to excavate, he found that “no one had even heard of it.”

Nothing excites Heyerdahl more than finding an unexplored, forgotten corner of the Earth. It certainly keeps him young. The Norwegian explorer turns 75 next month, but on this hike, he leaves his younger companions breathless.

Wearing a tailored safari suit and sporting neatly trimmed white hair--gone is the long-haired, bearded adventurer look of past years--Heyerdahl has the energy of a 45-year-old. And his intellect is as fit as his tanned, slender frame and muscled forearms.

Nor has he lost his penchant for generating controversy. With the Kon Tiki voyage in 1947, Heyerdahl sought to show that the South Pacific islands were settled from South America, a theory now widely discredited. Yet he proved that it could be done. Subsequent explorations in the Galapagos Islands off Ecuador and Easter Island off the Chilean coast also fostered their share of criticism, yet they opened up and analyzed little-known parts of the world, securing invaluable data even if the conclusions were challenged.

After finishing the Easter Island project, Heyerdahl was looking for a new venture two years ago when he learned of the discovery of an astonishing Indian tomb in northern Peru. He came to see for himself and was enthralled by the thousands of ruins scattered throughout the valleys along the coast. He was also shocked, he says, at the devastation wrought by huaqueros , or grave robbers, who had torn open hundreds of thousands of graves over the centuries since the Spanish Conquest.

Heyerdahl spoke with Walter Alva, the archeologist who was excavating the now-renowned burial mound of the Moche people, about possibilities for a project. The Norwegian recalls: “Walter told me, ‘I’ll show you a place never touched by the huaqueros. ‘ And we came here.”

Spread over 650 acres, the Tucume site is a dazzling array of ruins of pyramids, ramps, courtyards and temples on three sides of a mountain that juts up from the flat plain. It requires imagination to picture the place when it flourished, perhaps 1,000 years ago, because the torrential rains that fall every few years have eroded the structures into ridged and scarred lumps.

Building on Rapport

Heyerdahl has no lack of imagination, either for finding the money to launch a major excavation, for attracting a first-rate staff or for interpreting the findings in his own view of the world. Having won over the Peruvian people in the 1940s with Kon Tiki, he is now building on that rapport to help the nation confront the depredations of its past. He does so in fluent Spanish. (Besides that and Norwegian, he speaks English, French, German and Italian).

The Kon Tiki Museum in Oslo has provided $180,000 over the last two years to run the project, a princely sum in an area where Alva battled for just a few thousand dollars for his own work. The actual digging began just over a year ago and has unearthed seven child burial sites--prompting Heyerdahl to wonder if there were human sacrifices here--and a host of less dramatic information. Remnants of ash deposit in a possible burial ground raise the possibility of cremation, not previously known here but common on Easter Island.

Inevitably, Heyerdahl also has pondered this ancient people’s links with the sea, located 30 miles away. The site is littered with small seashells, and he insists--to the private consternation of other archeologists in the area--that one of the most important objects unearthed so far is probably a rudder.

But Heyerdahl is no dilettante, nor is he on his own. Peruvian archeologist Hugo Navarro is running half the dig, and American archeologist Dan Sandweiss is handling the other half. They are backed by a staff of about 100, including 75 local people and 25 scientists and Peruvian students who leaped at the chance for some practical experience.

“While I have worked on archeological finds since 1952, I still want professional archeologists to do the day-to-day directing,” Heyerdahl said.

‘Good Examples of Garbage’

Sandweiss is pleased with the first year’s excavations and is unconcerned that no riches have turned up, because his goal is to learn about the people. “We have some good examples of garbage,” he said.

The lore of Tucume enthralls Heyerdahl, and he said the story of the site, known as “The Purgatory,” explains why it is relatively intact while others in the region have been ravaged by looters.

“When the conquistadores arrived, they told the people that this was the entrance to purgatory, and they executed those who would not convert to Christianity,” he said. “It is said that the Spaniards had big wagons drawn by painted horses with bells and horns that went through town and pretended to come from hell. That terrified the people.

“The people had more fear, more respect for this place than any other,” he said. “It was very difficult to get people to work here--the night watchman said the spirits were squeezing his throat and he couldn’t sleep. We needed to bring the faith healer to come and bless it.”

A Devil Dance

Once a year, the town still has a devil dance in the streets. “People believe a big ray lives in the mountain and comes out at night,” Heyerdahl said, which naturally is further evidence for him of the Indians’ maritime roots.

Heyerdahl has built a handsome lodge about half a mile from the site, just beyond the ramshackle town’s outlying houses. He bought 20 acres there and devotes half of it to crops, selling the surplus in the market. The other half of his property is covered by yet more ruins.

He rides to the dig each day on horseback, and he jogs as well. The staff says he has built up excellent relations with the local people, rare for the archeologists who periodically work in the region and are often seen as rival looters. He is a required guest at local ceremonies, including the devil dance.

“I made it clear that we are not here to take anything out of Peru,” he said. “I hope it will be possible to have a museum site here. I insisted that this be a Peruvian project.”

Seeks to Raise Awareness

His broader aim is to use the site to raise awareness of the historical richness of Peru and the need for foreign support to protect it and learn from it.

“It is important for the whole world to know that America was not a place of barbarians when Europeans arrived. They had navigation expertise and culture at a level of anything in the Old World,” he said. “I am a great admirer of Columbus, but we should use 1992 (the 500th anniversary of his landing) to celebrate not only the first European who came here but the people who stood on the shores to greet him.

“We should call it the Great Encounter, not the Great Discovery.”

Heyerdahl was about to take a break from his work to travel to New York for a private dinner at the Explorers’ Club with potential donors. From there, he plans to take off for Asia for some speaking, and then back to Norway for birthday celebrations.