Thor Heyerdahl Easter Island". Heyerdahl proposed that Tiki's neolithic people colonized the then uninhabited Polynesian islands as far north as Hawaii, as far south as New Zealand, as far east as Easter Island, and as far west as Samoa and Tonga around 500 AD. They supposedly sailed from Peru to the Polynesian islands on "pae-paes"—large rafts built from balsa logs, complete with sails and each with a small cottage. They built enormous stone statues carved in the image of human beings on Pitcairn, the Marquesas, and Easter Island that resembled those in Peru. They also built huge pyramids on Tahiti and Samoa
Thor Heyerdahl also criticised Heyerdahl's theory in his 2009 book "The Wayfinders", which explores the history of Polynesia. Davis says that Heyerdahl "ignored the overwhelming body of linguistic, ethnographic, and ethnobotanical evidence, augmented today by genetic and archaeological data, indicating that he was patently wrong." A 2009 study by Norwegian researcher Erik Thorsby suggested that there was some merit to Heyerdahl's ideas and that, while Polynesia was colonized from Asia, some contact with South America also existed. Some critics suggest, however, that Thorsby's research is inconclusive because his data may have been influenced by recent population contact. However, more recent work indicates