28 April 1947: Thor Heyerdahl and five friends launch the raft Kon Tiki into the Pacific Ocean to test a theory that humans could have migrated to Polynesia from South America.
Kon Tiki
by Thor Heyerdahl
Nonfiction/Memoir
256 pages
Original publisher: Rand McNally
Current publisher: Simon & Schuster
Recommended for: Rhetoric students and adults
Thor Heyerdahl, a Norwegian explorer, ethnologist, and writer, had a theory, and he put his life on the line to prove it. Then he wrote a rollicking good tale to share his experience. That book, the nonfiction travel memoir Kon-Tiki, has become a mainstay in the annals of Pacific Rim travel literature. Unfortunately, it is a book that is very seldom read anymore, which is why, despite the fact that today is Harper Lee's birthday--and To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my favorite books--I am choosing to make Kon-Tiki my focus book for today, the anniversary of the day she set sail.
In the early 1940s, scientists were theorizing that colonization of the islands of Polynesia had to have happened from west to east. Thinking that there was no possible way that, given the rudimentary boat-making skills that were available around the time when the islands were believed to have been settled, people from South America could possibly have traveled all the way across the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, scientists refused to even entertain the idea. Pre-Incan cultures' skills only extended as far as open rafts.
Enter Thor Heyerdahl. A scientist himself, he had been to South America and Polynesia and the science as he knew it just did not add up. With his well-now-hang-on-a-minute enthologist's skepticism and his explorer's soul, he did one of those things that have the rest of us shaking our heads at just how far some people will go to prove a point. He built a raft. Out of balsa wood. And he didn't exactly enter the thing as his son's entry in the Cub Scout Regatta. No, Heyerdahl had a go-big-or-go-home mentality that was more than a match for his well-now-hang-on-a-minute enthologist's skepticism. That baby was life-sized, and regattas would be considered sissified compared to Thor's plan for his boat.
On 28 April 1947, Thor Heyerdahl, along with five intrepid friends, set sail from Peru on a voyage that would cover 4,300 nautical miles and take 101 days before they finally washed up in Tahiti, on the atoll of Raroia. Their open raft was built only with tools and materials that would have been available to pre-Columbian civilizations, and they navigated with nothing more than rudimentary sails, ocean currents, and the night sky. Upon setting foot on terra firma, I'm sure Heyerdahl, who could not swim, was ecstatic for more reasons than proving a point. No doubt one of those friends of questionable sanity knew how to sail, as Heyerdahl did not know how to do that either. Proving that it would have been possible for Polynesia to have been settled from the east, their journey beat all expectations except Heyerdahl's own but still was not proof that that really was how migration occurred.
To this day, there is still scientific debate as to the patterns of human migration that could have brought humans to the islands of Polynesia. Even DNA evidence has been inconclusive. For many, scientist and amateur alike, a sticking point remains rooted in the soil, in the same plants that made Heyerdahl first question, such as the sweet potato, which could only be a South American transplant.
For those of us far too sensible to ever dream at his level of insanity, Heyerdahl's tale is armchair adventuring at its very best. I cannot recommend this 1950 release highly enough. Not only is it wonderful writing, it presents many educational gateways. Students can research the scientific aspects, following the trail of clues that has stumped scientists since the 1930s; this would make an excellent research paper for science. For your budding psychologist, a paper on what drives men to put themselves in voluntary peril is an idea. There was also a documentary made in 1951 and a movie in 2012, offering a break from reading and opening the door to a good compare/contrast study with the memoir. If you are looking for a literary paper for this school year, you would be hard-pressed to find a better example than this to examine man-vs-nature. Since very few students are overly conversant in South Pacific islands geography, tracing the locations in the book--from Norway to Peru, to Polynesia--and then spending some time familiarizing themselves with that area would cover a lot of ground (water?).