Remembering Thor Heyerdahl

Norwegian explorer and archaeologist Thor Heyerdahl, who famously sailed from Peru to Polynesia on a primitive balsa-log raft called Kon-Tiki in 1947, died Thursday in his sleep at his home in Italy.

Today’s Los Angeles Times reports that Heyerdahl made the voyage to prove that it was within the realm of possibility that the South Pacific islands may have been settled by ancient Peruvian Indians. His book about the voyage, “Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft,” sold 30 million copies and has been published in 67 languages. “The Kon-Tiki expedition opened my eyes to what the ocean really is. It is a conveyor and not an isolator,” Heyerdahl wrote in the foreword of the 35th edition of “Kon-Tiki.” “The ocean has been man’s highway from the days he built the first buoyant ships, long before he tamed the horse, invented wheels and cut roads through the virgin jungles.” Heyerdahl was 87.

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