Kon-Tiki raft at the Kon-Tiki Museum. Public-domain photograph by Daderot, Wikimedia Commons.
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In 1947, Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl and five companions crossed part of the Pacific Ocean on a simple raft called Kon-Tiki. The raft was built mainly from balsa logs and was designed to resemble Indigenous South American rafts. Heyerdahl wanted to show that ancient people from South America could, in principle, have travelled to Polynesia by sea. After 101 days, the crew reached the Tuamotu Islands. The voyage proved such a journey was physically possible, although modern genetic and archaeological evidence shows Polynesian settlement primarily came from peoples moving eastward from Asia.
