Thor Heyerdahl (October 6, 1914, Larvik, Norway – April 18, 2002, Colla Micheri, Italy) was a Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer with a scientific background in zoology and geography.

On every page of this true chronicle-from the actual building of the raft through all the dangerous and comic adventures on the sea, to the spectacular crash-landing and the native islanders’ hula dances-each reader will find a wholesome and spellbinding escape from the twenty-first century. In the true spirit of adventure, they held on until finally making landfall on a remote Polynesian island, proving Heyerdahl’s theory possible after all. They encountered storms that threatened to tear their raft apart, whales large enough to sink them in the blink of an eye, and sharks ready to feast on any man unfortunate enough to fall overboard. On a primitive raft made of forty-foot balsa logs and named “Kon-Tiki” in honor of a legendary sun king, Thor Heyerdahl and five companions deliberately risked their lives to show that the ancient Peruvians could have made the 4,300-mile voyage to the Polynesian islands on a similar craft.įor three months, the bold young men made their way across the pacific at the complete mercy of the ocean. Will you come? …Reply at once.” That is how six brave and inquisitive men came to seek a dangerous path to test a scientific theory. “Am going to cross Pacific on a wooden raft to support a theory that the South Sea islands were peopled from Peru.

Kon tiki across the pacific by raft