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 Knut Haugland Knut Magne Haugland, DSO, MM, (23 September 1917 – 25 December 2009) was a resistance fighter and noted explorer from Norway, who accompanied Thor Heyerdahl on his famous 1947 "Kon-Tiki" expedition. Haugland, born in 1917 in Rjukan, Telemark, Norway, took his examen artium in 1937, qualifying him for university study. In 1938 he enrolled in military radio studies and afterward joined the Norwegian Army. In February 1940 he was stationed in Setermoen, and soon fought in battles near Narvik as a part of the Norwegian Campaign against Germany. After Germany's defeat of the Norwegian forces and the Nazi