In 1961, newspaper headlines across America were dominated by the story of the mysterious disappearance of Michael Rockefeller, the youngest son of Nelson Rockefeller, off the coast of New Guinea. Enthralled by the war-like Stone Age tribes living there, Michael had journeyed into the country's formidable interior to document their disappearing way of life and to assemble a museum collection of their extraordinary artifacts. He never returned -- drowned after capsizing in a canoe or, perhaps, killed by local tribesmen. His death remains a mystery to this day.
In 1909, wearing an unwieldy diving suit with two assistants hand-pumping his air supply, Edward Thompson lowered himself into a 60-foot deep Mayan well in search of a legend. What he discovered, deep in the jungles of Mexico, was an extraordinary collection of human bones, wool, pottery, jade and gold: precious artifacts of an ancient sacrificial site.
In 1803, more than 200 pieces of marble statues and friezes, considered to be among the highest expressions of classical civilization, were removed from the ancient Parthenon in Athens and taken to England. The feat was the work of Scottish Lord Thomas Elgin, British Ambassador to Constantinople, in his attempt to rescue the pieces from certain devastation by Turkish troops. Instead of accolades for his accomplishment, Elgin met with imprisonment, bankruptcy and the loss of his wife. Even the marble he had tried to preserve became a subject of intense controversy, prompting poet Lord Byron to allegedly write, "What the Goths spared, the Scots destroyed.”
At the time Napoleon began systematically stripping Egypt of its magnificent treasures, former Circus strongman Giovanni Belzoni found his purpose in life. Blessed with considerable engineering skills, the flamboyant showman was asked by the British consul in Cairo to outflank the French and secure what artifacts he could on behalf of England. With the aid of accomplished tomb robbers, he did so, becoming the first man ever to set eyes upon the extraordinary tomb of Sethi I in the Valley of the Kings and maneuver the labyrinths of the second exploits, which scholars had attempted to do for generations. He succeeded in lifting the seven-ton head of Ramses II onto a raft.