Thor Heyerdahl and the Ra II

May 17, 1970: Thor Heyerdahl sets sail from Morocco to Barbados in a boat made entirely of buoyant reeds in an attempt to provide validity to his claim that ancient vessels were capable of crossing the world's oceans during prehistoric times.  

With a crew of Norwegian hippies, Thor set out in his boat, "Ra II", named after the Egyptian Sun god.  "Ra I" had broke apart because it was made entirely of patchouli and good intentions, which coincidentally were not buoyant materials.  Heyerdahl's mission was to challenge the accepted origins of many cultures throughout the world. He claimed that due to the sea-worthiness of these crafts and early European reports of light-skinned tribes found throughout the Polynesian islands, there was the potential for ancient civilizations to have come into contact with each other much earlier than what other scientific and anthropological studies had suggested at the time. Heyerdahl's earlier journey, the "Kon Tiki" expedition, was made into a documentary film that won an academy award in 1951 (Hottest Superfluous Sex Scene in a Documentary).  

The Ra II expedition was a success and another film (The Ra Expeditions) was made thereafter. This film did not win any academy awards, however, due it being comprised entirely of superfluous sex scenes with Egyptian actors.  It was narrated during each scene by Thor himself, who named the uncut version "The Raw Expeditions". Some have called it pure egocentric pornography, but Heyerdahl claimed the artistic integrity of the film was apparent only if the genre was properly understood, which was of his own creation - "Thor Noir". It never caught on because it was all sorts of weird, but an epic example of soft-Thor Noir can be found here: Thor vs. Satan.    

Thor died in 2002.  This song was played at his funeral, in honor of Norway's most famous music, "Folk Troll Metal":