HEYERDAHL, Thor. The Kon-Tiki Expedition. By Raft Across the South Seas, translated by F.H. Lyon.

HEYERDAHL, Thor. The Kon-Tiki Expedition. By Raft Across the South Seas, translated by F.H. Lyon.From Peru to Polynesia by Balsa Raft HEYERDAHL, Thor. The Kon Tiki Expedition. By Raft Across the South Seas, translated by F. H. Lyon. London: George Allen & Unwin. [1950]. 8vo. Original brick cloth, gilt device blocked to upper board, spine lettered and decorated in gilt, illustrated dust jacket, not price clipped; pp. 235, [3 (colophon, advertisements)]; title printed in black and ochre with mask device, photographic frontispiece and 8 ff.

From Peru to Polynesia by Balsa Raft

HEYERDAHL, Thor. The Kon-Tiki Expedition. By Raft Across the South Seas, translated by F.H. Lyon. London: George Allen & Unwin. [1950].

8vo. Original brick cloth, gilt device blocked to upper board, spine lettered and decorated in gilt, illustrated dust-jacket, not price-clipped; pp. 235, [3 (colophon, advertisements)]; title printed in black and ochre with mask device, photographic frontispiece and 8 ff. photographic plates; a few small chips to dust-jacket at corners and edges; otherwise a very good copy.

Very rare first English edition, first impression of Heyerdahl’s account of his legendary sailing raft expedition across the Pacific from Peru, undertaken to demonstrate the possibility that indigenous North and South Americans could have crossed the Pacific to Polynesia.

The expedition ended when the raft was wrecked on a coral reef in the Tuamoto Archipelago, having covered 4,300 miles, but Heyerdahl had demonstrated the plausibility of his hypothesis. The 1950 film detailing the journey, starring and directed by Heyerdahl, won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1951.

SKU: 2124066