Heyerdahl then details the boat's launch from Callejo, Peru, and its 101 day journey across the ocean. After noting that descriptions of Incan rafts contained in journals of Spanish conquistadors were used as guides, Heyerdahl reveals how the Kon-Tiki, named for the Incan sun god, was constructed from nine large balsa logs topped by a bamboo platform. Heyerdahl states that he had earlier noticed similarities between ancient statues found in the Marquesas and in Peru and postulates that, with the help of trade winds, Incan sailors could have made the 5,000 mile voyage across the Pacific. Using maps and diagrams, Heyerdahl describes how trade winds in the southern Pacific always move in a northwesterly direction, creating a consistent current from South America to the Marquesas Islands. Heyerdahl explains that the purpose of the expedition is to test his thesis that Stone Age Indians living on the coast of Peru migrated to Polynesia in balsa rafts equipped with sails. This documentary chronicles the 1947 voyage of the Kon-Tiki, a balsawood raft built by Norwegian zoologist and ethnologist Thor Heyerdahl and his five-member crew-civil engineer Herman Watzinger radio operators and decorated Norwegian war heroes Knut Haugland and Torstein Raaby navigator Erik Hesselberg and Bengt Danielsson, a Swedish ethnologist.
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