Craft used in a voyage across the Pacific Ocean led by Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl (1914- ) to prove that Polynesian inhabitants of the South Pacific could have been influenced by South Americans. The craft, named after the legendary Incan sungod Kon-Tiki, was a primitive balsa-wood raft designed along the lines of ancient rafts used by South American Indians. Heyerdahl, a diffusionist, believed that Polynesian culture showed influences that came directly from South America. Most anthropologists believed that all Polynesians and their culture had come to the islands eastward across the sea from Asia. In a trip lasting 101 days, Heyerdahl’s expedition traveled 7,000 kilometers (4,300 miles) across the South Pacific. On August 7, 1947, the Kon-Tiki ran onto a reef in the Tuamoto Archipelago, proving that it was possible to reach Polynesia from South America using only Stone Age technology. The craft was later rescued and preserved in an Oslo museum.
The Kon-Tiki voyage from Peru to Tahiti showed that contact between the American mainland and the South Pacific was possible, but it did not prove that it had taken place. It also did not prove that South Pacific islanders were the descendants of South American Indians. How¬ ever, Heyerdahl’s record of the trip, published as Kon-Tiki (1948), brought him worldwide fame and won justification for his views. In 1961, the Tenth Pacific Science Congress in Honolulu, Hawaii, declared that South America had fathered some of the inhabitants and the cultures of the Pacific Islands.