A Tragic Disappearance (Mostly) Solved In 'Savage Harvest'

by NPR Staff
March 15, 2014 5:00 AM


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A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art

by Carl Hoffman


Hardcover, 322 pages






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The disappearance of Michael Rockefeller in November of 1961 was an international incident; Rockeller, just 23, was the scion of one of the world's richest families. He had gone to New Guinea to collect native art for his father's newly founded Museum of Primitive Art in New York — and then, he had vanished.

Rockefeller was collecting masks, shields, and poles among the Asmat, a Stone Age people known for their cannibalism as well as their beautiful carving skills — but ultimately, his fate was an unsolved mystery. Until now. Author Carl Hoffman has spent years tracking the story; searching documents, living amongst the Asmat, even learning their language for his new book, Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art. Hoffman tells NPR's Jacki Lyden that Rockefeller disappeared after his flimsy catamaran capsized off the coast of southwestern New Guinea. "He dove in and swam to shore, and he was never seen again."

Interview Highlights

On violence among the Asmat

The Asmat lived in a world of sacred reciprocal violence. Death had to be balanced by life, and life had to be balanced by death. And actually, two Asmat villages had gone to war with each other, and in response, overzealous Dutch policemen had raided the village of Otsjanep and killed a lot of people, and those deaths had been unreciprocated. The world was out of balance when Michael just happened to appear on the shore.

On the persistence of cannibalism

I think that for the Asmat, the sense of self is built on identifying with the other and ultimately consuming the other, and becoming the other. And in Asmat cosmology, I could take Jacki's head and I would become Jacki, my name would be Jacki, and I would be welcomed into your family as if I were you.



Carl Hoffman is a contributing editor at National Geographic Traveler. Liz Lynch/Courtesy of HarperCollins



I think if you look at the Asmat world, it's a world where there's no steady food supply, there's no gardens, it's hard to know chicken and egg with something like this, but I think, you know, thousands upon thousands of years ago, the Asmat probably were suffering from nutritional deficiencies, and that's probably where the cannibalism originated. And then it became ritualized into something much larger.

On learning about Rockefeller's death and cannibalization

If you ask them, they don't want to talk about it. They say, yes, we used to be cannibals, but we don't want to talk about it. We're not cannibals anymore. They have been converted to Catholicism, but they also have multiple wives and live in this rich spirit world that is outside of Catholicism, so it's very difficult to get them to talk about actual cannibalism, and Michael Rockefeller in particular. They're frightened to talk about it.


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As popular culture overflows with vampires and zombies, are we forgetting to be scared of evil?

By Thomas Fleming

PUBLISHED: 10:22 EST, 4 June 2012 | UPDATED: 10:22 EST, 4 June 2012






Rudy Eugene, 31, pictured in an old police mugshot, was shot dead by police in Miami after attacking a man and eating chunks of his face

In 'Eating People is Wrong,' Malcolm Bradbury's genial satire on 1950's leftism, it was still possible to take certain European prejudices for granted. Eating our fellows, as one non-European character in the novel learned, was wrong. Even today most of us probably regard it as not very nice. Nonetheless, the media in every form are ablaze with true stories of cannibalism.

A Haitian-American in Miami attacked a homeless man and ate three fourths of his face, a white mother in Texas drowned her baby and ate bits of it, and the son of a Kenyan college professor in Maryland killed and consumed parts of a 37-year-old Ghanaian boarding in his parents' house. In New Jersey, a man stabbed himself 50 times and pelted the police with some of his intestines. Most bizarre of all, perhaps, is the unconfirmed story of a Canadian homosexual porn actor on the lam for allegedly eating his Chinese boyfriend.

The internet - an electronic petri dish created to culture conspiracy theories - offers the usual zany ideas. It's all voodoo or environmental pollution, and we are on the verge of a zombie apocalypse. It is the tweet twittered round the world.

Amateur philosophers and pop culture critics are in a rush to ascend their cracker barrels and deliver their explanations for the hysteria. People are worried about the economy, see, and project their own fears onto the cannibals. Zombies, so they argue, are our worst nightmare because they have no redeeming virtues. Vampires are romantic - or have been made to seem so in cheap fiction - and even werewolves are tragic figures. But flesh-eating zombies? Why now?

