Why the name “Kon-Tiki”
The name comes from an Inca sun deity called Viracocha (Kon‑Tiki).
Heyerdahl believed legends about this god described a bearded culture hero who sailed west across the ocean, which inspired the name.
The raft hoisted sail outside the port of Callào in Peru with 6 men onboard. Norwegians Thor Heyerdahl, Herman Watzinger, Knut Haugland, Torstein Raaby and Erik Hesselberg, and a Swede, Bengt Danielsson. Heyerdahl was out to prove that people from South America could have settled Polynesia in pre-Columbian times. His aim in mounting the Kon-Tiki expedition was to show, by using only the materials available to those people at the time, that there was no technical reasons to prevent them from sailing from South America to the South Pacific.”
So Kon-Tiki roughly means:
“Sun god Tiki” or “Tiki of the Sun.”
The original documentary was an award winning, life changing film (for me). I remember seeing this at the Eagle Rock theatre in Southern CA when malls were a cool place to hang out.
It has been made into a film recently which is on the watchlist for sure!