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The Man Who Sailed From Peru To Tahiti On a Wooden Raft To Prove His Critics Wrong
Over 4,000 miles of open ocean
What lengths would you go to prove to someone that you are right? That is the question Thor Heyerdahl asked himself when stewing over recent criticisms of his work. Thor Heyerdahl was a Norwegian ethnographer who was studying how ancient peoples had arrived on remote islands in the Pacific. He postulated that people could have sailed from the western coast of South America on ancient rafts and made it to distant islands in Polynesia.
Using maps, detailed analysis of building practices, and ocean currents, Heyerdahl presented his ideas to his colleagues. But his colleagues weren’t buying it. There was no way ancient peoples could have survived a journey of thousands of miles from South America to the central Pacific.
Heyerdahl was wholly convinced that he was right. He vehemently disagreed with his naysayers. People could absolutely sail from South America to Polynesia on rafts. And he was going to prove it.
It turns out Heyerdahl was willing to go to inhuman lengths, risking his life and his reputation to prove his critics wrong.