Bogeymen and mythical demons are, as a sociologist would say, "socially constructed" by the stories we are told, the films we see, the religious traditions we accept. As we go mad, we are inclined to pattern our obsessions and delusions according to the myths that dominate our culture. A schizophrenic Christian or even cultural Christian has visions of Christ and the saints, while an ancient Greek in his dreams would receive admonitions from tall handsome people, whether gods or dead relatives.

If zombies and cannibals are coming out of the woodwork to stir our imaginations, it is partly the fault of a very sick popular culture that dotes on the perverse movies of George Romero, Anne Rice's novelistic gushings over vampires, and the teen-exploitation books, movies, and TV shows in which ghouls, werewolves, and vampires are basically not bad creatures who just need a little understanding. We are teaching ourselves not just to celebrate evil but to elevate it. Good people trying to muddle through in a difficult world are boring: Evil is way cool.

There are very few people, any more, who even know that the zombies of legend are not flesh-eating corpses but soulless voodoo slaves, exploited by their masters. For a real zombie movie, watch the Jacques Tourneur/Val Luten movie - beautifully filmed - I Walked With a Zombie. Then watch one of Romero's Night of the Living Dead cannibal-fests and you will begin to understand what has become of our poor world.

The appeal of the old pre-Romero zombie films, and of movies like Don Siegel's The Invasion of the Body Snatchers or Ionesco's play, the Rhinoceros or, even earlier, Karl Capek's R.U.R. and The War With the Newts was the fear of dehumanization. The forces of capitalism and Marxism, as well as mass media and commercialism, were turning out a breed of men and women who seemed less and less rational, less compassionate, less humane and, indeed, less human. People, in other words, like George Romero, Ann Rice, and their admirers.

We no longer fear dehumanization, because too many of us have already lost so much of our humanity. Rape, mutilation, cannibalism - it's all in a day's work for a TV scriptwriter. Someone with a DVD player and a Netflix account can feed his imagination all day long on comic book evil. It is our religion. The Greeks had Zeus and Apollo and Athena; we have Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Buffy and Spike, and the entire cast of Twillight.

Human societies have always had their share of misfits, creeps, and sociopaths, but they also had a moral, aesthetic, and spiritual framework in which to understand the outlaw Grendel or monsters living under volcanos. The great lyric poet Pindar contrasts the lawless rage of Mt. Aetna's Typhon with the serene and beautiful order imposed by the music of Apollo.

Today, such popular art as we have tends to side with Typhon, and there is hardly an undergraduate reader of Milton who does not think Satan is the hero. It is, of course, easy enough to turn off the TV set and throw away the pulp fiction celebrations of vampires and ghouls, but one still has to wonder what the neighbours are reading and watching.



The wildly popular Twilight films are full of romanticised evil-doers, notably vampires and werewolves

Unfortunately, anyone who takes up this theme will be put down as paranoiac or puritanical. Don Siegel is always described as a rabid McCarthyist, which he was not, and anyone who ventures to criticise vampirism will be dismissed as homophobic - "You see, it's an obvious metaphor."

Anyone halfway sane in the 21st century must feel like Dr. Miles Bennell (played by Kevin McCarthy character in Don Siegel's film). Before your very eyes, human beings are turning into pod people - soulless aliens without a trace of compassion.

"Look you fools, you're in danger! Can't you see? They're after you. They're after all of us! Our wives...our children...they're here already! You're next!"

Yes, it's over the top and not the ending Siegel wanted, but it's no less true. A stupefied fascination with monstruous evil is obviously contagious. A few cannibals or zombies, more or less, is nothing to worry about, it is worth thinking about a global population of deracinated consumers who tease their imaginations with real and fictional tales of such depravity.

As they used to say at the end of cheap horror movies, "They're coming to your town. Perhaps they are sitting next to you in the theater." If you are watching Zombie Apocalypse, they probably are - or, rather, they have to worry about sitting next to you.




Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2154452/As-popular-culture-overflows-vampires-zombies-forgetting-scared-evil.html#ixzz2cjCMAMq6 


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The Siege of Jerusalem

Flavius Josephus

(37-100)

"But why dwell on the commonplace rubbish which the starving were driven to feed upon, given that what I have to recount is an act unparalleled in the history of either the Greeks or the barbarians, and as horrible to relate as it is incredible to hear?"

