“The indigenous maritime tradition of Peru dates back more than 1,500 years, undertaking trade-based sailing along the coast of South America, from Mexico in the north to Chile in the south.īalsa wood being cut to make Kon-Tiki. However, the Kon-Tiki expedition had proved them wrong. It noted that US and European experts had once dismissed the seaworthiness of balsa-wood rafts. However, when the tides of history travel one way, they will eventually return,” it added. “The article claimed that the Kon-Tiki had ceased to be relevant scientifically, because archaeologists had proven that the Polynesians had their origins in the southern tip of Taiwan. Members of the Kon-Tiki expedition sharing a meal.

“In 2007, Norway’s most important newspaper, Aftenposten, had the headline Kon-Tiki - In Eternal Headwind.

The statement noted that Heyerdahl was for many years both celebrated and controversial. It was on April 28, 1947, that Heyerdahl, a Norwegian explorer, along with his crew, had set sail on the Kon-Tiki balsa wood raft from Callao, Peru, to the Tuamotu Islands in French Polynesia. “The study again brings to the fore Thor Heyerdahl’s experiment with the Kon-Tiki raft, in which he tested the seafaring capability of the primitive balsa-wood rafts of the indigenous peoples of South America’s west coast,” the statement added.

The earliest element of this DNA material is found on the island of Fatu Hiva, in the Marquesas, where Thor Heyerdahl in 1937 began the outline of his theory.

About 2-5 per cent of the DNA in today’s Polynesian population is from the area of present-day Colombia, proving that these two groups once had met.

The majority of immigration to Polynesia had come from the west.

The paper, published in the journal Nature, had presented three main conclusions: The strongest validation the theory received was in 2020, when an American research group made a comprehensive study of Polynesian DNA, the museum said in a statement April 28, 2022. Thor Heyerdahl’s theory of indigenous Americans and Polynesians being in contact with each other prior to European colonisation is still relevant today, as his Kon-Tiki expedition completes 75 years, the Kon-Tiki Museum based in Oslo has said.

Heyerdahl museum