Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl 3.5 stars rounded up

[Karin]

NB Heyerdahl, who wrote the book, was definitely a wise leader even if he did wisely allow big decisions on the raft to be made as a group (that was brilliant in this instance)

I read this as a child and remembered almost nothing from it, so it was time for a reread.

Not all of you might know about the then-famous voyage Heyerdahl and five other men made on a raft built in the ancient Pervuian style. Heyerdahl was convinced that it was Peruvians who first settled in part of Polynesian, so set out to prove that the voyage could be made using those rafts and did just that. He did put in a very short appendix pointing out that this did not prove his long unpopular theory. However, an DNA study published in 2020 does show that there are some South American indigenous genes as well as some from coastal people in British Columbia. This doesn't surprise me in the least since it wasn't as unusual for coastal peoples do roam the seas as it has been made out.

Back to the book. Heyerdahl starts with planning the voyage, getting financial backing and that sort of thing, then moves to their travels in South America in order to get balsa logs and other natural supplies to build the raft etc. Much of the book is about the voyage itself, and just the last chapter or so is about them actually being in Polynesia. The book isn't dry and I found it interesting, particularly since this was in 1947 and the only technology they brought along were 2 cameras (yes, there are b & w photos in the book),a couple of short wave radios and a way to cook food even though they could have eaten the fish raw.

There are some intense survival scenes in this book, but much of it is about life and navigating on the raft, their adventures with fish and so on and so forth.