The Impossible Voyage Of Kon Tiki

Read Along or Enhanced eBook: Combining history with culture, the ocean with exploration, and risk with triumph—this rich offering is the only picture book account of Thor Heyerdahl's world-famous Kon-Tiki expedition, during which he sailed a raft 5,000 miles from the coast of South America to the islands of the South Pacific. Author Deborah Kogan Ray clearly and succinctly sets up how Norwegian anthropologist Heyerdahl became convinced that ancient Peruvians arrived in the South Pacific via raft, why he wanted to re-create the voyage, and how he planned for it. She uses primary-source quotations on each spread to shore up the factual history of the events portrayed in the book. Her illustrations add emotion to this harrowing journey. From the Hardcover edition.

"Combining history with culture, the ocean with exploration, and risk with triumph--this rich offering is the only picture book account of Thor Heyerdahl's world-famous Kon-Tiki expedition, during which he sailed a raft 5,000 miles from the coast of South America to the islands of the South Pacific"--Publisher.

A desert island might sound like a paradise of sunshine and buried treasure, but in real life, these environments are harsh on human beings. This intriguing book introduces readers to real-life scenarios unique to islands � and provides the tools to plan their own survival. A map and supply list give readers the base of survival plans, while Makerspace activities allow readers to exercise their critical thinking and creativity. Fact boxes provide enticing information to immerse readers in the island biome. This high-interest topic will encourage readers to engage with STEM material, making this a valuable book for any library.

“One of the great adventures of our time.” —Life “Am going to cross Pacific on a wooden raft to support a theory that the South Sea islands were peopled from Peru. Will you come? . . . Reply at once.” That is how six brave and inquisitive men came to seek a dangerous path to test a scientific theory. On a primitive raft made of forty-foot balsa logs and named “Kon-Tiki” in honor of a legendary sun king, Thor Heyerdahl and five companions deliberately risked their lives to show that the ancient Peruvians could have made the 4,300-mile voyage to the Polynesian islands on a similar craft. For three months, the bold young men made their way across the pacific at the complete mercy of the ocean. They encountered storms that threatened to tear their raft apart, whales large enough to sink them in the blink of an eye, and sharks ready to feast on any man unfortunate enough to fall overboard. In the true spirit of adventure, they held on until finally making landfall on a remote Polynesian island, proving Heyerdahl’s theory possible after all. On every page of this true chronicle—from the actual building of the raft through all the dangerous and comic adventures on the sea, to the spectacular crash landing and the native islanders’ hula dances—each reader will find a wholesome and spellbinding escape from the twenty-first century.

"Islands have captured the imagination of scientists and the public for centuries - unique and rare environments, their isolation makes them natural laboratories for ecology and evolution. This authoritative, alphabetically arranged reference, featuring more than 200 succinct articles by leading scientists from around the world, provides broad coverage of all the island sciences. But what exactly is an island? The volume editors define it here as any discrete habitat isolated from other habitats by inhospitable surroundings. The Encyclopedia of Islands examines many such insular settings - oceanic and continental islands as well as places such as caves, mountaintops, and whale falls at the bottom of the ocean. This essential, one-stop resource, extensively illustrated with color photographs, clear maps, and graphics will introduce island science to a wide audience and spur further research on some of the planet's most fascinating habitats." --Book Jacket.

What makes a good explorer? Adaptability, ambition, stamina, self-confidence, curiosity, optimism, authority—and fund-raising ability. Though few of us will ever have to face a charging elephant, or survive solely on penguin stew, when it comes to project management, crisis aversion, or any number of everyday problems, there is much we can learn from the larger-than-life tales of the world's most famous adventurers. Here, award-winning documentarian Mick Conefrey pulls practical advice from their original diaries and logs, like how to survive an anaconda attack (wait until it has swallowed your legs, then reach down and cut its head off), and how to keep morale up (according to Ernest Shackleton, "A good laugh doesn't require any additional weight"). In addition to the wonderful characters and stories, this book offers many lessons on how to set sail without a clear path home. Answers to some important questions, courtesy of The Adventurer's Handbook: * How many corpses are believed to be on Mt. Everest? Answer: 120 * How is polar bear meat best prepared? Answer: Raw and frozen. * What do you do if attacked by a charging lion? Answer: Stand very still and stare it down. * What should you wear when crossing a desert? Answer: Lots of layers—fabric absorbs sweat and prolongs its cooling action.

Paints a compelling picture of impressive pre-Columbian cultures and Old World civilizations that, contrary to many prevailing notions, were not isolated from one another In Ancient Ocean Crossings: Reconsidering the Case for Contacts with the Pre-Columbian Americas, Stephen Jett encourages readers to reevaluate the common belief that there was no significant interchange between the chiefdoms and civilizations of Eurasia and Africa and peoples who occupied the alleged terra incognita beyond the great oceans. More than a hundred centuries separate the time that Ice Age hunters are conventionally thought to have crossed a land bridge from Asia into North America and the arrival of Columbus in the Bahamas in 1492. Traditional belief has long held that earth’s two hemispheres were essentially cut off from one another as a result of the post-Pleistocene meltwater-fed rising oceans that covered that bridge. The oceans, along with arctic climates and daunting terrestrial distances, formed impermeable barriers to interhemispheric communication. This viewpoint implies that the cultures of the Old World and those of the Americas developed independently. Drawing on abundant and concrete evidence to support his theory for significant pre-Columbian contacts, Jett suggests that many ancient peoples had both the seafaring capabilities and the motives to cross the oceans and, in fact, did so repeatedly and with great impact. His deep and broad work synthesizes information and ideas from archaeology, geography, linguistics, climatology, oceanography, ethnobotany, genetics, medicine, and the history of navigation and seafaring, making an innovative and persuasive multidisciplinary case for a new understanding of human societies and their diffuse but interconnected development.