NY Times LitterFaring Seafarers Manmade junk, largely of plastic, accounts for up to fourfifths of the debris in the oceans. All that litter is providing more opportunities for marine organisms to spread. [Required free registration at NYTimes to view] April 30, 2002 Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian anthropologist who died this month at 87, spent much of his life trying to prove his theories that ancient peoples traveled the oceans in rafts or other vessels and populated faroff lands.His ideas have been largely discounted in favor of other theories as to where, for example, the people of Polynesia came from. But while early societies may not have spread by traveling the oceans, other organisms have, their KonTiki a bit of debris like wood or buoyant pumice.

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