Rush
Family Cyperaceae
Scirpus totara, rush (S. totara 1), is a giant South American marshland plant.
Use
The Indians along Lake Titicaca in Bolivia and Peru use it for boats building. Thor Heyerdahl assumes that this technique of boat building could have been used by early civilisations to cross the Atlantic. The Europeans most likely will have used papyrus for boat building, while the early settlers changed to the giant Andean rush to explore their new environment in the opinion of Heyerdahl. When in later times the Europeans changed to other techniques of boat building, this technique remained unchanged in the isolation of the Andes.