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This book is the chronicle of a journey made in 1947 by Norwegian author Thor Heyerdahl and four other men. Heyerdahl sought to prove that pre-Columbian South American natives had the ability to reach and settle Polynesia. Using only the materials that would have been available to them, Heyerdahl and his crew successfully constructed and sailed a balsawood raft from Peru to Polynesia. It is still intact today and can be viewed at the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo.
Though anthropologists now believe, based on DNA testing, that modern Polynesians are descendents of explorers from Southeast Asia, Heyerdahl merely sought to demonstrate that it was possible that the island was also colonized by South Americans. Polynesian legends state that the island was inhabited by two different groups, those with "long ears" and those with "short ears," and that the long-eared people were exterminated in a bloody war. Heyerdahl believed that this now-extinct group of "long-eared" people were originally from South America.
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