In total, the six-man crew consisted of five Norwegians and one Swede. All had to be hardy and courageous – this was to be a long and treacherous voyage – and it wasn’t long before he’d found his team. Thor set about assembling a crew, each of which could bring a useful skill to the voyage. When making these claims, Heyerdahl was dismissed by most anthropologists with one, Herbert Spinden, exclaiming ‘Sure, see how far you get yourself sailing from Peru to the South Pacific on a balsa Raft!’ Not one to turn down such a challenge, even though it wasn’t necessarily serious, Thor Heyerdahl decided to do just that. There was also the legend of Kon-Tiki Viracocha, a native chief who is said to have set sail from Peru into the sunset on a balsawood raft. His primary evidence was the Moai statues on Rapa Nui (known in the West as Easter Island) which, he claimed, owed more to South American than Asian culture. Thor’s theory was that the islands making up Polynesia were settled from the West by natives of South America using ‘drift voyaging’ – basically building a raft with a sail and letting the ocean take you. But many remained unconvinced, including a Norwegian Explorer and Ethnographer by the name of Thor Heyerdahl. One theory, advanced in the 1930s is that the Islands were populated step-by-step from South-East Asia. 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 inhabited by people with similar customs, cultures and, notably, languages. 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.

Kon tiki by thor heyerdahl