Pre-Columbian rafts

Pre-Columbian rafts plied the Pacific Coast of South America for trade from about 100 BCE, and possibly much earlier. The 16th-century descriptions by the Spanish of the rafts used by Native Americans along the seacoasts of Peru and Ecuador has incited speculation about the seamanship of the Indians, the seaworthiness of their rafts, and the possibility that they undertook long ocean-going voyages. None of the prehistoric rafts have survived and the exact characteristics of their construction and the geographical extent of their voyages are uncertain.

It is likely that traders using rafts, constructed of balsa wood logs, voyaged as far as Mexico and introduced metallurgy to the civilizations of that country. Some scholars and adventurers of the 20th and 21st century (most notably Thor Heyerdahl) who reached Polynesia on the Kon-Tiki raft have asserted that the rafts and their crews journeyed thousands of miles across the Pacific to Polynesia. Several other people and groups have also built rafts based on prehistoric models and undertaken trans-Pacific voyages.

Balsa is the Spanish word for raft. The use of rafts for commerce on the coasts of Peru and Ecuador, from northern Chile to southern Colombia, continued until the late 19th century, long after the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire (1532 to 1572), although the fidelity of these rafts to their prehistoric ancestors is uncertain.