Heyerdahl, Thor

Heyerdahl, Thor (1914-2002), Norwegian scientist.

In 1947, Thor Heyerdahl sailed a raft of balsa wood from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands in the South Pacific. The voyage took one hundred and one days.

He made it to prove that the first people in these islands could have been Indians from South America, who could have crossed the Pacific on a raft like the one he had used.

Heyerdahl's raft was called Kon-Tiki and in 1948 he published a book about his voyage called The Kon-Tiki Expedition. The book made him famous all over the world.

In 1970, Heyerdahl crossed the Atlantic Ocean in a boat made of papyrus. He sailed from Morocco to the West Indies. The boat he used, Ra II, was the kind used by people in Ancient Egypt. He wanted to show that they could have sailed to America.

See Thor Heyerdahl The Kon-Tiki Expedition