jsut extremely very well done!
So much more than my couple of feeble attempts at the model.
Cudos for your expertise
Wildman
----- Original Message -----
From: Gunnar Sillén
To: [email protected]
Sent: Saturday, July 02, 2011 10:25 AM
Subject: Re: [Papermodels II 45171] Kon-Tiki ready
More on the Kon-Tiki
In the mid 19th century not many westerners could imagine that ”primitive”
non-Europeans were able to travel the high seas long before Columbus. Deep sea
sailing was believed to demand a ”developed” culture to be invented and dared.
Therefore the Norwegian adventurer Tor Heyerdal was met with much scepticism
when he launched a theory that Polynesia might have been populated through a
direct migration from South America. He pointed at winds and streams leading
constantly from the South American west coast to the Polynesian islands and at
great similarities between pre historic sculptures in both places. To prove
the theory he had a native raft, a so called ”balsa”, built in Peru following
16th century descriptions and with no modern (metallic) strengthenings.
Together with four friends from the allied war training camp ”Little Norway”
(started in Canada) and a Swedish ethnologist, he sailed off from Callao on the
28th of April 1947. The raft was named Kon-Tiki after an Inca divine
personality who following the ancient myth had to flee over the ocean together
with his closest after a hostile attack from neighbours.
Heyerdahl and his friends sailed and drifted 7000 kilometers and landed
after 101 days on the island Ravoia, where the polynesians showed such an
interest in the raft. Even if they had never seen a vessel of this type they
already knew it and had a name for it as it well followed descriptions in the
myth telling how their ancestors had come to the islands.
The book that Heyerdahl wrote (1948) on the expedition became a bestseller
and the documentary film from the journey got an Academy award in 1951. I was a
quite young boy at that time, but still remember how impressed I was when
seeing the film in the cinema together with my parents.
Even if Heyerdahls theory on migration still is not so accepted, he managed
to show that pre historic native crafts were good enough for tranocean
crossings. It has made it easier for us to understand that even stone age
peoples could sail the seas. Only that they did not need the growing amount of
safety gadgets that later generations don´t dare to live without.
As I stated already in my earlier posting, this paper model downloaded from
the Bulgarian site http://www.bgbiomass.com/bghobby/kon-tiki/index.htm has been
a great pleasure to deal with. I have done some mistakes (who does not?) but
managed to masque most of them behind a little paint and lots of threads. (The
amount of ropes and lines on the pictures of the real craft are stunning.) For
the rigging spars I have been lucky that my wife several years ago cultivated
flax in our garden. Beautiful flowers alive. Nice bouquets also when dead and
hanging in or ceiling to dry. And now a huge stock of masts, antennas, canons,
stancions and what ever thin and strong I need for detailing my paper models.
Sorry that there are no scale indications with the photos. The model is in
1:100 and has a length of 15 cm (6 inches?). Also sorry if the story was a bit
long, but the model inspired me so much.
Gunnar
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