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July 14, 2015

“Am going to cross the Pacific on a wooden raft to support a theory that the South Sea islands were peopled from Peru. Will you come? Reply at once.”

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Thor Heyerdahl and the Kon-Tiki Heyerdahl was thirty-two years old when the Kon-Tiki left port on April 28, 1947. He was joined by his five crewmembers, a green parrot, multiple portable radios, a hand crank generator and batteries, 275 gallons of water stored in cans as well as sealed bamboo rods, and various food supplies such as numerous coconuts and sweet potatoes, as well as field rations supplied by the United States military and other implements needed to document the journey.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at July 14, 2015 8:20 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

Your Say

What's amusing is that it never occurred to him that he had the immigration exactly backward, or that the people who Cook witnessed navigating the Pacific in large canoes wouldn't be caught dead in a raft. He was a hard headed man.

Posted by: james wilson [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 14, 2015 10:09 AM

I think those ideas occurred to him. He was just trying to prove something. His problems were that he couldn't prove very much the way that he was trying to prove it, i.e. by building and sailing a large raft. Nor, did he have access to the tools, linguistics, genetics, and carbon dating that verified the west to east theory.

Posted by: Fat Man [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 14, 2015 10:53 AM

Back then when we wanted to do or say something nutty we cloaked it in in a scientific wrapper so as not to be embarrassed. Thank goodness we've outgrown that, and nuttitness is now a virtue

Posted by: BillH [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 14, 2015 1:40 PM

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