Pre-Columbian rafts voyaged as far as Mexico and introduced metallurgy to the civilizations of that country. Some scholars and adventurers of the 20th and 21st century have asserted that the rafts and their crews journeyed thousands of miles across the Pacific to Polynesia, most notably Thor Heyerdahl who reached Polynesia on the Kon-Tiki raft. Several other people and groups have also built rafts based on prehistoric models and undertaken trans-Pacific voyages. Balsa is the Spanish word for raft. The use of rafts for commerce on the coasts of Peru and Ecuador, from northern Chile to southern Colombia, continued until the late 19th
Knut Haugland He held the ranks of major from 1954 and lieutenant colonel from 1977. He left the Air Force in 1963 to become acting, later permanent, director of the Norway's Resistance Museum. He retired from this position in 1983. He was also the director of the Kon-Tiki Museum from its start in 1947 to 1990. He rounded off his career as board chairman of the Kon-Tiki Museum in 1991. Haugland also served as J. S. Wilson's attaché at the 1949 12th World Scout Conference in Elvesæter. Five of the six men in the Kon-Tiki expedition were Scouts. Haugland first met Thor