Lecture: KON-TIKI

I loved visiting the Kon-Tiki last June in Oslo, Norway. I remember reading that wonderful 1948 adventure book as a kid. Karen did not get as excited as I did to see the actually Kon-Tiki raft restored there and the history of the adventurous and interesting personality of Thor Heyerdahl.

The Kon-Tiki was named by Heyerdahl for an Inca God. He had studied in Oslo and then as a zoologist … going to the South Pacific with his wife to the Marquesa Islands in 1936 and honeymoon’s in Nuku Hiva where only 500 people are living. There they lived and are intrigued by and study animals and their activities. In 1947 with his 6 person crew, that never drove a raft, build this raft out of balsa logs that was to go from Peru, across the Pacific to the Polynesian islands in the South Pacific going west taking the Humboldt current, as recorded by Spanish conquistadores that might have come 800 years earlier.

Heyerdahl was not considered a scientist but more of an adventurer. He had a hypothesis and would work to prove his theory was right rather than gather evidence. His hypothesis was that a Peru based people reached Polynesia before the Polynesian people (rather than the western origins of Polynesians, who he believed were too primitive to sail against the wind and currents.) His aim was to show, by using only the materials and technologies available to those people at the time, that there were no technical reasons to prevent them from having done so. The Kon-Tiki was deliberately a primitive raft and un-steerable.

The logs were 45’ by 2’ diameter and tied together with hemp. The cross pieces were 18’ and 1’ diameter. The mast made of mangrove created an A-frame 29’ high. The cabin 14’x8’x4’ high had a banana leaf thatched roof. It had a 19’ oar. The mainsail was 15’x18’. No metal or screws were used in the construction.

The basis of his expedition was that the original inhabitants of Easter Island were a race of who supposedly originally sailed from Peru, arguing that the monumental Moai statues on Easter Island were typical of pre-Columbian Peru more than any Polynesian designs.

His hypothesis (is still rejected by most scientists) argued that Polynesia was settled from boats following the wind and currents for navigation from South America. They sailed the raft for 101 days for 4,340 miles at an average of 1.5 knots before smashing into a reef in Raroia (right next to Rangiroa where we are) where they made successful landing and all returned safely.Читать далее