Kon-Tiki

Legendary creator god of Peru and sun king who ruled the country later occupied by the Incas and was supposed to have migrated out into the Pacific. The name was used by explorer Thor Heyerdahl in 1947 for his raft.

Heyerdahl sailed the raft, made of nine balsawood logs, from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands, near Tahiti, on the Humboldt current in an attempt to show that ancient inhabitants of South America might have reached Polynesia. He sailed from 28 April to 7 August 1947, with five companions, about 8,000 km/5,000 mi. The Tuamotu Archipelago was in fact settled by Austronesian seafarers, and Heyerdahl's theory is largely discounted by anthropologists.