Thor Heyerdahl: 100 years of the great explorer celebrated with Google Doodle
NORWEGIAN ethnographer explorer Thor Heyerdahl has been remembered today in the latest Google Doodle.
Best known for his leading Kon-Tiki expedition of 1947, Google have marked what would have been his 100th birthday.
Heyerdahl and his crew sailed on a raft 5000 miles west of Peru in an attempt to use materials which would only have been available to pre-Columbian Americans.
They were eventually successful in their expedition reaching French Polynesia.
His hypothesis was that these places were colonised by Americans first before Asians.
Heyerdahl also visited Easter Island and the doodle displays a moai - one of the huge facial sculptures on the island.
The explorer argued that the island was proof that settlers had come from the east rather than the west.
Heyerdahl was born in Larvik in southern Norway and studied geography and zoology at the University of Oslo.
He fought during the Second World War and died in 2002.