What happened when the Kon-Tiki expedition reached Raroia Atoll in 1947?

In 1947, the Kon-Tiki expedition concluded its 4,300-mile (6,900-km) voyage across the Pacific Ocean when the balsa wood raft drifted onto the reef at Raroia Atoll in the Tuamotu Archipelago.

Led by Norwegian scientist Thor Heyerdahl, the expedition had set out from Peru three and a half months earlier to demonstrate the theory that ancient people from South America could have reached and colonized Polynesia. While the successful arrival at Raroia proved the feasibility of such a transoceanic journey, modern scholarship generally points to an Asian origin for the inhabitants of Polynesia.12