100 Tala - Tanumafili II Tigris Expedition

The Tigris Expedition was Thor Heyerdahl's 1977–78 voyage aboard a reed boat built in Iraq, intended to demonstrate prehistoric maritime trade routes connecting Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and East Africa. After five months at sea, Heyerdahl deliberately burned the vessel off Djibouti in protest against the wars then ravaging the Horn of Africa and Yemen — a political act, not a navigational failure. Samoa issued commemoratives for several Heyerdahl voyages during the 1990s, part of a broader Pacific-nation trend of licensing prestige gold issues through foreign minting programs.