Kon-Tiki

Kon-Tiki begins with the author, Thor Heyerdahl, and his five "pirate" looking companions out at sea miles away from any form of land. Reminiscing about his initial reasoning for beginning this expedition, he remembers that it originally began as a way to disprove a theory and prove that it is true that the Polynesians came from South America. Heyerdahl explains his voyage best in this argument, "If, for example, you put out to sea on a wooden raft with a parrot and five companions, it is inevitable that sooner or later you will wake up one morning out at sea, perhaps a little better rested than ordinarily, and begin to think about it." I myself do this quite often. During one of my classes last year I thought to myself, "What in God's name made me take this class." After that you realize that the objective of what you started is a good reason for the current madness.

Thor then goes on to talk about how the cultures of the Peruvians and Polynesians are similar. The main similarity pertains to the god Kon-Tiki or Sun-Tiki. The two cultures had this god in common which lead to Heyerdahl to hypothesize about their cultural similarities. He also compares their statues in this phrase, "Have you noticed that huge stone figures of Tiki in the jungle are remarkably like the monoliths left by extinct civilizations in South America?" Heyerdahl asked himself this very question while in the Marquesas triggering his theory of the exodus of the South Americans to Polynesia.