“The original name of the sun-god Virakocha, which seems to have been more used in Peru in old times, was Kon-Tiki or Illa-Tiki, which means Sun-Tiki or Fire-Tiki,” Heyerdahl claims to have read. The Norwegian researcher also cited the legend of Viracocha, the Inca god who created the world.
The very fact that Ipomoea batatas was cultivated in Polynesia also fit into Heyerdahl’s puzzle obviously the plant couldn’t have made its own way across the ocean, with no help from humans. For him, an unquestionable example was kumara – the word means ‘sweet potato’, and it means the same thing on lands that are 8000 kilometres away from each other. Another not insignificant clue was language: similar sounding words meant the same thing both for residents of Polynesia and in today’s Peru and Bolivia. Heyerdahl backed up the Tei Tetua theory with his knowledge of the winds and ocean currents (which flowed from east to west), and he also recognized the similarity between the Tiki statues found in Oceania and figures known from South America. Especially when a question was forming in his mind: how did the first people get to Polynesia? It turned out, however, that Thor wasn’t able to settle in a single place. Officially, he had come to the island with his wife to research animal migrations, but the couple had been dreaming of getting back to nature. The 23-year-old Heyerdahl, who was asking the above questions, was a budding zoologist.
According to the aforementioned old man, Tei Tetua was once the leader of the four tribes, but he outlived all his countrymen and all his 12 wives he was one of the few islanders who remembered and believed in their their fathers’ and grandfathers’ legends of about the great Polynesian chief-god Tika, son of the Sun. That conversation took place in 1937 on Fatu Hiva, an island about the size of the Polish town of Zakopane (84 square kilometres), in a place where the globe is almost entirely blue. “‘From Te-Fiti ,’ answered the old man and nodded toward that part of the horizon where the sun rose, the direction in which there was no other land except South America.” “‘From where?’ I asked, and was curious to hear the old man’s reply. “It was Tiki in flesh and blood who had led Tei Tetua’s ancestors across the ocean to these islands.
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