Did the Kon-Tiki really happen?

After 101 days at sea the Kon-Tiki ran aground on a coral reef by the Raroia atoll in Polynesia. The expedition had been an unconditional success, and Thor Heyerdahl and his crew had demonstrated that South American peoples could in fact have journeyed to the islands of the South Pacific by balsa raft.

Was Thor Heyerdahl right?

RG: Heyerdahl’s views were largely not accepted by the scientific community during his lifetime. And now, a study by scientists has proved that Heyerdahl was at least partly right.

Did Peruvians sail to Polynesia?

Six men on a raft: The Kon-Tiki sailed from Peru to Polynesia in 101 days in 1947.

Did they catch a shark on Kon-Tiki?

The crew captured the encounter with a whale shark on film. The whale shark also features at the Kon-Tiki museum in Oslo. So we knew that the pressure was on to make this sequence seamless.”

What does Kon-Tiki mean?

Kon-Tiki was the raft used by Norwegian explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl in his 1947 expedition across the Pacific Ocean from South America to the Polynesian islands. It was named after the Inca sun god, Viracocha, for whom “Kon-Tiki” was said to be an old name.

What was Heyerdahl’s theory?

The theory, published in full in Heyerdahl’s 1952 book American Indians in the Pacific: The theory behind the Kon-Tiki expedition (henceforth American Indians), claimed that the first settlers of the Pacific island world, in stark contrast to established scientific tradition, had not been of Asiatic origin, but in fact …

Did Kon Tiki make it to Polynesia?

There is no doubt that the voyage of the Kon Tiki was a great adventure: three months on the open sea on a raft, drifting at the mercy of the winds and currents. That they did eventually reach Polynesia proved that such drift voyaging was possible.

What happened to the Kon-Tiki?

After 101 days at sea the Kon-Tiki ran aground on a coral reef by the Raroia atoll in Polynesia. The expedition had been an unconditional success, and Thor Heyerdahl and his crew had demonstrated that South American peoples could in fact have journeyed to the islands of the South Pacific by balsa raft.

Why did Thor Heyerdahl sail Kon Tiki?

On this day in 1947, Kon-Tiki, a balsa wood raft captained by Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl, completes a 4,300-mile, 101-day journey from Peru to Raroia in the Tuamotu Archipelago, near Tahiti. Heyerdahl wanted to prove his theory that prehistoric South Americans could have colonized the Polynesian islands by drifting on ocean currents.

How long did it take to sail the Kon Tiki raft?

On January 30, 2011, An-Tiki, a raft modeled after Kon-Tiki, began a 4,800-kilometre (3,000 mi), 70-day journey across the Atlantic Ocean from the Canary Islands to the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas. The expedition was piloted by four men, aged from 56 to 84 years, led by Anthony Smith.

Who was the sixth member of the Kon-Tiki expedition?

Danielsson had a scholarly interest in Heyerdahl’s migration theory. He sought out Heyerdahl during the preparations for the Kon-Tiki expedition and asked if he could join. Danielsson became the sixth and final member of the expedition – and the only one who could speak Spanish.