The Siege of Jerusalem, AD 70
by Josephus

Jerusalem fell, after a siege, to a Roman army under Titus.
Josephus was a Jew who had gone over to the Romans.



Throughout the city people were dying of hunger in large numbers, and enduring unspeakable sufferings. In every house the merest hint of food sparked violence, and close relatives fell to blows, snatching from one another the pitiful supports of life. No respect was paid even to the dying; the ruffians [anti-Roman zealots] searched them, in case they were concealing food somewhere in their clothes, or just pretending to be near death. Gaping with hunger, like mad dogs, lawless gangs went staggering and reeling through the streets, battering upon the doors like drunkards, and so bewildered that they broke into the same house two or three times in an hour. Need drove the starving to gnaw at anything. Refuse which even animals would reject was collected and turned into food. In the end they were eating belts and shoes, and the leather stripped off their shields. Tufts of withered grass were devoured, and sold in little bundles for four drachmas.

But why dwell on the commonplace rubbish which the starving were driven to feed upon, given that what I have to recount is an act unparalleled in the history of either the Greeks or the barbarians, and as horrible to relate as it is incredible to hear? For my part I should gladly have omitted this tragedy, lest I should be suspected of monstrous fabrication. But there were many witnesses of it among my contemporaries; and besides, I should do poor service to my country if I were to suppress the agonies she went through.

Among the residents of the region beyond Jordan was a woman called Mary, daughter of Eleazar, of the village of Bethezuba (the name means "House of Hyssop"). She was well off, and of good family, and had fled to Jerusalem with her relatives, where she became involved with the siege. Most of the property she had packed up and brought with her from Peraea had been plundered by the tyrants [Simon and John, leaders of the Jewish war-effort], and the rest of her treasure, together with such foods as she had been able to procure, was being carried by their henchmen in their daily raids. In her bitter resentment the poor woman cursed and abused these extortioners, and this incensed them against her. However, no one put her to death either from exasperation or pity. She grew weary of trying to find food for her kinsfolk. In any case, it was by now impossible to get any, wherever you tried. Famine gnawed at her vitals, and the fire of rage was ever fiercer than famine. So, driven by fury and want, she committed a crime against nature. Seizing her child, an infant at the breast, she cried, "My poor baby, why should I keep you alive in this world of war and famine? Even if we live till the Romans come, they will make slaves of us; and anyway, hunger will get us before slavery does; and the rebels are crueler than both. Come, be food for me, and an avenging fury to the rebels, and a tale of cold horror to the world to complete the monstrous agony of the Jews." With these words she killed her son, roasted the body, swallowed half of it, and stored the rest in a safe place. But the rebels were on her at once, smelling roasted meat, and threatening to kill her instantly if she did not produce it. She assured them she had saved them a share, and revealed the remains of her child. Seized with horror and stupefaction, they stood paralyzed at the sight. But she said, "This is my own child, and my own handiwork. Eat, for I have eaten already. Do not show yourselves weaker than a woman, or more pitiful than a mother. But if you have pious scruples, and shrink away from human sacrifice, then what I have eaten can count as your share, and I will eat what is left as well." At that they slunk away, trembling, not daring to eat, although they were reluctant to yield even this food to the mother. The whole city soon rang with the abomination. When people heard of it, they shuddered, as though they had done it themselves.

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Famine during the Siege of Jerusalem

Terrible were the calamities that fell upon Jerusalem when the siege was resumed by Titus. The city was invested at the time of the Passover, when millions of Jews were assembled within its walls. Their stores of provision, which if carefully preserved would have supplied the inhabitants for years, had previously been destroyed through the jealousy and revenge of the contending factions, and now all the horrors of starvation were experienced. A measure of wheat was sold for a talent. So fierce were the pangs of hunger that men would gnaw the leather of their belts and sandals and the covering of their shields. Great numbers of the people would steal out at night to gather wild plants growing outside the city walls, though many were seized and put to death with cruel torture, and often those who returned in safety were robbed of what they had gleaned at so great peril. The most inhuman tortures were inflicted by those in power, to force from the want-stricken people the last scanty supplies which they might have concealed. And these cruelties were not infrequently practiced by men who were themselves well fed, and who were merely desirous of laying up a store of provision for the future.

