It is 1947, somewhere in the Pacific.
Against all odds, six men have embarked on a remarkable voyage in a breakthrough scientific
experiment.
In a primitive balsa wood raft, exposed to the fury of the open seas, they are attempting
to cross 4,300 miles of ocean.
Few believe they'll return alive.
Their leader is Thor Heyerdahl, the Contiki expedition, a bold and controversial first
step in a lifelong quest to discover how ancient man traveled the globe.
Heyerdahl's passion for the mysteries of early man would take him all over the world, recreating
the hazardous journeys he believed were made many centuries ago, and risking his life to
prove early man could have made the same voyage.
He's a pioneer scientist, a trailblazing sailor, explorer, and adventurer who challenged the
forces of nature and rewrote the history of ancient man.
I think he's one of the great adventurers of our time.
He's a true explorer and also a great scientist.
I think an interesting side of my father's personality is that he is a blend between
a scientist, an artist, and a philosopher.
He said, well, I've never crossed an ocean willingly in my entire life.
I've only crossed the oceans because I've had to.
As a boy growing up in Norway, Heyerdahl was fascinated by the Pacific Ocean, often drawing
his fantasies about life in the tropical South Seas.
A confirmed landlubber who was a child feared and avoided the water, he led a solitary and
quiet life, returning at an early age to books and reading everything he could find about
exotic locations around the world.
Later studying zoology and geography, he wondered about man's earliest migrations to remote parts
of the world.
Who were the first visitors to these tiny specks of land?
Where had they come from?
And how had they made such hazardous journeys?
In 1937, Heyerdahl, a young scientist just out of university, went to Polynesia to find
out.
He traveled to the remote island of Fatuhiva with his young wife to study plant and animal
life and fulfill his boyhood dream of escaping civilization.
He was immediately startled by similarities with vegetation that could only have come
from South America.
Could they be clues to Polynesia's mysterious past?
It was here Heyerdahl first imagined ancient people riding the trade winds in primitive
boats from South America across the Pacific to Polynesia.
It was a revolutionary idea that would change his life and set off a raging controversy
throughout the scientific community for years to come.
When I was sitting talking to the old people who knew the traditional history, I was amazed
when they pointed exactly to those plants which I knew as a biologist had been brought
by man and they said they had been brought by their ancestors from the sunrise.
So I started really to take a little more faith in what we call mythology, which in
reality very often is traditional history.
At the time, the experts were convinced the earliest settlers in Polynesia came from Asia
sailing east.
For ancient sailors without the benefit of modern navigational equipment to have come
to Polynesia all the way from South America was dismissed as utterly impossible.
For Heyerdahl, the evidence was becoming too strong to dismiss.
But could all of his teachers and the entire scientific community be wrong?
Years ago, as a young man, Heyerdahl had spoken to an old chief, the last man on the island
who still remembered the ancient legends.
Now, many years later, Heyerdahl sits on the same spot with the old chief's son.
Both had heard the old man tell stories of their ancestors and where they had come from.
Tikki, he was both god and chief.
It was Tikki who brought my ancestors to these islands where we live now.
Before that, we lived in a big country beyond the sea.
When Heyerdahl asked the old chief where this country was, he pointed across the ocean to
the east towards South America and told Heyerdahl that, in legend, his people had been brought
across the water, out of the sunrise, by their ancient god Tikki.
This was the breakthrough Heyerdahl had been looking for, a direct link between the two
cultures.
It was only later that he would learn of the legendary South American sun god called Kan
Tikki who, it was said, sailed west from South America across the Pacific, never to return.
He was convinced that the two gods, Tikki in Polynesia and Kan Tikki in South America,
were one and the same.
In 1938, he returned to Norway, spending long hours in libraries delving into the prehistory
of early man, searching the two cultures, Polynesia and South America, for similarities,
and gradually developing even more evidence that the original Polynesians had come from
South America, not Asia.
But no one believed him.
His theory was rejected by the scientific establishment.
Its premise, that ancient man sailed balsa wood rafts thousands of miles across the Pacific,
was ridiculed.
Early man could never have survived such a journey, he was told.
In 1946, Heyerdahl came to New York, where he hoped to find members of the scientific
community more open to his theory of Pacific migration.
