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N0KFQ > TODAY 07.08.10 17:13l 60 Lines 2797 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Today in History - Aug 7
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Sent: 100807/1425Z @:N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA #:13860 [Branson] FBB7.00i $:13860_N
From: N0KFQ@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
To : TODAY@WW
Aug 7, 1947:
Wood raft makes 4,300-mile voyage
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.
Heyerdahl and his five-person crew set sail from Callao, Peru,
on the 810-square-foot Kon-Tiki on April 28, 1947. The Kon-Tiki,
named for a mythical white chieftain, was made of indigenous
materials and designed to resemble rafts of early South American
Indians. While crossing the Pacific, the sailors encountered
storms, sharks and whales, before finally washing ashore at
Raroia. Heyerdahl, born in Larvik, Norway, on October 6, 1914,
believed that Polynesia's earliest inhabitants had come from
South America, a theory that conflicted with popular scholarly
opinion that the original settlers arrived from Asia. Even after
his successful voyage, anthropologists and historians continued
to discredit Heyerdahl's belief. However, his journey captivated
the public and he wrote a book about the experience that became
an international bestseller and was translated into 65
languages. Heyerdahl also produced a documentary about the trip
that won an Academy Award in 1951.
Heyerdahl made his first expedition to Polynesia in 1937. He and
his first wife lived primitively on Fatu Hiva in the Marquesas
Islands for a year and studied plant and animal life. The
experience led him to believe that humans had first come to the
islands aboard primitive vessels drifting on ocean currents from
the east.
Following the Kon-Tiki expedition, Heyerdahl made archeological
trips to such places as the Galapagos Islands, Easter Island and
Peru and continued to test his theories about how travel across
the seas played a major role in the migration patterns of
ancient cultures. In 1970, he sailed across the Atlantic from
Morocco to Barbados in a reed boat named Ra II (after Ra, the
Egyptian sun god) to prove that Egyptians could have connected
with pre-Columbian Americans. In 1977, he sailed the Indian
Ocean in a primitive reed ship built in Iraq to learn how
prehistoric civilizations in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and
Egypt might have connected.
While Heyerdahl's work was never embraced by most scholars, he
remained a popular public figure and was voted "Norwegian of the
Century" in his homeland. He died at age 87 on April 18, 2002,
in Italy. The raft from his famous 1947 expedition is housed at
the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo, Norway.
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