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The Kon-Tiki expedition was a 1947 journey by raft across the Pacific Ocean from South America to the Polynesian islands, led by Norwegian explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl. The raft was named Kon-Tiki after the Inca god Viracocha, for whom "Kon-Tiki" was said to be an old name.
- Thor Heyerdahl
- 1948
His argument was based largely on the wind and current patterns in the Pacific, which flow predominantly from East to West.
Kon-Tiki, raft in which the Norwegian scientist Thor Heyerdahl and five companions sailed in 1947 from the western coast of South America to the islands east of Tahiti. Heyerdahl was interested in demonstrating the possibility that ancient people from the Americas could have colonized Polynesia; to.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- The Voyage
- Anthropology
- Other Projects by Heyerdahl
- References
- External Links
The Kon-Tiki left Callao, Peru on the afternoon of April 28, 1947. It was initially towed 50 miles out to open water by the Fleet Tug Guardian Riosof the Peruvian Navy. She then sailed roughly west carried along on the Humboldt Current. The team’s first sight of land was the atoll of Puka-Puka on July 30. They made brief contact with the inhabitant...
The Kon-Tiki adventure is often cited as a classic of "pseudoarchaeology," although its daring and inventive nature is still widely acclaimed. While the voyage was successfully demonstrated the seaworthiness of Heyerdahl's intentionally primitive raft, his theory that Polynesia was settled from South America did not gain acceptance by anthropologis...
Expedition to Easter Island
In 1955-1956, Heyerdahl organized the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to Easter Island. With a staff that included several professional archaeologists, the expedition spent several months on the island investigating several of its profound mysteries. Highlights of the project include experiments in the carving, transport, and erection of the famous moai statues, and excavations at prominent sites such as Orongo and Poike. The expedition published two large volumes of scientific reports (R...
The Boats Ra and Ra II
In 1969 and 1970, Heyerdahl built two boats manufactured from papyrus and attempted to cross the Atlantic from Morocco in Africa. There has been much confusion about the purpose of these voyages. They were not, as it is often stated, an attempt to prove that Egyptians visited the New World in ancient times, something that Heyerdahl himself found unlikely. Instead, they were meant to test the possibility that vessels made of buoyant reeds were seaworthy. Such boats of various sizes were in use...
The Tigris
Heyerdahl built yet another reed boat, Tigris, which was intended to demonstrate that trade and migration could have linked Mesopotamia with the Indus Valley Civilization in what is now modern-day Pakistan. Tigris was built in Iraq and sailed with its international crew through the Persian Gulf to Pakistan and made its way into the Red Sea. After about five months at sea, while still seaworthy, the Tigris was deliberately burnt in Djibouti, on April 3, 1978 as a protest against the wars ragin...
Heyerdahl, Thor. Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific in a Raft. Ballantine Books. 2000. ISBN 978-0345236234Heyerdahl, Thor, & Lyon, F.H. Kon-Tiki.Rand McNally & Company. 1950.Image Entertainment Kon-Tiki(DVD). 1951.Suggs, Robert C. The Island Civilizations of Polynesia.New American Library. 1960.All links retrieved April 23, 2018. 1. Azerbaijan International. Quick Facts: Comparing the Two Rafts: Kon-Tiki and Tangaroa. 2. Azerbaijan International. Tangaroa Pacific Voyage (Summer 2006). Testing Heyerdahl's Theories about Kon-Tiki 60 Years Later. 3. Thor Heyerdahl’s Research Foundation. Kon-Tiki Museum.
Feb 12, 2019 · The Kon-Tiki voyage led by Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl was a huge success and proved beyond doubt that Polynesia could have been settled from South America. One of the great mysteries of anthropology is how Polynesia – a vast pseudo-country in the Pacific spread triangularly between Rapa Nui, Hawaii and New Zealand – came to be ...
Thor Heyerdahl, Norwegian ethnologist and adventurer who organized and led the famous Kon-Tiki (1947) and Ra (1969–70) transoceanic scientific expeditions. Both expeditions were intended to prove the possibility of ancient transoceanic contacts between distant civilizations and cultures.
A nonfiction narrative about a 1947 voyage from the coast of Peru to the islands of Polynesia; published in 1950. SYNOPSIS. Six Scandinavians cross the Pacific Ocean on a balsa wood raft in order to support the theory that the Polynesian islands in the South Pacific were originally settled by people from South America.