With little money and just three copies of his new scientific manuscript, he made the
rounds of the top men in the field, with similar results.
In scientific circles, Heyerdahl was a heretic.
Worse yet, if he was right, then the so-called experts must all be wrong.
Dr. Herbert Spindon, director of the Brooklyn Museum, refused to even consider his unorthodox
theory.
Absolutely wrong.
But you haven't even read my arguments yet.
Arguments?
You can't treat ethnographic problems like some sort of detective mystery.
Why not?
I've based all the conclusions on my own observations, and the fact that science has recorded.
But one thing we do know for certain is that none of the peoples of South America got over
to the islands in the Pacific.
You know why?
They couldn't get there.
They had no boats.
They had rafts.
You know, balsa wood rafts.
You can try a trip from Peru to the Pacific islands on a balsa wood raft.
Unwittingly, Spindon made the suggestion that would change Heyerdahl's life.
To prove a balsa wood raft capable of crossing the Pacific, Heyerdahl resolved to build a
precise replica of the ancient craft and sail it from the coast of South America to Polynesia.
It was an audacious undertaking.
Spindon thought he would be sailing to certain death.
There was a drive within him, so nothing could have stopped him.
I recall my mother once saying that, your father, he experienced the Second World War
as a personal insult.
It was an obstacle to his plans.
This just shows how focused he was on pursuing his theories.
Heyerdahl refused to give up.
Desperately short of money, he couldn't even afford his apartment and moved into the Norwegian
sailors' home in New York, where so many expert sailors, just returned from the war, were
all convinced he was mad, that crossing the Pacific on a raft would be impossible.
Finally, one man, a Norwegian engineer and sailor named Hermann Watzinger, took him seriously.
What's more, Watzinger asked to join the expedition.
The Kon-Tiki had its first crew member.
But Heyerdahl still had no backers to pay for the journey.
He took Watzinger to the Explorers Club in New York, where Heyerdahl was a member.
Here, Danish polar explorer Peter Freuchen introduced Heyerdahl to a group of backers
who promised to raise the money needed to finance the trip.
This was the turning point.
Heyerdahl began to assemble his crew.
He reckoned it would take six people to sail a balsa wood raft.
He wrote to an old friend, Erik Hasselback, an artist who was an experienced navigator.
Then to two wartime comrades, Torstein Rabi, who'd run a secret radio transmitter close
to the German battleship Tirpitz, and Knut Haugland, who was a radio operator for the
famous sabotage raid that destroyed the Nazi heavy water plant in Norway in 1943.
For many in the team, the expedition seemed to fill a void at war's end.
I think the main thing was that I was very tired after the war, and I must say I was
depressed, and when I was thinking that I could get away from it all, first to South
America and then to Polynesia, I think that was the main reason to do something which
was not connected with war at all.
The sixth member to join the expedition later was Bengt Danielsen, a Swedish anthropologist.
Although they all had specific skills, not one knew anything about sailing a balsa wood
raft.
The men he took were not experienced seamen.
Indeed, you couldn't find nowadays anyone experienced in using these log rafts.
So although his men were not sailors, he didn't think that was very important, because the
type of craft on which they would be sailing, he didn't think required sailors.
They had to be healthy, strong people who could take a tough turn, but for me it was
also very important that they had a sense of humor.
I've always felt that when you really have trouble, if you can crack a joke and take
it with a joke, you can solve many problems, and they all had a terrific sense of humor.
It was a fantastic group of boys to sail with.
As you will have read in the war department's official release, which was published today,
I'm intending to lead a scientific expedition across the Pacific next year.
It finally looked as though the Contiki expedition was coming together.
After years of hard work, Heirdahl felt confident he now had both the crew and the backing he
needed.
But just in the midst of the press conference explaining his plans to cross the Pacific
on a balsa wood raft, Heirdahl received devastating news.
His financial backers had withdrawn their support.
It was Christmas in New York, but Heirdahl was alone and facing the possibility of total
failure.
He confided his despair in a letter that was only recently revealed.
I've gone straight ahead as never before in my life.
I've believed in will and the obstacles have collapsed, one after another, until today.
There's one way forward and none back.
I believe it will work out, and I'm determined that it shall work out.
But I shall like to remember this day, this struggle and this experience for the rest
of my life, till the day I shall be forced to give up my very breath.
