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.
Thor was... well, could have been Chris Hemsworth and played Thor, which would have been ironic. Handsome, charismatic, charming, and movie stars would die to have his perfect pearly white teeth and engaging grin.
But the funny thing was, there's this giant museum full of mementos and stories about the Kon-Tiki, and then the Ra and Ra II (the inverse of the Kon-Tiki, instead of Polynesian to South America Ra was Morroco to South America; the Ra sank, hence the Ra II). Great stories, particularly the sinking of the Ra, given THOR COULDN'T SWIM. And the entire thing about everyone telling him the Kon-Tiki and Ra were unproven, he should do shorter test trips, but he wasn't about to listen to some namby-pamby adventurer want-to-bees. He was going ALL IN. And that to prove a theory that a few Inca carvings that looked like something from Polynesian meant there must have been a migration from one place to the other, that they were really all from the same ancestory.
And, that may sound a little like, "is this guy an idiot? Sailing on an unproven ship on a wildly improbably journey in the middle of the ocean when you don't know how to swim?" But it's not. The man was the stuff of every heroic fantasy I've ever read, and I think it's great to find someone that actually lived that life.
But at the end of this entire paint-by-number path throught the museum and simulated cave-complex and recreations of the actual ships and the like, at the very last little bit of the trail of breadcrumbs, was a small little sign that said "DNA testing subsequently determined that, in fact, none of Thor's theories were true."
So, KON-TIKI - THE GREATEST SEA ADVENTURE OF OUR TIME is essentially correct (or at least, I don't know anything that would trump it). But it all seems a little ... ya.
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