After emigrating from Hungary to South America, Maerth lived in Hong Kong for many years, later moving with his wife Elisabeth and three children to Lake Como in Northern Italy, where he bought the Villa Passalacqua in Moltrasio.

[4] According to Maerth, this diet increased the apes' brain size, sex drive, and aggression, but suppressed their purported innate psychic ability, eventually causing insanity.

[1] Maerth offered no evidence for his theories, basing them largely on his alleged meetings with cannibals in Java and New Guinea[5] and his experiences eating raw ape brains in a restaurant in Southeast Asia.

He hints at having activated his latent psychic abilities through altering the shape of his skull in the manner of Incan tribes and/or trepanation, and his theories claimed to be mostly derived from the resulting divine inspiration.

The frontispiece of Maerth's book says that after his travels in Asia, South America and Australia he settled in Italy where he lived with his wife and three children on Lake Como, where he was involved in the restoration of Villa Passalacqua.