If you believe you can do anything in the world if you just have a conviction strong
enough, and I really did believe and I worked it out.
Refusing to accept defeat, he gradually scraped together the money he needed.
It weathered the storm, and now would begin the greatest adventure of his life.
In January 1947, the Contiki team arrived in Ecuador to harvest the fresh balsa wood
logs in the precise manner of the ancient people before them.
Next, they were floated down the river to the coast and on to the port near Lima.
There, for the first time in hundreds of years, a balsa wood raft would be built on the coast
of Peru, a precise reconstruction of the craft that sailed these waters so long ago.
Nine of the thickest logs were chosen to form the actual raft.
Then thinner logs laid crosswise over them at intervals of about three feet.
Native dockyard workers helped assemble the brand new prehistoric craft.
Erdahl was determined to recreate the raft exactly in the manner of the early South Americans.
With the logs in place, they were lashed together individually with hemp rope, each one firmly
knotted by hand.
It was easier to piece together what these rafts were like.
Some of the early voyagers had indeed even made good drawings of what they were like.
Every detail with the masts and sails and the rigging, so we knew exactly what to do.
Boat builders and sailors alike advised Erdahl to use modern construction techniques, especially
metal chains instead of hemp ropes to lash the logs together.
But Erdahl insisted that they must build a precise replica of the ancient craft, otherwise
his experiment would be invalid.
However, naval experts were all convinced the raft could not possibly survive a Pacific
crossing and advised him to abandon the expedition.
We were told, of course, that the bolts of wood is fragile as cork, and the priests who
came and gave us the Bible and said that at least we should read that before we end it.
And some come and said, think of your mother, how she will feel when she get the news that
you have gone down.
So there were a lot of warnings.
Despite the predictions of disaster, the crew remained committed to Erdahl's dream.
Tor was convinced that these balsa log rafts worked, and that was the basis for his confidence.
When you have a leader with such confidence, so evident, and such calmness, so evident,
that inspires the crew.
My men knew me well enough to know that I was not interested in committing suicide.
They knew that I enjoy life very much, and that if I was sure that it would work, then
they felt that the chances were big enough for them to join in.
Suddenly they hauled the rectangular sail up on a yard made of two bamboo stems.
The face of Kantiki was revealed.
At last they were ready to put to sea.
Diplomats and journalists were invited to the christening of the raft.
Gert Vold, the expedition secretary, was asked to do the honors.
I think it was the day or two days before they were leaving that tour, suddenly said,
I want you to christen the raft with a coconut.
Now one thing I had learned from the tour was that nothing, nothing at all is impossible.
So I didn't protest, I mean it isn't easy to crack a coconut, but I used all the force
I had, and milk was spread all over.
The preparations were over, the Kantiki was ready to set sail.
Most observers still felt the expedition was doomed, and the crew knew there was no hope
of rescue if disaster struck, they would be completely on their own.
On April 28, 1947, an ocean-bound tug towed the Kantiki out to sea, the crew rode back
to the raft, aware this would be their last human contact for a long time.
As the tug sailed off, they were finally alone on the raft, with only the waves for company.
This was the moment they'd been waiting for, the ultimate test of the Kantiki and her crew.
Could they survive on a primitive raft in the vast Pacific?
The feeling wasn't too good, the current was very rough there, like a stream, and quite
heavy wind, and we were not used to this kind of a craft, so it took some time before we
learned how to adjust the sail and the centerboards and things.
The raft was put to the test almost immediately, when the weather quickly turned rough.
Huge waves came crashing down over the cabin.
The men grabbed hold of whatever they could, and could only hope to ride out the storm
as the sea washed over them.
With each new wave, they held their breath, not knowing if the raft would surface again.
But each time, the Kantiki rose easily to the top of the wave, the water filtering
through the logs, the raft floating safely atop the enormous swells.
When the waves started rising around you, it was quite an exciting feeling.
At one moment you would see a shark in the water at eye level, and you think next it's
falling down upon us, but next moment your raft is on top of that wave, and you see the
shark way down below you.
It actually was sometimes so comical that we were just sitting laughing at the way this
seemingly clumsy vessel took the seas.
To their great surprise and relief, the raft proved up to every challenge, its design even
more ingenious than Heirdahl had imagined.
