Kantuta Expeditions on the balsa raft from Peru to Polynesia. Kantuta Expeditions The Kantuta Expeditions were two separate expeditions on balsa rafts led by the Czech explorer and adventurer Eduard Ingris. The voyages were inspired by the Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki expeditions. The goal of the expeditions was to repeat the success of the Kon-Tiki and confirm Heyerdahl's thoughts about the migration of Peruvian people to Polynesia. The first expedition, Kantuta I, took place in 1955/1956 and led to failure. In 1959 Ingris built a new balsa raft Kantuta II and tried to repeat the previous expedition. The second expedition was a success.
Mau Piailug prevent debate among scholars. Before the "Hōkūle‘a" voyage in 1976, academic debate about the settlement of Polynesia was divided between several schools of thought. Norwegian ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl hypothesized that the Pacific was settled by voyages from South America and set out to prove that with his "Kon-Tiki" expedition. Scholars did not take Heyerdahl's hypothesis seriously. New Zealander Andrew Sharp proposed the accidental voyaging hypothesis in 1957, which (erroneously) argued that Oceania was too vast to have been settled by intentional voyaging so migrations must have happened by accidental drift voyages. Sharp granted that Polynesians likely settled the Pacific from