Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki expedition

Record summary

Thor Heyerdahl’s 1947 Kon-Tiki expedition used a balsa raft to travel from Peru to Polynesia, demonstrating that such a voyage was physically possible. Heyerdahl presented this as support for significant pre-Columbian South American influence in Polynesia. Later archaeology, linguistics, genetics, and settlement research generally support substantial west-to-east Austronesian voyaging, while allowing that limited prehistoric contact across the Pacific remains plausible. The voyage therefore matters as an experiment in possibility, not proof of the direction, scale, or demographic importance of ancient migrations.