Each element seemed to have an unforeseen benefit, from the bamboo cabin to the balsa
logs bound together by hemp ropes.
The very great advantage with the raft is of course that when a big wave came over the
deck, the water would soon disappear down between the logs, and there was no hull which
could be filled up by water, and so we could sink, we could actually not sink at all.
I mean, not before all the logs had been completely waterlogged.
After a few days at sea, Heirdahl wrote in his diary,
We were now so accustomed to having the sea dancing around us that we took no account
of it.
What did it matter if we danced around a bit with a thousand feathers of water under us,
so long as we and the raft were always on top?
It was only here that the next question arose, how long could we count on keeping on top?
It was easy to see that the balsa logs absorbed water.
I myself felt a bit insecure because you could feel the outside of the logs were getting
swampy and moist, and when I thought that nobody looked at me I took my knife, cut off
a piece of the outer part of the wood which was waterlogged, and dropped it in the ocean
to see if it floated, and it was shocking to see that it slowly sank into the blue bottom
of the Pacific.
Now Heirdahl understood why the experts predicted the raft could never cross the Pacific, because
balsa absorbs water.
How long would it take before all the logs were soaked through and sinking to the bottom?
But we had done like the Indians, we had gone into the jungle and cut the logs green with
a sap inside, and the sap prevented the water to get further in, and it was lighter than
the ocean water, so it was only the first couple of weeks that we absorbed, and from
then on the logs were perfectly dry inside.
We took our position at noon and found that in addition to our run under sail, we had
made a big deviation northward along the coast.
We still lay in the Humboldt current, just 100 miles from land.
The great question was whether we should get into the treacherous eddies south of the Galapagos.
This could have fatal consequences.
Fortunately, the wind and currents steered them clear of the turbulent waters.
After nearly 21 days at sea, the raft finally began to head west and out of danger.
One of the few pieces of modern equipment they had with them was a shortwave radio.
The expedition's two operators, Knut and Torstein, sent daily reports from the raft.
The most difficult thing for us was movement of the raft, because when you sit there and
shall send moths, you know, and it's going up and down and that side.
I had daily radio contact with the raft.
There were two, I think you call it in English, ham operators.
There was one in Washington, his name I remember was Gene Melton, and he received the messages
from a ham operator in Los Angeles.
When finally the Kon-Tiki raft was on its way, I received a couple of telegrams from
Tor and Erik.
The second went something like this.
Now on the journey through time following the sun, I send you and your family my warmest
greetings from the ocean, as we have travelled 2,000 kilometres of our voyage.
As to all our friends, Tor.
This tangible proof from the middle of the Pacific gave reassuring hope to Heirdahl's
friends and family.
Each man had his own sphere of daily responsibilities.
Apart from the radio operators, Bengt was the steward and looked after supplies.
Herman took scientific measurements.
Erik was the navigator.
And Tor was their leader and kept the ship's log.
Together they shared general chores like cooking or steering.
They all had to learn to handle the raft in case of emergency.
Virtually impossible to manoeuvre, the raft was at the mercy of the wind and the currents.
It could neither stop nor turn around.
They had some say in the direction it took, but by and large nature was at the helm.
It was only after the day's work was done, when the sea was calm, that the crew could
relax.
While the ocean rolled by beneath them, there was time to appreciate where they were.
Inevitably though, with six men living and working in such cramped quarters, problems
would arise.
It's not the big things that causes problems when you sit together months on a raft.
It's the little trivial thing where you're not expected if somebody is spilling sugar
into your sleeping bag or forgotten fishhooks where you are sitting and things like that,
that you may blow up uncontrolled.
And we had a few instances like that.
Through it all, the expedition relied on Heirdahl's leadership.
I could say shortly that he was a very good leader.
He had the same kind of friendship to everyone.
He was a good organizer, always thinking of not to forget anything.
So we were comfortable with food and water.
I think from the Army I learned that you shall treat your crew as equals and listen to them.
And whenever there is a possibility to sit, if you have time, to sit like American Indians
in the powwow and discuss what is the right solution now, well then we do it.
And then the men feel that this is their expedition also.
The dangers on a balsa wood raft in the vast Pacific were everywhere.
It became evident to the crew the second time two of them took out the rubber dinghy to
make scientific measurements.