Thousands perished from famine and pestilence. Natural affection seemed to have been destroyed. Husbands robbed their wives, and wives their husbands. Children would be seen snatching the food from the mouths of their aged parents. The question of the prophet, “Can a woman forget her sucking child?” received the answer within the walls of that doomed city: “The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children: they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people.” Isaiah 49:15; Lamentations 4:10. Again was fulfilled the warning prophecy given fourteen centuries before: “The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and toward her daughter, ... and toward her children which she shall bear: for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege and straitness, wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates.” Deuteronomy 28:56, 57.

The Great Controversy, pp.31-32.
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Jamestown settlers ate 14-year-old girl, researchers say

Smithsonian explains the Jamestown archaeological dig.
By Matt Pearce

May 1, 2013, 1:47 p.m.

The early American settlers called it "the starving time," and accounts of the winter of 1609-1610 were so ghastly, and so morbid, that scholars weren't sure if the stories were true.


George Percy, then president of the English settlement of Jamestown in Virginia, wrote that settlers ate horses, then cats and dogs, then boots and bits of leather, and, finally, one another.

"One of our colony murdered his wife, ripped the child out of her womb and threw it into the river, and after chopped the mother in pieces and salted her for his food," wrote Percy, who then ordered the man executed.

"Now whether she was better roasted, boyled or carbonado’d [barbecued], I know not, but of such a dish as powdered wife I never heard of," added the famed settler John Smith. "This was that time, which still to this day we called the starving time; it were too vile to say, and scarce to be beleeved, what we endured."

Until now: Researchers said Wednesday that they have discovered the first forensic proof that cannibalism happened at Jamestown during one of its darkest periods.

The announcement was presented by Douglas Owsley, the division head for physical anthropology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, chief archaeologist William Kelso from the Jamestown Rediscovery Project at Preservation Virginia and historian James Horn, vice president of research and historical interpretation at Colonial Williamsburg.

But the biggest name involved with the announcement was "Jane," the nickname given to the remains of a 14-year-old girl found last year in settlement trash from the starving period.

Archaeologists did not find much of Jane -- just part of her skull and part of her leg, or 10% of her body -- but said those remains showed that someone tried to eat her, apparently after she had died of an undetermined cause.

Someone made four small chops to Jane's forehead before an ax or cleaver broke open the back of her skull, the researchers said. There were also small knife cuts on her jaw and cheek.

“The desperation and overwhelming circumstances faced by the James Fort colonists during the winter of 1609–1610 are reflected in the postmortem treatment of this girl’s body,” Smithsonian anthropologist Owsley said in the announcement. “The recovered bone fragments have unusually patterned cuts and chops that reflect tentativeness, trial and complete lack of experience in butchering animal remains. Nevertheless, the clear intent was to dismember the body, removing the brain and flesh from the face for consumption.”

Researchers took DNA from Jane in case that her real identity could be someday discovered by matching samples with those of her family's descendants, though officials said finding relatives was unlikely.

Tests showed that Jane had a diet of wheat and meat, said officials, who believe she arrived in Jamestown in August 1609, mere months before the worst of the colonists' starvation. That winter, 80% of the settlers died -- about 200 people -- sometimes at the hands of the Native Americans living in the area.

"The 'starving time' was brought about by a trifecta of disasters: disease, a serious shortage of provisions, and a full scale siege by the Powhatans that cut off Jamestown from outside relief," Colonial Williamsburg's researcher Horn said in the announcement. "Survival cannibalism was a last resort; a desperate means of prolonging life at a time when the settlement teetered on the brink of extinction."

By May, the colony's Percy wrote, settlers called out to visitors, "We are starved, we are starved."

One man, Hugh Pryse, "being pinched with extreme famine ... did come openly into the market place blaspheming, exclaiming and crying out that there was no God, alleging that if there were a god he would not suffer his creatures whom he had made and framed to endure those miseries." Pryse was soon killed by Native Americans, Percy wrote, surely in divine punishment for his blasphemy.

Jamestown, although almost abandoned, survived after more settlers and colonists arrived.

The discovery of Jane came as part of a 20-year excavation of the colonists' original settlement. A digital reconstruction of her face will go on display Friday at the Nathalie P. and Alan M. Voorhees Archaearium at Historic Jamestowne and at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington.


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