The Viracocha expedition first reed boats built? Were ancient mariners able to cover large distances in reed rafts? Did ancient cultures utilize the ocean currents and winds as highways rather than barriers in search of new lands? Were the ancient navigators able to find their way across endless miles of ocean? These are questions the scientific world has debated for centuries. The expeditions of explorer/anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl captured the imagination of the world with the Kon-Tiki balsa log raft voyage on the Pacific in 1947, his Ra Expedition, a reed raft journey across the Atlantic in 1970 and his Tigris reed boat voyage
Thor Heyerdahl after him, as are HNoMS "Thor Heyerdahl", a Norwegian Nansen class frigate, along with "MS Thor Heyerdahl" (now renamed "MS Vana Tallinn") and "Thor Heyerdahl", a German three-masted sail training vessel originally owned by a participant of the Tigris expedition. Thor Heyerdahl Upper Secondary School in Larvik, the town of his birth, is also named after him. Heyerdahl's numerous awards and honours include the following: Thor Heyerdahl Thor Heyerdahl (; October 6, 1914 – April 18, 2002) was a Norwegian adventurer and ethnographer with a background in zoology, botany, and geography. He became notable for his "Kon-Tiki" expedition in 1947,