The Contiki was moving much faster than they had thought.
Soon the two men were rowing desperately to catch up with the raft.
If the wind had only been a little stronger, they would have been left behind in the vast
Pacific.
Everyone on board knew the stark truth.
Anyone who got separated from the Contiki was doomed.
Whether in the dinghy or simply swimming alongside, they either stayed close by or would be left
behind without hope of rescue.
Another threat were the sharks.
Someone was always on lookout and the moment one was spotted, the crew had to scramble
back on board.
26 days out, one seemed to challenge the raft itself.
I was sitting just aft here on the two logs you see over there, washing my shirt and then
suddenly a creature came up on the sea.
I saw an enormous head and a mouth and a dorsal fin high, nearly a meter high.
I shouted so high they could hear it all over the Pacific.
So everybody came running.
The monster turned out to be a whale shark, the largest of all fish in the sea but far
from the most ferocious.
Started over 60 feet long and weighing several tons, the great fish dwarfed the raft.
It was so large, the crew feared they'd be sunk simply if the shark rammed them.
Eventually, one of them could bear the tension no longer and through a hand harpoon of the
great creature, it immediately dove into the deep.
A few days later in broad daylight, the nightmare they had all been dreading finally occurred.
One of the crew lost his footing, fell overboard and was immediately swept away.
Amid the roar of the wind and the crashing of the waves, his head bobbing in the huge
swells, his arms flailing, Herman was carried further and further away from the raft.
Although an excellent swimmer, he was caught in the grip of a tenacious current.
They tried throwing a life belt but the wind blew it back.
There seemed nothing anyone could do to rescue him as they watched him drift further into
the distance.
Lut came running out of the cabin and grabbed the life belt and jumped with it into the
sea.
And he swam towards Herman and Herman towards him.
At last we met and he was very, very nervous and I got him in front of me in the rope and
then we were dragged up by the others.
I was literally shivering in my knees, shaking.
That's one of the worst moments in my life.
If we had lost one man there it would be the end of, I don't know what I would have done.
Three months out and still no sight of land.
Had their calculations been off?
Could they have missed the islands altogether?
The crew was growing more anxious by the day, supplies were limited.
If they missed the Polynesian islands there was no telling where the raft might be headed.
Then 93 days after leaving the coast of South America, the first indication of land, birds
flew overhead.
They had arrived in Polynesia.
And yet perhaps the most treacherous part of the journey still lay ahead, landing their
raft amid the islands razor sharp reefs, powered by the same strong winds and currents that
brought them all the way across the Pacific, they were now speeding towards the deadly
coral.
The Tuamuotu Islands, they're also known as the dangerous archipelago because of the tremendous
surf, the largest surf in the world because the big ocean swells come all the way from
South America with nothing to stop them.
They agreed that if they were wrecked they would stay with the raft or risk being crushed
in the pounding surf or ripped to shreds against the reef, so they tied everything down and
waited.
The reef was dead ahead, Torstein made one last call on the radio, the final entry in
the log sets the scene.
9.50, very close now, drifting along the reef, must pack up log now, all in good spirits,
it looks bad but we shall make it.
That was the worst nightmare I think in my life when we heard the thundering of the tremendous
surf in front of us and gradually we were lifted up and thrown in and then the next
wave came over us and instead of lifting us up as before the wall was a glass wall taller
than the top of the mast and it fell down upon us.
The raft was thrown up on the reef but then again sucked back into the surf, both Torstein
and I were hanging outside, we were completely exhausted and then finally one wave came so
big that it threw us far up on the reef and the raft got stuck on the corals.
I ran aft here and was standing here at the end of the cabin holding myself in that rope
you see there and when we went down just before the reef I saw this reef wall just in front
of me and then the raft moved up again through the wave, I jumped onto the reef with a long
rope and ran on the reef and then helped to drag the raft on the shore.
Once they were all safely ashore, the magnitude of their accomplishment began to sink in.
They had succeeded in crossing the largest and most dangerous ocean on a primitive balsa
raft using only the winds and current.
After so much fear and apprehension, they found themselves on a tropical island, the
sands rimmed with palm trees, the sun shining bright on the clear blue water, anybody's
definition of paradise.
