Kon-Tiki expedition

, the expedition leader, in 2000 Kon-Tiki had a six-man crew, five of whom were Norwegian; Bengt Danielsson was Swedish. A seventh member of the team handled administration from land but did not travel on the raft. • Thor Heyerdahl (1914–2002) was the expedition leader. He was also the author of the book of the expedition and the narrator of the story. Heyerdahl had studied the ancient people of South America and Polynesia and believed that there was a link between the two. • Erik Hesselberg (1914–1972) was the navigator and artist. He painted the large Kon-Tiki figure on the raft's sail. His children's book Kon-Tiki and I appeared in Norwegian in 1949 and has since been published in more than 15 languages. • Bengt Danielsson (1921–1997) took on the role of steward, in charge of supplies and daily rations. Danielsson was a Swedish sociologist interested in human migration. He served as translator, as he was the only member of the crew who spoke Spanish. He was a voracious reader; his box aboard the raft contained many books. • Knut Haugland (1917–2009) was a radio expert, decorated by the British in World War II for actions in the Norwegian heavy water sabotage that stalled what were believed to be Germany's plans to develop an atomic bomb. Haugland was the last surviving crew member; he died on Christmas Day, 2009 at the age of 92. • Torstein Raaby (1918–1964) was also in charge of radio transmissions. He gained radio experience while hiding behind German lines during WWII, spying on the German battleship Tirpitz. His secret radio transmissions eventually helped guide in Allied bombers to sink the ship. • Herman Watzinger (1910–1986) was an engineer whose area of expertise was in technical measurements. He was the first to join Heyerdahl for the trip. He collected and recorded data (such as weather data) on the voyage. • Gerd Vold Hurum was the person who helped Thor Heyerdahl to organize the Kon-Tiki Expedition in the winter and spring of 1945–47 as a project manager. The expedition also carried a parrot named Lorita who drowned in the middle of the expedition. ==Construction==

showing the raft at the Port of Callao (in Spanish). The main body of the float was composed of nine balsa tree trunks up to long, in diameter, lashed together with hemp ropes. Cross-pieces of balsa logs long and in diameter were lashed across the logs at intervals to give lateral support. Pine splashboards clad the bow, and lengths of pine thick and wide were wedged between the balsa logs and used as centreboards. The mainmast was made of lengths of mangrove wood lashed together to form an A-frame high. Behind the mainmast was a cabin of plaited bamboo long and wide, about high and roofed with banana leaf thatch. At the stern was a long steering oar of mangrove wood, with a blade of fir. The mainsail was on a yard of bamboo stems lashed together. Photographs also show a topsail above the mainsail, and also a mizzen sail, mounted at the stern. The raft was partially decked in split bamboo. The main spars were a laminate of wood and reeds and Heyerdahl tested more than twenty different composites before settling on one that proved an effective compromise between bulk and torsional rigidity. No metal was used in the construction. ==Supplies==

Kon-Tiki carried of drinking water in 56 water cans, as well as a number of sealed bamboo rods. The purpose stated by Heyerdahl for carrying modern and ancient containers was to test the effectiveness of ancient water storage. For food Kon-Tiki carried 200 coconuts, sweet potatoes, bottle gourds and other assorted fruit and roots. The U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps provided field rations, tinned food and survival equipment. In return, the Kon-Tiki explorers reported on the quality and utility of the provisions. They also caught plentiful numbers of fish, particularly flying fish, "dolphin fish", yellowfin tuna, bonito and shark. Heyerdahl and crew were equipped with water-tight sports wristwatches manufactured by Swiss watchmaking firm Eterna. After the journey, Eterna decided to brand their sports watches as "Kon-Tiki". ==Communications==

The expedition carried an amateur radio station with the call sign of LI2B operated by former World War II Norwegian resistance radio operators Knut Haugland and Torstein Raaby. Haugland and Raaby maintained regular communication with a number of American, Canadian, and South American stations that relayed ''Kon Tiki's'' status to the Norwegian Embassy in Washington, D.C. On August 5, Haugland made contact with a station in Oslo, Norway, away. ''Kon Tiki's'' transmitters were powered by batteries and a hand-cranked generator and operated on the 40, 20, 10, and 6-meter bands. Each unit was water resistant, used 2E30 vacuum tubes, and provided approximately 6 watts of RF output; the equivalent of a small flashlight. Two British 3-16 MHz Mark II transmitters were also carried on board, as was a VHF transmitter for communicating with aircraft and a hand-cranked survival radio of the Gibson Girl type for 500 and 8280 kHz. The crew once used a hand-cranked emergency transmitter to send out an "all well, all well" message "just in time to head off a massive rescue attempt". The call sign LI2B was used by Heyerdahl again in 1969–70, when he built a papyrus reed raft and sailed from Morocco to Barbados in an attempt to show a possible link between the civilization of ancient Egypt and the New World.{{cite book|author=Thor Heyerdahl|title=The Ra Expeditions|url=https://archive.org/details/raexpeditions00heye|url-access=registration|edition=English|year=1971 ==The Voyage==

