The movie inspired by journey by raft across the Pacific Ocean from South America to the Polynesian islands, led by Norwegian explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl. The film was mainly shot on the island of Malta.

While the prevailing theories of the time held that Polynesia had been settled by peoples migrating from the west, Heyerdahl, an experimental ethnographer and adventurer, sets out to prove his theory that people from South America settled the islands in pre-Columbian times.