Thor Heyerdahl under the title "Fatu Hiva" (London: Allen & Unwin, 1974). The story of his time on Fatu Hiva and his side trip to Hivaoa and Mohotani is also related in "Green Was the Earth on the Seventh Day " (Random House, 1996). In 1947, Heyerdahl and five fellow adventurers sailed from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands, French Polynesia in a pae-pae raft that they had constructed from balsa wood and other native materials, christened the "Kon-Tiki". The "Kon-Tiki" expedition was inspired by old reports and drawings made by the Spanish Conquistadors of Inca rafts, and by native legends and archaeological
Kon-Tiki (2012 film) One significant inaccuracy is absence of indigenous Polynesians from the cast. The scenes depicting Heyerdahl's experiences on Fatu Hiva were shot in Thailand with Thai extras who do not resemble native Polynesians, and who are shown holding compound spears not typical of the Marquesas Islands, and weaving rattan baskets, of which neither the technique nor the plant material are native to French Polynesia. The film focuses on Heyerdahl's theory that Polynesia was first populated with humans from Peru, but it ignores the Norwegian's more ethnocentric speculations that the original Kon-Tiki voyage was undertaken by a race of tall white bearded