October 7, 2021 • 50 mins
Scottish King James IV was, by all accounts, a learned man. As a polyglot, he was especially interested in the origin of language -- so much so, in fact, that he allegedly conducted an experiment that would scandalize modern scientists: James had two children spirited off to the remote island of Inchkeith, where they were raised without language by a mute caretaker. While historians still debate whether this actually occurred, James wasn't the first guy to try it out. He, like his predecessors, wanted to see whether the kids would speak a 'natural' or 'original' language on their own.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in this one that we're all
pretty excited about. That's our super producer, the one and
only Mr Max Williams. Give him a hand. Uh, my
name is Ben. I gotta say I love this one.
It's it's terrible, it's horrific. I did some research for
(00:49):
an unrelated project on this, and uh, I don't know.
I would say that you and I both are lovers
of language, right, we're no pun left behind guys. Well,
then I actually prepared for this episod by not speaking
for a week, uh, in the hopes that when my
my mouth opened and I spoke on this episode, out
would come the original language of Eden, God's intended language
(01:11):
for humanity. But it turns out I just still speak
kind of broken English. Well, what what week was that?
Because you and I were hanging out this weekend? Man, man,
don't don't come on, man, Let me have my dreams
very at the very least, my my thin subterfuge. It
was a bit, man, I was a bit yes, and
come on, um no, it's true though I I didn't
(01:33):
do that. But um, it's an interesting concept, isn't it.
The notion that if you are not exposed any language
at all, that you may come out with the very
language that God intended. The implication there being the languages
somehow passed down from on high and not some sort
of like learned trait involving, you know, paying attention to
(01:54):
other people are doing, and that it's a living language,
that it evolves over time, and you know, different languages
exist because of different trial and error attempts throughout history.
Right right right, there was this idea of an ancient
idea that if humans would stop bothering children with their
own pesky habits of language, that children would, as you say,
(02:15):
speak the way that God intended them to. This story
has has so many threats to pull, but let's start
with an island that you may not have heard of
unless you are from Scotland. It's a tiny place. It's
called inch Keith. The atomology, I think ultimately just means
wooded aisle, which is a little bit of a down
(02:38):
because I was hoping there was a guy named Keith
somewhere in the Island's passed and there was like an
inch thing going on. But if you go to this aisle,
this island is about three miles north of Edinburgh, you
will see that it has you know, it has a
pretty deep past. It was used to quarantine people suffering
(02:58):
from contagious sickness, is especially a syphilis which they called,
get this, the Grand Gore, Grand Gore back in the day.
That sounds like a muppet villain or something like that,
like the trash heap you know from Fraggle Rock, or
like in Dark Crystal. You have to you have to
(03:19):
the Grand Gore. But the thing this island is most
famous for nowadays is a very sad and as we
will find, not unique experiment that is believed to have
taken place in when then King of Scotland, James the
Fourth said I gotta do an experiment with as few
(03:42):
people as possible, and he set up something today, a
language experiment that remains a fascinating rabbit hole. And what
we'd like to do is explore a little bit about James,
who was a smart guy. For the record, going into this,
it's important to know where you hear all the crazy
stuff we're gonna say about him. James was a smart
(04:04):
guy for his time and Uh, maybe not the most ethical.
Would you agree with that? Yeah? He was. I mean,
you know, I gotta give the guy a little slack.
It was a different time. Well, he didn't necessarily hurt anybody.
What he did would now be considered incredibly unethical. And
what he did was take two newborn infant babies, uh
(04:24):
and sequester them on the island of inch Keith and
have them raised by mute nursemaids. He would of course
give them all the things they needed to be nourished physically,
though not spiritually or like, intellectually or emotionally. Maybe emotionally.
They probably gave them hugs, but they did not give
them bedtime stories or you know, sing them songs or anything,
because they could not speak. The idea being that if
(04:47):
this happened, supposedly they would naturally, like you said, Ben,
in the same way the babies can swim out of
the womb, come out with this language he referred to
oftentimes as the language of Eden, you know, the first
language of man, and by manny, we mean like, you know, humankind.
But let's go a little bit more into the history
of this island. It is around three miles north of
(05:09):
Edinburgh in the middle of Scotland's Firth of Fourth area.
Just a real tongue twister, and it has had a
bit of a checkered past. In the twelfth century it
was used as a stopping point for boats and ferries
going from Edinburgh to Fife, and then a couple of
centuriears later. It had a strategic position that allowed it
(05:31):
to be very useful in the Scottish Wars of Independence.
It was constantly being you know, um besieged by various
invading English forces. Uh, during the Anglo Scottish Wars. Then
in the fifteenth century, like you said, Bennett was kind
of like a plague quarantine island, like that one they
were trying to send Hannibal Lecture two where you the
(05:51):
view of a tree, you know, maybe get to walk
on the beach, all that stuff. But then that was all,
you know, a subterfuge, as we know you've seen the film.
But let's go to James the Fourth Now, Ben, what
say you, yeah, yeah, let's go. So a bit of
background about our boy. James was born in fourteen seventy
three on seventeenth of March. So if you just do
(06:15):
some quick math you'll realize that he was pretty young
when he did this experiment, okay, And he was King
of Scotland from fourteen eighty eight until his death in
September nine, fifteen thirteen. He was just like fifteen when
some rival nobles who were opposed to his father started
(06:39):
using him as a figurehead. In a four eight rebellion,
his father was killed under mysterious circumstances and as kind
of a a punishment or a penance for somehow playing
a role in patricide. James the fourth would wear a
heavy iron chain around his waist for the rest of
(07:01):
his life. And a lot of this is coming from
a great little website we'd like to recommend called Undiscovered
Scotland dot co dot uk. So he got into the
royalty game pretty early. It's just fifteen when he gets coordinated.
