Just reread Thor Heyerdahl's "Kon-Tiki" for the first time in half a century. It tells of their 100-day sail from Peru to Polynesia on a balsa-log raft as part of his effort to show that the eastern Pacific Islands (Polynesia) could have been settled by people from the east (South America) rather than the west (Asia)
It's a very well written book, with just the right amount of detail, scene-setting and pacing. An easy read and very enjoyable.
What's really interesting reading it now is that DNA evidence, which wasn't available then, has shown that he was wrong: Polynesians common ancestors came from Asia. Yet the book is very persuasive, using myth, anthropology and the earliest European records in the Pacific to argue that people there came from Peru.
It's a good reminder that even the most persuasive of arguments can be overturned by later evidence.
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