Thor Heyerdahl: Encyclopedia II - Thor Heyerdahl - The Kon-Tiki Expedition

Thor Heyerdahl - The Kon-Tiki Expedition

This expedition demonstrated there were no technical reasons to prevent people from South America from having settled the Polynesian Islands. Nevertheless most anthropologists continue to believe, based on linguistic, physical and genetic evidence, that Polynesia was settled from west to east, migration having begun from the Asian mainland.

In the Kon-Tiki Expedition, Heyerdahl and a small team went to South America, where they used balsawood and other native materials to construct the Kon-Tiki raft. Kon-Tiki was inspired by old drawings made by the spanish Conquistadors of Inca rafts. After a 101 day, 4,300 mile journey across the Pacific Ocean, it smashed into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands on August 7, 1947, showing that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America. The only modern technology the expedition had was a radio. For food, they lived off the fruit of the ocean. The documentary of the expedition, itself entitled Kon-Tiki, won an Academy Award in 1951.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The Kon-Tiki Expedition", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki