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The film is the dramatized story of Thor Heyerdahl and his Kon-Tiki expedition of 1947.. While the prevailing theories of the time held that Polynesia had been settled by peoples originating from Asia, Heyerdahl, an experimental ethnographer and adventurer, sets out to prove his theory that people from South America settled the islands in pre-Columbian times.
The Kon-Tiki expedition was a 1947 journey by raft across the Pacific Ocean from South America to the Polynesian islands, led by Norwegian explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl. The raft was named Kon-Tiki after the Inca god Viracocha , for whom "Kon-Tiki" was said to be an old name.
The Polynesian triangle. Between about 3000 and 1000 BC speakers of Austronesian languages spread through the islands of Southeast Asia – most likely starting out from Taiwan, [9] as tribes whose natives were thought to have previously arrived from mainland South China about 8000 years ago – into the edges of western Micronesia and on into Melanesia, through the Philippines and Indonesia.
Heyerdahl was born in Larvik, [8] Norway, the son of master brewer Thor Heyerdahl (1869–1957) and his wife, Alison Lyng (1873–1965). As a young child, Heyerdahl showed a strong interest in zoology, inspired by his mother, who had a strong interest in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
During World War II, the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marines are preparing a counteroffensive against the Imperial Japanese Navy in the islands of the South Pacific. Lieutenant Joe Cable, a Marine officer, asks a local French planter, Emile de Becque, to help him on a reconnaissance mission behind Japanese lines, but de Becque declines.
Japan slowly extended its influence along the margins of the western Pacific for much of the 20th century leading up to World War II. After the initial scramble for positions by the Spanish, Dutch, English and French in the 19th century, Guam was ceded to America by Spain in 1899 and German-Samoa changed hands to become a New Zealand colony ...
Before the Hōkūleʻa voyage in 1976, academic debate about the settlement of Polynesia was divided between several schools of thought. [ 54 ] Norwegian ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl hypothesized that the Pacific was settled by voyages from South America and set out to prove that with his Kon-Tiki expedition. [ 55 ]
According to a 19th-century interpretation of Rarotongan legend by Stephenson Percy Smith, Ui-te-Rangiora and his crew on the vessel Te Ivi o Atea sailed south and encountered an area he called Tai-uka-a-pia (interpreted by Smith as a frozen sea), "a foggy, misty, and dark place not seen by the sun" where rocks grow out of the sea.