I don't think any of us will ever forget the feeling after 101 days on the raft to
wade, put our feet in dry warm sand and walk on the ground that didn't roll and walk up
and see the shade underneath the coconut palms and as I looked around I come to hear where
all my men, I had not lost a single man, that is when you fall down and bury your fingers
in the sand and realize how close you were to have seen the end of earthly life there
and then.
Heirdahl now had the proof he needed, never again could he be told the ancient South Americans
could not have sailed across the Pacific to Polynesia.
From the island he and his crew were picked up and taken to Tahiti where they boarded
a liner for San Francisco and civilization.
After their return from the South Seas the Contiki adventurers were showered with adoration
everywhere they went, Contiki fever swept the world, they were besieged by the press
and honored by presidents and royalty.
The Contiki expedition happened two years after war ended, six young men sail across
the Pacific in the trade winds, they land on a Pacific atoll with attractive hula girls,
with bananas and papayas and other tropical fruits, a blue lagoon, I mean this is what
the world was dreaming of in those days.
Of course after the voyage it was a tremendous surprise to me and all my men that public
interest is stimulated.
I had expected that of course the scientists would be interested in seeing that the dogma
they had all ascribed to was untenable, that it was possible and that here I had an argument
to continue work along the same line on the ocean migrations of animals and men to Polynesia.
Heyerdahl prepared a detailed academic treatise explaining his theory of Pacific migration
and yet when his more popular account of the voyage became an international best seller
at Heyerdahl a media celebrity some in the scientific community questioned his scientific
credentials.
They bought the Contiki book and said I was just writing a travel story to make money
and they didn't realize that before I wrote that I had written the scientific volume but
nobody wanted to publish it.
They didn't look at him as a scientist they looked at him as a sailor, oh he's just proved
that he's a good sailor, well this was absurd because he had a lot of scientific evidence
behind his idea.
He had thrown a boulder into the calm pool of Pacific scientific research.
Eminent scientists such as Alfred Matrow who had studied the subject for so long were convinced
that there was no way Heyerdahl could be right.
If he was right then they and their life's work were totally wrong.
The common thinking of the time was that if the oceans were a major barrier to disseminating
populations throughout the world and he looked at the oceans completely different coming
from a background of seafaring nations such as Norwegians and Scandinavians and the Vikings
that the oceans are really avenues of transportation.
So I think that he postulated this idea and he proved it and I think he's been just having
to prove it ever since.
During the course of the expedition Heyerdahl shot 8,000 feet of movie film that was later
made into a documentary bringing the story of the Kantiki to an even wider audience and
creating even greater fame for Heyerdahl when the film won an Oscar in 1951.
The money that came in from the book and the film made it possible for me to organize larger
expeditions and in this way I must say that I am very glad for the publicity but in other
ways I would much have preferred to have been left a little more in peace because the amount
of corresponds coming in from all over the world and of course all the fighting I had
for many years.
In spite of Heyerdahl's remarkable voyage the scientists remained skeptical.
They wanted firm proof of an ancient South American presence in Polynesia.
Heyerdahl turned to Easter Island, the nearest part of Polynesia to the coast of South America.
As a boy he'd seen illustrations of the mysterious stone statues.
Now he wondered if they might not provide clues to the ancient people he was looking
for.
He knew that stone heads were also found in Mexico and on the Andean coast of South America
but nowhere else.
If ancient South Americans had made this journey surely they would have left other evidence
of their culture on the island.
In 1955 Heyerdahl used the money from the Kantiki book and movie to mount his first
Easter Island expedition accompanied by five professional archaeologists as well as his
second wife Yvonne and their small daughter.
Until he arrived Easter Island and its many mysteries had been unexplored.
Few considered it a valuable site for archaeological research.
During his first revelations the so-called stone heads when unearthed were in fact complete
bodies.
One statue found in a squatting position was of particular interest to Heyerdahl's longtime
colleague archaeologist Dr. Arne Skoval.
The squatting statue was one of the most important finds we made there.
It was buried in debris from the quarries.
I dug it out myself.
It was completely different from all the other statues on Easter Island and there were no
parallels to this statue anywhere else in Polynesia.
The closest resemblance is to the works of the Tiwanaku civilization in Bolivia.
This was the first link to South American culture.
The statue bears a strong resemblance to one in the Bolivian capital of Rapaz.