Kon-Tiki left Callao, Peru, on the afternoon of April 28, 1947. To avoid coastal traffic it was initially towed out by the Peruvian Navy fleet tug Guardian Rios, then sailed roughly west carried along on the Humboldt Current. On July 2, Heyerdahl writes about an encounter with a rogue wave; in his book he describes a "Three Sister" phenomenon: "During a night-shift with quiet seas appears an 'abnormal huge wave' followed by two more waves. The raft is being swept up and down and is covered in water." After the three waves he describes the sea as quiet as before. The crew's first sight of land was the atoll of Puka-Puka on July 30. On August 4, the 97th day after departure, Kon-Tiki reached the Angatau atoll. The crew made brief contact with the inhabitants of Angatau Island, but were unable to land safely. Calculations made by Heyerdahl before the trip had indicated that 97 days was the minimum amount of time required to reach the Tuamotus, so the encounter with Angatau showed that they had made good time. On August 7, the voyage ended when the raft struck a reef and was then beached on an uninhabited islet off Raroia atoll in the Tuamotus. The team had travelled a distance of around in 101 days, at an average speed of . After spending a number of days alone on the islet, the crew were greeted by men from a village on a nearby island who arrived in canoes, having seen washed-up flotsam from the raft. The crew were taken back to the native village, where they were feted with traditional dances and other festivities. Finally the crew were taken off Raroia to Tahiti by the French schooner Tamara, with the salvaged Kon-Tiki in tow. == Anthropology ==

The basis of the Kon-Tiki expedition was pseudoscientific, racially controversial, and has not gained acceptance among scientists (even prior to the voyage). Heyerdahl believed that the original inhabitants of Easter Island (and the rest of Polynesia) were the "Tiki people", a race of "white bearded men" who supposedly originally sailed from Peru. He described these "Tiki people" as being a sun-worshipping fair-skinned people with blue eyes, fair or red hair, tall statures, and beards. He further said that these people were originally from the Middle East, and had crossed the Atlantic earlier to found the great Mesoamerican civilizations. By 500 CE, a branch of these people were supposedly forced out into Tiahuanaco where they became the ruling class of the Inca Empire and set out to voyage into the Pacific Ocean under the leadership of "Con Ticci Viracocha". () based on archaeological, linguistic, and genetic studies, as opposed to Heyerdahl's eastern origin hypothesis He argued that the monumental statues known as moai resembled sculptures more typical of pre-Columbian Peru than any Polynesian designs. He believed that the Easter Island myth of a power struggle between two peoples called the Hanau epe and Hanau momoko was a memory of conflicts between the original inhabitants of the island and a later wave of Native Americans from the Northwest coast, eventually leading to the annihilation of the Hanau epe and the destruction of the island's culture and once-prosperous economy. Heyerdahl described these later migrants as "Maori-Polynesians" who were supposedly Asians who crossed over the Bering land bridge into Northwest America before sailing westward towards Polynesia (the westward direction is because he refused to accept that Polynesians were capable of sailing against winds and currents). He associated them with the Tlingit and Haida peoples and characterized them as "inferior" to the Tiki people. "Drift voyaging" from South America was also deemed "extremely unlikely" in 1973 by computer modeling. Hōkūleʻa also remains fully operational, and has since completed ten other voyages, including a three-year circumnavigation of the planet from 2014 to 2017, with other sister ships. Historians today consider that the Polynesians from the west were the original inhabitants and that the story of the Hanau epe is either pure myth, or a memory of internal tribal or class conflicts. == Later recreations of Kon-Tiki ==

