ANorwegian-born anthropologist and explorer, Thor Heyerdahl is best known for his daring journey across the Pacific Ocean on a balsa wood raft. As a child Heyerdahl dreamed of fleeing the small sedate Norwegian town of Larvik, where he was born, to seek adventure in distant exotic lands. In 1937, after three years at the university in Oslo, Heyerdahl left Norway with his young wife Liv to live on Fatu Hiva, one of the islands of Polynesia. Returning to Norway after a year, Heyerdahl decided to study the unsolved mystery of Polynesian origins. His studies were interrupted, however, by the Nazi invasion of Norway, and for five years Heyerdahl fought in the underground resistance until the war ended and he resumed his work. To support his theory that the Polynesian islands were settled by pre-Inca Peruvians, Heyerdahl sailed, along with six other intrepid explorers, from the coast of South America to Polynesia on a small balsa raft. Kon-Tiki describes his adventures at sea and his arrival in Polynesia.
The "Viracocha" people. When Spanish explorers led by Francisco Pizarro arrived in what is now Peru in 1527, they noticed that although the majority of Incas, a tribe of native South Americans, were dark-skinned, some had lighter skins and even red hair.
