For our current issue, we wanted to celebrate a few visionaries  making a big impact with simple tools or even a simple idea.  Ever had a great idea but thought to yourself, “if it doesn’t exist, there must be a reason it can’t be done?” Our micro-profiles provide a window into some amazing minds who  inspired us to not to take “impossible” for an answer.  For the next week we’ll be featuring several “Do More With Less” all-stars, starting with one from history: Thor Heyerdahl, inventor of the Kon Tiki, who illustrates that thinking outside the box has a long and storied tradition.

What do you call Thor Heyerdahl (1914-2002)—an experimental anthropologist? An explorer? Certainly an inspiration. Born in Larvik, Norway, Heyerdahl is best known for successfully crossing the Pacific ocean in his balsa-wood raft the Kon-Tiki in 1947. Named after a South American god, the Kon-Tiki was built using only what materials would have been available to prehistoric boatbuilders: balsa-tree trunks, hemp rope, bamboo, and pine. After 101 days and 4,300 miles, they made it to a small Pacific island, drawing international attention to Heyerdahl’s theory that this was how the islands had first been settled thousands of years ago. Until then, no one knew how people first got to these isolated areas and no one paid much attention to a maverick Norwegian with a zoology degree. After Kon-Tiki, Heyerdahl continued this experiment throughout his life in different forms: building surprisingly seaworthy watercraft of strictly local, natural materials, and through his expeditions drawing unexpected connections between ancient world cultures. Heyerdahl, whose crafts always flew a United Nations flag showing a photograph of the Earth from space, hoped his voyages would inspire cooperation among nations today. He also had a front-row seat to the horrors of ocean pollution, and voiced an early warning about the dangers of industrialization. Sailing his reed boat the Tigris through Persian Gulf sludge in 1977 on the trail of Sumerian beginnings, he wrote that the ancient people “would have been horrified to see the environment modern man prefers.”

-Brook Wilensky-Lanford

Brook’s debut book Paradise Lust: Searching for the Eden was just named one of The New York Times Editor’s Picks. Lust tells the true story of people who’ve searched for the Garden of Eden on earth, including Thor Heyerdahl and his 1977 Iraq expedition. Follow the quest at: paradiselustbook.com