Beneath the Sands of Egypt (27 page)

The author (
right
) and Thor Heyerdahl during a lecture appearance.
Richard Londgren

I accompanied Thor to Lixus twice, traveling first to Casablanca and then traveling north up the coast. It's a marvelous and complex site, which had already been partially probed by a few earlier expeditions. Finding the location of the ancient port would be a major goal, and modern technology such as ground-penetrating radar could be put to use to outline its contours. Morocco would
be a splendid place to work, too. Here, unlike the crowded confines of the Nile Valley, there were miles and miles of wide-open spaces. Thor had been to Morocco a few times before, having launched the
Ra
expeditions from the port of Safi, and he had subsequently been awarded one of the country's highest honors by the king himself.

We needed to obtain formal permission to excavate at Lixus, and eventually a meeting was arranged with Moroccan antiquities authorities to approve our proposal so that we could immediately begin work. A small group of us, including a colleague of Thor's from Norway, traveled to Morocco for this meeting in the country's capital, Rabat. Anticipating a congenial welcome, we were instead treated to a long-winded lecture in French about our arrogance in wanting to excavate at such a site as Lixus, and our intentions were questioned. Although my French listening skills weren't perfect, I was readily getting the gist that something was seriously wrong by the growing look of irritation on the faces of my colleagues. Thor finally had had enough and spoke up, addressing our honest intentions and commenting on the unexpected rudeness. We got up and left, and I quickly called home to inform an American member of our team, airline ticket in hand, to by no means come to Morocco, and certainly not with the expensive and sophisticated equipment he had arranged for us. Thor, though, was somewhat defiant and insisted that we drive up to the site of Lixus the very next day. There we were greeted quite cordially by the local archaeologists, who seemed to be well aware that we'd be coming. Perhaps the friendly reception at Lixus was the result of a fear that the antagonism shown us at our original meeting had gone way overboard and that Thor, with his international clout, might offer a bad report. We were never quite sure of all the dynamics involved, and the speculation regarding our reception is full of intrigue but unproved.

With strange things occurring around us, I departed to the
airport to return to Tenerife while Thor and Jacqueline kept their plane tickets but decided to quietly take a ferry to Spain. The ferry was delayed, and upon arrival on the opposite side of the straits, Thor was surprisingly greeted by a “journalist” who inquired as to how he'd enjoyed his trip to Morocco. With that, the strange Lixus affair never improved much. Despite his royal connections and repeated overtures, Thor's efforts to excavate at Lixus were thwarted and eventually abandoned.

We would have somewhat better luck in Tenerife itself with the Güímar pyramids. Thor was convinced that these curious structures were the work of the indigenous people of the Canaries called the Guanches. With their probable origins among the Berber people of North Africa, the Guanches settled the islands during the first millennium
B.C.
Their culture is fascinating, and their language is extinct, but a number of words survive, especially in place-names. They raised sheep and wheat, and some lived in the countless caves that dot the volcanic landscape. Most curiously, the Guanche practiced mummification.

Through the efforts of Thor, Fred Olsen, and others, the site of the Güímar pyramids was preserved, and I watched and occasionally advised as the area was turned into an “ethnographic park.” A research foundation with the acronym FERCO (Foundation for Exploration and Research on Cultural Origins) was formed, and one of our first projects was a program of excavation that we hoped would help us solve some of the fundamental questions the pyramids posed: Who built them, when, and for what purpose? A local archaeologist, Tito Valencia, and I started by excavating a small natural cave that seemed to penetrate underneath one of the smaller pyramids. There had been local legends that perhaps it led to secret chambers, perhaps containing Guanche mummies, but a bulldozer associated with a sewer project had used the cave
entrance as a convenient place to shove loose debris. The entrance was small, and when I first took a look at the spot, Thor suggested I crawl inside and see what I could see. The volcanic rocks were sharp against my chest, and I inched my way in a body length or two. Within moments I was struck by an eerie tingling feeling on my skin and in my hair that became increasingly uncomfortable, to the point where I decided to quickly extract myself from the tunnel. As I returned to daylight, Thor began to laugh. I was covered from head to toe with fleas; the cave had served as a refuge for some of the local feral dogs, who enjoyed its cool interior.

The Pyramids of Güímar on Tenerife in the Canary Islands are enigmatic structures and an archaeological challenge.
Denis Whitfill/2000 Excavation at the Pirámides de Güímar

We excavated much of the cave and found that after a couple of short bends it ended with no secret rooms to be found. We concluded that there was no particular evidence to suggest that it was even related to the pyramid above it. Near its entrance, though, we found
some of the distinctive pottery and stone tools of the Guanche, with radiocarbon dating providing a date of about
A.D.
1000.

The Pyramids of Güímar are a complicated site, and altogether we conducted four field seasons of excavations there. The latter three involved interesting combinations of volunteers and archaeological professionals who worked together to mostly dig test pits and make maps. A lot of our digging indicated that whatever this curious place was, it had been heavily used and reused, and we often found a jumble of material from different eras, including rusty nails mixed in with old Guanche artifacts.

One of our major goals, of course, was to determine the true nature of the pyramids themselves. Old Spanish records suggested that these were indigenous constructions, and it's possible that they were used for solar worship by the Guanches. Stairways up their western sides leading to flat summits seemed to support the notion that such approaches would indeed be suitable for greeting the rising sun. There also seemed to be deliberate orientations along walls of two adjoining pyramids, which accurately aligned to the setting of the sun through notches in the mountains to the west during the summer solstice. There were some, however, that weren't buying the idea that Pirámides de Güímar were either old or native. Alternate theories included the idea that they were Spanish agricultural terraces or were piles of rocks from farmers of the last few centuries clearing their fields.