Seven Little Sisters In 1954, William Willis sailed alone on a raft Seven Little Sisters from Peru to American Samoa, successfully completing the journey. He sailed , which was farther than Kon-Tiki. In a second great voyage ten years later, he rafted from South America to Australia with a metal raft Age Unlimited. Kantuta In 1955, the Czech explorer and adventurer Eduard Ingris attempted to recreate the Kon-Tiki expedition on a balsa raft called Kantuta. His first expedition, Kantuta I, took place in 1955–1956 and led to failure. In 1959, Ingris built a new balsa raft, Kantuta II, and tried to repeat the previous expedition. The second expedition was a success. Ingris was able to cross the Pacific Ocean on the balsa raft from Peru to Polynesia. Tahiti-Nui II A second Tahiti-Nui was built in Constitución, Chile, leaving on April 13, 1958, towards Callao, then towards the Marquesas. It missed its target and after four months, the raft began to sink. The crew built a new smaller raft, the Tahiti Nui III, in the ocean out of the more buoyant parts of the Tahiti Nui II. They were swept towards Cook Islands where on August 30, the raft went aground and was wrecked at Rakahanga atoll. Éric de Bisschop died in this accident. Las Balsas The 1973 Las Balsas expedition is the only known multiple-raft crossing of the Pacific Ocean. It is the longest-known raft voyage in history. The expedition was led by Spaniard Vital Alsar, who, in 1970, led the La Balsa expedition, only on that occasion with one raft and three companions. The crossing was successful and, at the time, the longest raft voyage in history, until eclipsed in 1973 by Las Balsas. The purpose of the 1973 expedition was three-fold: (1) to prove that the success of 1970 was no accident, (2) to test different currents in the sea, which Alsar maintained ancient mariners knew as modern humans know road maps, and (3) to show that the original expeditions, directed perhaps toward trade or colonisation, may have consisted of small fleets of balsa rafts. Tangaroa (2006) , Norway In 2006, the Tangaroa Expedition recreated the Kon-Tiki voyage using a newly built raft, the Tangaroa, named after the Māori sea-god Tangaroa. Tangaroa's six-man crew was led by Norwegian Torgeir Higraff and included Olav Heyerdahl, grandson of Thor Heyerdahl, Bjarne Krekvik (captain), Øyvin Lauten (executive officer), Swedish Anders Berg (photographer) and Peruvian Roberto Sala. Tangaroa was launched on the same day that Kon-Tiki had been—April 28—and it reached its destination on July 7, which was 30 days faster than Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki which had taken 101 days for the voyage. Tangaroa's speed was credited to the proper use of guaras (centerboards). An-Tiki On January 30, 2011, An-Tiki, a raft modeled after Kon-Tiki, began a , 70-day journey across the Atlantic Ocean from the Canary Islands to the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas. The expedition was piloted by four men, aged from 56 to 84 years, led by Anthony Smith. The trip was designed to commemorate the journey in an open boat of survivors from the British steamship Anglo-Saxon, sunk by the German cruiser Widder in 1940. The raft ended its voyage in the Caribbean island of St Maarten, completing its trip to Eleuthera in the following year with Smith and a new crew. Kon-Tiki2 On 7 November 2015, two teams with two balsa rafts Rahiti Tane and Tupac Yupanqui left Lima, Peru for Easter Island. Expedition Kon-Tiki2 got its name because it had 2 crews from many nations: Norway, Russia, UK, Mexico, New Zealand, Sweden, and Peru. It sought to double down on Heyerdahl's voyage by sailing two rafts from South America to Polynesia and then back. Expedition leader was Torgeir Higraff from Tangaroa Expedition (2006). Øyvin Lauten and Kari Skår Dahl were captains on the first leg, while Signe Meling and Ola Borgfjord were captains on the second leg. The raft reached Easter Island, but did not complete the return. The two rafts were made of 11 balsa logs and 10 crossbeams held together by 2000 meters (1¼ miles) of natural fiber ropes. Tens of thousands of waves, up to six meters (20') tall, hit the rafts in an El Niño year. This stress for 16 weeks weakened the ropes, but the crew could not replace all of them. On March 3, 2016, all crew members were taken on board the Hokuetsu Ushaka freight ship after 115 days of sailing and 4½ months at sea. ==Documentation==

Memoir book A book documenting the voyage and raft was released in 1948 by Thor Heyerdahl, called The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the South Seas. Documentary film A black and white film documentary about the voyage and raft was released in 1950, called Kon-Tiki (produced in 1947). It won the 1951 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. There was also produced short Kodak Kodachrome color film from expedition in 1947. ==In popular culture==

Kon-Tiki is a 2012 Norwegian historical dramatized feature film about the 1947 Kon-Tiki expedition. It starred Pål Sverre Valheim Hagen as Thor Heyerdahl and was directed by Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg. It was the highest-grossing film of 2012 in Norway and the country's most expensive production to date. Episode 5 of the tenth season of HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm features Clive Owen as himself in a one-man play entitled "Kon Tiki". Episode 2 of the second season of Apple TV+'s For All Mankind mentions a Space Shuttle named Kon-Tiki. Cotton Mather's 1997 album Kontiki is named for the Kon-Tiki expedition. The Kon-Tiki and Ra expeditions were parodied in the titular sketch of "Mr. and Mrs. Brian Norris' Ford Popular", the second episode of Series 3 of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Mr. Norris and his wife seek to use the titular car to prove that Hounslow's inhabitants in fact migrated from their original home region, Surbiton, by driving the short distance from the former to the latter. Upon being unable to surmise how the Surbiton migrants might have crossed the River Thames, in spite of the presence of a visible bridge, they go to Hounslow Central tube station and notice a sign pointing to Surbiton there; the Norrises conclude that it was in fact the people of Hounslow who made the journey to Surbiton, and not vice versa. In 1961, British popular music group The Shadows had a hit record in the UK and elsewhere, with an instrumental titled Kon-Tiki (song). German famous disco band Dschingis Khan has a song Kontiki dedicated to this journey. == See also ==