But soon Heyerdahl would discover an even more important similarity between Easter Island
and the early people of South America.
He found rocks covered with ancient paintings of bird-like men holding eggs.
The local population told him that in the ancient tradition a contest was held for the
island's strongest man to collect a bird's egg from an offshore islet.
This was the connection he'd been looking for.
The birdman cult was thought to be unique to ancient South American civilizations, a
figure found prominently throughout the early dance and culture yet nowhere else in the
Pacific.
Heyerdahl felt he had growing evidence that early South Americans had made the voyage
to Easter Island.
This was the key for Heyerdahl, finding similarities between Polynesia and South America that would
prove an ancient connection between the two civilizations.
During excavations of the stone statues, another mystery came to light.
One of the statues was found to have a large three-masted ship carved onto its breastplate.
Islanders identified it as similar to the reed ships of legend their ancestors had used
when they'd come to Easter Island years ago.
But it was well known the most sophisticated early culture, the Inca, couldn't sail.
So who were the ancient seafarers who left their mark on this remote island?
Still today, the modern islanders use small floats made of reeds for fishing.
Could their ancestors have made larger reed boats to sail the vast distances across the
Pacific?
Local fishermen in Peru also use reed boats similar to those on Easter Island.
But Heyerdahl still had much work to do to prove that connection.
All in all, Heyerdahl felt his Easter Island expeditions had been a tremendous success,
turning up clear evidence an early South American people had visited here years ago.
The question he now needed to answer was, who were the pre-Inca people who might have
made that journey?
Meanwhile, he began to suspect other ancient cultures could have put to sea and reed boats
long before most historians believe possible.
Over the years, he would sail the oceans of the world, replicating voyages of civilizations
as far back as pre-Biblical times in order to establish how ancient man traveled the
globe.
I think Heyerdahl was a pioneer in this whole aspect of experimental archeology, especially
when it comes to watercraft.
Because he has selected watercraft based on drawings of paintings made by prehistoric
people.
He's reconstructed the craft and then demonstrated seaworthiness by sailing it.
The ocean is not a barrier.
The ocean helps you across.
You have to struggle hard to go through a continent by foot, whereas in the ocean you're
sailing in your food provider and you fish and you collect rain, and with time, with
no effort, you get across the largest world oceans.
His voyages captivated the imagination of people all over the world.
But still, in the halls of academia, his expeditions were seen more as publicity stunts than scientific
experiments.
The active imaginations of explorers would be explorers.
Historians, writers, thinkers, savants, and especially charlatans have sprinkled over
one hundred years of publications with conjecture on how...
He was still a heretic.
His theories still unorthodox and threatening to the work of many scientists.
In the scientific community, academics disapproved of Heirdahl's high profile and his great popularity
through books and film.
Congress after another, and everybody...
We can handle it.
Oh, they agree.
I'm not...
I'm kind of...
Well, but let us agree on one thing.
And that is that we stop, or you stop attacking me.
Let's see when I agree to talk when there's not a camera over your shoulder.
Okay.
But you have been at that team for a long time.
Well, I don't think he relishes controversy so much, but it is, as I've tried to tell
him over and over again, that he depends on it.
Because it's this controversy that gives him publicity, and publicity is what he needs
to finance his projects.
So he can't live without the controversy.
He should be very grateful to his opponents.
In 1987, Walter Alva, a Peruvian archeologist, made an intriguing discovery, ancient gold
masks that might provide the final clue in Heirdahl's lifelong quest.
The masks had piercing blue eyes inlaid with lapis lazuli that was only found 2,000 kilometers
to the south along the coast.
Soon another mask was uncovered with tropical shells that could only be found on the coast
of Ecuador, far to the north.
These precious materials could only have been obtained after a long sea journey.
Could they have been made by the ancient seafarers that Heirdahl had been searching for?
But Alva's greatest revelation was still to come.
We came to Tucumé just as the sun set.
And when I saw these enormous structures shining golden in the evening sun, for a moment I
was sure I was dreaming.
I mean on this planet full of tourism, it isn't a tourist site, it isn't on the map
and the government and nobody has ever been speaking about it.
And I felt that if this is untouched, we may be able to find answers to many questions.
Hidden in these barren hills could be the missing link Heirdahl had been searching for
his entire life.
