Twenty-three-year-old Michael Rockefeller disappeared during a trip in search of primitive art in one of the most remote parts of the world, in Papua New Guinea.
The official explanation from the Dutch authorities, under whose administration the country was at the time, was that he drowned while trying to swim to shore from his overturned ship, while others claimed that he had met a terrible fate, that he had been killed and eaten by cannibals in order to took revenge on the whites for the Dutch attack on their village, writes the British Daily Mail.
A new documentary by Fraser Heston, son of actor Charlton Heston, revisits this remarkable story, and newly discovered footage of a bearded, naked white man rowing with a group of Papuans suggests another possibility: a Harvard-educated American who rejected civilization and joined a tribe of cannibals .
The story begins in 1961 when a young graduate swapped life in Manhattan for a modest life in Dutch New Guinea, one of the most remote places in the world.
The young anthropologist went in search of exhibits for the museum of primitive art that his father, the governor of New York, and later the deputy of the American president, Gerald Ford, had just founded.
Michael Roffeller was particularly fascinated by the cannibalistic tribe of the Asmata, who made impressive sculptures out of wood (and dyed them with the blood of their victims) and decorated the corpses of members of the enemy tribe whose brains they had previously eaten, believing that in this way their power would be transferred to them, it says in to the Daily Mail article.
Bizarre myth: Natives keep Rockefeller as a totem
The young Rockefeller, who, according to his father, had never been happier in his life, mysteriously disappeared on November 18, 1961, after his catamaran capsized.
Native guides swam to shore for help, and he spent the night with a Dutch anthropologist on a boat, at one point stripping down to his underpants, saying he thought he would make it, and jumping into the water. The Dutchman was rescued the next day, and Rockefeller was lost, writes the Dail Mail
Years later a Dutch missionary who lived in the area said he had heard rumors that the natives had found him, killed and eaten him, while Dutch officials reject this claim, as well as another, rather bizarre story, that Rockefeller's heir is alive and the local tribe he guards it as a totem.
The editor of "New York Magazine" Milton McLean, who became interested in that story, sent a photographer to that area, who took the mentioned shot in 1969, and the picture was stored in a warehouse in New York for 40 years until Heston found it when he was filming. documentary film "The Search for Michael Rockefeller".
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