Thor found these ideas ridiculous. Building three-dimensional terraces with large stone corner blocks would be an absurd waste of time and energy, and as far as their being mere rock piles, there were plenty of examples of those, some even across the street from the site, which resembled, as one might suspect, piles of rocks. No, there was something very strange about the Pirámides, and during our investigations we visited other sites with similar structures,
including some in utter ruins on other islands in the Canaries.

To solve some of these outstanding questions, a deep probe into the pyramids bore the possibility of providing some answers. Would digging shafts to penetrate their interiors reveal secrets of their building history? If we reached the original building surface and found organic remains that we could carbon-date, perhaps we could gain an idea of their antiquity, or lack thereof. Could there even be burials inside?

Digging within the pyramids proved a very intimidating challenge. We brought in one of the best American engineers we could find and quickly learned how difficult the task would be. The pyramids consisted primarily of small, coarse volcanic stones mixed with loose soil, which presented a veritable nightmare in terms of maintaining the archaeological integrity of the digging and, more important, the safety of the archaeologists. Our talented engineer attempted to address the problem using traditional mine-shoring methods, placing beams in our initial shaft's walls to prevent the dreaded cave-in. While well suited for mining, the method failed to keep the upper stuff from mixing with the lower stuff, thus violating our need to maintain a clean record of potential strata as we dug deeper. The situation was very frustrating.

I took the issue to Thor, who with his busy schedule could visit the site only for brief periods every day or so. He thoughtfully considered our dilemma, and in short order removed an old envelope from his shirt pocket and drew a little sketch with a pencil. “Try this,” he said. The drawing illustrated a set of square boxes that, like nesting Russian dolls, could fit one within the other. We would set the first and largest box on top of the pyramid and excavate inside, the box dropping down with us as we dug, preventing stratigraphic contamination and at the same preserving our lives. When the top of the box reached the surface,
we could then insert another, just slightly smaller in size, and add more as necessary.

When I presented the idea to our engineer, he was extremely skeptical but was ultimately willing to give it a try. We built our first box out of reinforced wood right on top of the pyramid, about one meter square and two meters tall and in some ways resembling a phone booth—minus the phone, of course. We slipped the curious device into our shallow mine shoring, crawled inside, and began to excavate. It worked like a charm. Once again, as I had grown accustomed, Thor's genius was reliable. The following year we returned, but this time we had ordered a set of nesting boxes made of steel that would allow us to dig a shaft whose beginning dimensions were two meters square. With a wonderful crew of very experienced archaeologists, including an incredible amateur nicknamed “Termite,” we were able to reach bedrock in two shafts dropped down through the center of two different pyramids. The results were disappointingly inconclusive. Datable material was ultimately not forthcoming, nor were Guanche burials encountered. On the other hand, our efforts were a mere sample, and theoretically it's possible that we could have missed a burial by inches and a continued search for datable material could prove worthwhile.

Working for Thor was always an adventure, and I made regular trips to the beautiful Canaries for work sessions. Thor was constantly on the move, and occasionally we met in such places as New York City for events like the formal Explorers Ball or a press conference, or perhaps in British Columbia to investigate a possible Northwest Coast Indian connection to Polynesia (it's not as weird as it sounds). Twice he graciously agreed to visit my university, Pacific Lutheran, conveniently an institution founded by Norwegians and a regular stop on the tour of Scandinavian royalty and cultural luminaries.

Being Thor's right-hand man never ceased to be a fun challenge. Modern technology enabled our full-time cooperation, and many a night would be interrupted by the sound of my fax machine going off with the latest news and requests for information or advice that would be a daunting challenge for anyone. I, however, was usually prepared. Trying to anticipate anything and everything that Thor might possibly need, I regularly collected relevant information, and with advanced library skills and a knowledge of Internet search engines I aimed to deliver answers in the shortest possible turnaround time. The 3:00
A.M.
faxes were by no means annoyances (to me at least—I can't speak for my wife) but were an exciting call to action. I couldn't believe I was actually being paid to do this; it was just too much fun and too wonderful!

Working for Thor did have its downside. I had to deal with some of his uncivil opponents, who occasionally resorted to name-calling or other degrading behaviors. Thor did not take kindly to meanness and preferred his opponents from earlier in his career, who were stridently opposed to his theories but could express themselves without the degree of viciousness that often came with the later attacks. Thor was his own best ambassador and his opponents tended to moderate themselves when they met the man in person, when the idea of Thor came face-to-face with the reality of Thor.

Thor reluctantly accepted the role of celebrity that had been imposed upon him but recognized that it enabled him to conduct his life and work in the manner he chose. He recognized, too, that in public, he was
the
Thor Heyerdahl and a Norwegian, and should he be seen in public with a dirty shirt or rebuffing his fans, the word would be passed on. Many a restaurant meal was interrupted by autograph and photograph seekers, and there were times—especially on Tenerife, where there are loads of Europeans vacationers—when Thor preferred to hide and relax while his wife and I hit the
streets shopping. And then there were those who came to seek Heyerdahl on Tenerife, confident that he harbored the elusive answers to some of life's and history's most profound questions. It wasn't always easy being Thor Heyerdahl, but he took it all in stride and lived life to its fullest.