Page 31 - Insights Into The Scriptures - The Jaredites

The archeologist, Thor Heyerdahl, believed ancient cultures did not
build wooden ships like we are familiar with in the times of the Romans
and Greeks. He felt that the vessels that were built when men first started
water travel were of two types—rafts made from logs, and reed boats. To
prove his theory that ancient civilizations could travel such distances on
these types of barges, he traveled across oceans in such crafts. The
Kontiki, his first such ship, was made of balsa logs [10] on which he and
his crew crossed the Pacific. Later, he and his team crossed the Atlantic
Ocean on a ship made of reeds [15].

In crossing these oceans, Heyerdahl showed it was plausible that
man-made rafts and boats built out of materials like logs and reeds that
were familiar to men anciently, could make such journeys. It is possible
that the Jaredites crossed the great Siberian Sea using one of these
methods. Figure 13 shows a picture of Thor Heyerdahl’s log raft Kontiki
on which he and his crew crossed the Pacific Ocean. Figure 14 shows a
picture of Ra II, the reed boat on which Herydahl and his crew crossed the
Atlantic.

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