Thor Heyerdalh (ocean crossing by totora boats)

Norwegian anthropologist and archaeologist, Thor Heyerdalh became famous thanks to the expedition he led in 1947, on a boat of totora, the reed of Lake Titicaca. 

He would have been largely inspired by the boats made by the populations living permanently on the lake, by means of floating houses, to create his boat, baptized the "Kon-Tiki". This expedition led him to cross the Pacific Ocean from east to west on this reed boat, in search of information on the settlement of the Polynesian islands. His goal was to prove that the indigenous populations of the Andean region were descended from the peoples of Oceania, who crossed the Pacific Ocean in these small boats.