Tucumé, Peru's lost city, was a complex of 26-step pyramids that had lain forgotten
for centuries.
Heirdahl hoped that at last he'd come upon the pre-Inca race capable of navigating from
the coast of South America to the islands of Polynesia.
Here in this remote part of Peru, Heirdahl built himself a traditional adobe brick house,
the Casa Cantiqui, and began to raise money and international interest for a proper archaeological
excavation of the site.
Heading to the site each morning, he took a very personal interest in the excavations.
Work began in 1988 and immediately an avalanche of fascinating artifacts came pouring out
of the eroded pyramids, mounds and cemeteries.
Buenas Dias Hugo.
Buenas Dias Thor.
¿Cómo está?
Bien.
¿Cómo va el trabajo?
Bien, avanzando un poco, encontrando nuevas cosas.
¿Qué ha encontrado?
Inca.
It's a, the mold, geometric mold.
Yes, that means we have many sequences.
This is the latest, no?
And we have Chimu before this.
Maybe Wari.
Yeah.
And this thing is inca.
More and more, Heirdahl uncovered artifacts from the pre-Inca culture here that were strikingly
similar to objects found on Easter Island.
Each discovery provided even more evidence
that the early people of South America
made the journey just as Hayardal had imagined.
One of the unique features of Easter Island
was a double-bladed paddle used ceremonially
by the islanders in their traditional dances.
Now here in Takume,
Hayardal found a miniature silver paddle,
the only other example of such a paddle anywhere.
But could this ancient South American race
have sailed to Easter Island?
Finally, it was in 1992 that Hayardal made
the most exciting discovery of the entire excavation.
They revealed the top of a temple wall
covered with an ancient relief.
To their trained eyes, the motif was very familiar.
It was the key to the puzzle
Hayardal had been searching for all his life.
These are typical representations of seabirds.
Also see the wave pattern that's associated with it.
And you even have it on the pots, don't you?
On the pots and also sometimes associated with fish on the pots.
There's no question as to the identity of these birds
as being seabirds.
All along, he'd been missing one crucial piece of evidence.
Because the Inca couldn't sail,
he needed to find an earlier culture that went to sea.
This relief from an ancient temple wall
contained all the information he needed
to be certain the people of Takume
were the civilization he'd been seeking for so long.
What's more, here was an exact copy
of the Easter Island birdman.
We found temple reliefs of big reed chip
with bird-headed men sitting
and with rows of crouching bird-headed men
with an egg in the hand sitting below.
This excavation shows without any question at all
where the birdman cult came from.
Because in Peru, it was widespread
all over the continent,
although it had a concentration in Tucumán.
The Contiki expedition had shown it was possible
to sail a balsa raft from South America to Polynesia.
On Easter Island, he had found evidence
that a South American culture had visited
that remote part of the world.
But who those people were remained a mystery.
Now, to complete the puzzle, Takume provided proof
of a South American civilization
capable of making that treacherous journey so long ago.
After five years of major archeological excavations
in Tucumán, I find for myself
that this has closed the ring.
I was back where I started,
where I started by showing that science was wrong
when they said that the balsa raft was not seaworthy.
And my first expedition was to show
that such a way it could be done.
And here in these excavations,
we revealed that these people were navigators.
They actually had a maritime culture
with contact all the way up and down
the coast of South America
and as far out as to Easter Island.
The archeological finds at Tucumay
have finally vindicated the theory
Heyerdahl sought to prove for so long.
His life has been an ongoing adventure.
A detective story told in epic journeys
many said could never be made.
I hope that my father will be remembered
for challenging conventional science,
showing that it's possible to achieve results
through unorthodox methods
and to prove to young people
that everything is possible
if you just put the enthusiasm and power into it.
I think he'll be remembered
as an extraordinarily courageous man.
One thing, he not only had the courage
to face the elements, to face nature,
he also had the courage to stand up to criticism
without anger, without sarcasm,
without even any outward show of terrible indignation.
He simply bore the criticism
and just steadfastly kept going to find the truth.
When I think back at a long life in science,
I can see that I managed to do one thing.
I have stirred up dead water.
I have made people discuss and test dogma
and start rethinking when it comes to the ocean.
You Highness, when you are alive,
raise your hand if you want to call for help,
let's stand up
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