7th August 1947: Kon-Tiki expedition ends when the raft smashes into a reef at the Raroia atoll

Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl aimed to test his theory that early South American civilizations could have made long sea voyages and reached the islands of the Pacific. He and his team studied ancient rafts depicted in pre-Columbian Inca culture to construct a raft built from balsa wood and other indigenous materials, which he named Kon-Tiki, another name for the Inca sun god, Viracocha.

Heyerdahl and his crew of five set sail from Peru on April 28, 1947. The raft was equipped with a small cabin made of bamboo, basic provisions, and a radio transmitter. Their journey relied on ocean currents and trade winds, without the aid of modern navigation equipment or propulsion systems.

During their 101-day voyage across the Pacific Ocean, the crew faced numerous challenges, including storms, strong currents, and the constant threat of the raft breaking apart. Despite these hardships, they managed to cover approximately 4,300 nautical miles. The crew used their fishing skills to supplement their food supplies, catching fish and other sea creatures along the way.

On 7 August the Kon-Tiki crashed into a reef on the Raroia atoll in French Polynesia. The crew all survived, and their expedition provided evidence supporting Heyerdahl’s hypothesis that it was possible for ancient South Americans to have travelled across the Pacific Ocean to Polynesia. However, the theory continues to be controversial, with many members of the academic community pointing to linguistic, cultural, and genetic evidence suggesting that Polynesia was instead settled by peoples from Southeast Asia.

[derekwood]

I was born in 1946. I recall reading their copy of Heyerdahl's "Kon Tiki", whilst I was still a young boy of maybe seven or eight. The raft was built of logs of balsa, lashed together using twine, which was all that would have been available to the South-American native tribes at that time. The incessant motion of the raft in the sea caused the lashings to cut into the soft balsa, and I recall reading of the crew's repeated efforts to tighten the raft bindings, which progressively became looser as their journey went on.

[mikepoulin]

There actually was recently found traces of ancient South American Indian DNA concentrated in the Marquesas indicating a small ancient group did settle there. It seems most were wiped out by polynesian settlers coming from Asia. Heyerdahl never denied an Asian ancestry element from Polynesia, and always insisted there were signs of mixing and cultural borrowing. The route he proposed out of Asia though, was via the Northwest coast of the US, an area which also had sea-going craft, from there through Hawaii. The other element from South America, whose seafaring abilities the Kon Tike raft was trying to demonstrate, he proposed brought things like sweet potatoes, bottle gourds, totora reeds, as well as stone work and various cultural items... He never said Polynesians were South Americans, a generalization and lie spread all over...