August 7 - Kon Tiki Smash!

nPosted on August 7, 2020

Key Points

nThese giant headed statues – and the unusual name of the islands where they’re found – are they familiar to you?

Statues on Easter Island

n Would it surprise you to know that Easter Island is located in the South Pacific?

nWould it surprise you to know that it is a special territory of Chile?

nEaster Island’s first inhabitants settled the island around 1200 A.D. – the time when Europe was still in the middle of “medieval times” and Genghis Khan was busy setting up the Mongol Empire. A Norwegian explorer and writer named Thor Heyerdahl believed that these first inhabitants, the Rapa Nui, came from Peru. But this idea goes against the oral history of the Rapa Nui. Also, studies of culture and language tie the Rapa Nui to other Eastern Polynesian peoples such as Hawaiians and Tahitians.

nBasically, Heyerdahl was almost surely wrong. (But, if you keep reading, you will find out that he is probably also partly right!)

nHeyerdahl got it into his head that the big-headed statues – which are called moai – are more like pre-Columbian Peru art than like Polynesian art. In 1947, he set out to prove that sea travel between Peru and Easter Island was possible with the kinds of materials and seafaring knowledge that Peruvians had back in the 1200s.

nHeyerdahl presided over the construction of a wooden raft. It was made from nine balsa tree trunks lashed together with hemp ropes. Pine splashboards were added to the bow so that the raft wouldn’t sink in the waves, and mangrove wood was used to create A-frame masts.

nHeyerdahl named the raft Kon-Tiki. He outfitted the raft with drinking water in both modern cans as well as sealed bamboo rods, which would have been like water containers created by early Peruvians. He also carried coconuts, sweet potatoes, and other fruits and roots. Of course, he had packed some modern equipment – radios and cameras, for example – but those pieces of equipment were to keep the expedition safe and to record the journey. They were incidental to proving the claim that early Peruvians could have made the ocean crossing.

nAlong with five companions and a pet parrot, Heyerdahl sailed the raft for 101 days. On this date in 1947, the Kon-Tiki smashed into a reef surrounding an island in Eastern Polynesia (an island called Raroia, not Easter Island), and all six men safely disembarked.

I imagine that this was a later photo.
The Kon-Tiki crew did not look like THIS
after 101 days on the ocean!

nThey had crossed almost 7,000 km (around 4,300 miles) of open ocean.

nEven though Heyerdahl’s expedition didn’t reach Easter Island itself, the raft journey was proof-of-concept that pre-Columbian Peruvians could have made the sea journey to the island.

nSince Heyerdahl’s time, we now have the ability to trace genetic heritage through DNA evidence. And – although scholars say that the Rapa Nui were Polynesian – DNA evidence indicates that at least a few Peruvians did indeed make the sea crossing. There was a “genetic mixing event” near the beginning of humans living on Easter Island!

Even though the moai have disproportionally large heads,
they DO also have bodies. But in some shots, we see
moai that are buried up to their shoulders…and so we
often think of the Easter Island statues as being giant
heads!

nAlso on this date: