
Artifacts taken from Easter Island in 1947 by Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl are being returned to their home, called Rapa Nui by its indigenous community. Two decades after Heyerdahl’s death, Oslo’s Kon-Tiki Museum has begun the repatriation of many of the approximately 5,600 items brought to Norway. In 1947, Heyerdahl sailed on a balsa raft from Peru to Polynesia in an attempt to prove his theory that the South Sea Islands could have been settled by mariners from South America. Among the items being returned are human remains, skulls from the Rapa Nui people called Ivi Tepuna, along with sculpted stone relics.
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