Anthropos 61. 1966
44
Discussions of Transoceanic Contacts:
Isolationism, Diffusionism, or a Middle Course?
By Thor Heyerdahl
When two parties have so vigorously opposed each other for so long as
has been the case with the diffusionists and the isolationists in American anthro-
P°l°gy, must we take side and assume that one group is wrong and the other
Hght ? Could it not be that each group fails to see certain existing virtues in
the opponent’s observations because each one approaches the opponent’s
arguments as an indivisible entity that has to be accepted or rejected en block?
For anybody who has witnessed the frequently heated discussions between the
two schools of opinion during the last number of decades, and not least for
those who intentionally or involuntarily have been involved in the combat, it
rnust gradually have appeared obvious that each school counts supporters
who are thoroughly convinced of the justification of their view, and whose
scholarly standing is otherwise sufficiently highly rated to merit reasonable
attention.
It is beyond the scope of the present discussion to enumerate the scholars
°f the present century who have had, or still have, conflicting views on whether
°r not Columbus was the first navigator to reach the New World by sea. It is
sufficiently well known that the followers of the Vienna school have defended
the principles of diffusion according to the “Kulturkreislehre”, whereas
Fastian’s view of a psychic unity of mankind was shared by an increasing
uumber of Anglo-American anthropologists who argued that cultural analogies
w ere to be ascribed to independent evolution along parallel lines. Whereas
the diffusionist school continued to muster remarkable parallels between the
c ultures of the Old and the New Worlds, their opponents, the independent
e volutionists, or isolationists, refused to accept the arguments as valid proof
°f contact, insisting that the inventive human mind would be apt to react in a
Sl milar way to the same environmental challenge on either side of a geographical
harrier.
A couple of decades ago, the great majority of modern scholars, and
ffiore particularly those of Anglo-American or Scandinavian training, had
ac cepted the isolationist’s way of reasoning, and thus rejected collectively the