And one thing that's fascinated about him I always found
was that he was actually good at his job. You know,
(07:22):
we're not saying he's a perfect person, right. He took
to it quickly and was considered to be the most effective, well,
the first effective monarch out of the Stewart line. Yeah, yep,
and he expanded the navy. He was known for keeping
a cool head in military affairs and being a solid leader.
(07:43):
But as we alluded to earlier, James was also super
into the arts and sciences. He was a monarch, but
that wasn't all he was. In fact, he is probably
out of every other Scottish king, he is the one
who is most often brought up as being a what
(08:04):
you would call a renaissance man today. He likes history, poetry, literature, medicine, science.
He wants to learn about the world. Yep, he licensed
the very first printing press in Scotland. UM. He was
a notable patron of the arts. Um he you know,
helps support numerous you know creators, bards for example, songwriters.
(08:26):
He even studied, you know, dentistry and surgery. I don't
know that he hopefully he didn't perform any amateur dental
or or surgical procedures, but you never know. The king
he's certainly wasn't beyond the room of possibility. But he
also was super into alchemy, which I think we're both
fascinated by as well, been largely from stuff we talked
about on our other podcast, Stuff that don't want you
(08:48):
to know. I think we have a whole episode on
alchemy that's folks to check out in which we almost
certainly talk about John Damien, who is King James is
most trusted and you know, supposedly adapt ALcom anybody that
doesn't well, we'll get to that for sure. Not only
could you not fly, he pulled kind of a Marty
McFly kind of situation. Um that we'll get to in
(09:09):
just a second. But John Damien was you know, what,
what what what? What James would have considered an adept alchemist.
What we know today is that was not really a thing.
It was largely being very good bulleit, being able to
kind of convince people that you had these abilities. It
was sort of It's interesting culturally because it straddled that
(09:30):
line between magic and science, right man. Yeah, Alchemy gave
the human species a lot of advancements. It's a precursor
to what we call chemistry today. And they were conducting
a lot of experiments that may have seemed unorthodox at
the time and may seem ill informed, but in many ways,
(09:51):
the alchemists of this era were trailblazers. John Damiens unfortunately
perhaps most from umber today for an experiment he did
with flights and this is this is also mentioned in
article by Paul Anthony Jones, the King of Scotland's peculiar
(10:12):
language experiment over with our friends of mental flows. Here's
what Here's what Johnny D did, which is why I'm
gonna call him. He he thought, you know, well things
with feathers, birds, many of them can fly. He thought,
so why don't I get some feathers together and will
(10:34):
I'll make some wings. They're the size of a man
for out of chicken feathers. And then I'm gonna jump
from Sterling Castle whereas he said, he's uh, King James
is located and he says, you know, I get enough altitude,
your highness, I'll be able to fly straight through France.
This was maybe true for a couple of seconds. He
(10:54):
did reach great speeds, but they were all you know,
he was. He reached great speed going downward, and he
broke his leg. He survived, though. Unfortunately, falling and flying
are not the same thing, even if they both take
place in the air. Um and I mentioned Marty McFly earlier,
and I'm referring to the fact that in every iteration
of Back to the Future, Biff Marty's nemesis ends up
(11:15):
falling into a pile of manure, showing the history repeats
itself no matter what you do, or at the very least,
it often rhymes right, ben um. But that's exactly what happens.
Told Johnny D. He tumbles out of the sky into
a massive dung heap. Nothing worse than that, having to
walk away from a failed experiment covered in excrement, but
it admittedly did cushion his fall and keep him from dying. Instead,
(11:39):
he did just suffer a broken leg and uh likely
a heavily bruised ego, And then he ended up blaming
the types of feathers on it. Right, What was that? Yeah? Yeah,
he said, he said, Look, your Highness, my ideas are solid.
The hidden feathers I used must have been so attracted
to that pile is below that it made me crash.
(12:02):
And what we're saying with this anecdote is that the
King is an open minded guy. For his time, he
wants to He wants to pursue stuff. He believes the
world is both understandable and worth understanding, which is something
I am principle agree with. But that's chief amongst his
intellectual interests. The stuff that he really dug was his
(12:25):
love of language. He spoke multiple languages. This guy spoke English, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish,
she threw some Flemish in there, and people were amazed
that he wasn't He wasn't putting up a front about this.
(12:47):
He really did speak these languages, and as a linguist,
he was constantly asking himself, how do people notice speak?
And how come people are the only animals he wondered,
Uh that I know of that can use language? Nowadays,
(13:08):
we know that's not entirely true. By the way Wales
communicate with through song right, and it has a lot
in common with languages, and birds seem to also be
able to communicate certain concepts, especially Corvett's shout out um.
But he, like I, I think we both read that sometimes.
(13:30):
This guy, who again is the King of Scotland, he's
got stuff to do. This guy would sit around and
just watch people talk. He would just watch their mouths move.
It's a little weird, huh, It's cool again. I plub
the guy for his thirst for knowledge, But he also
seemed like a bit of a sociopath. I don't know
most kings, it's easier for them to fall into that trap,
(13:52):
given that you're just constantly surrounded by yes man. Not
to say the sociopaths are made, but certainly, if you
have those tendencies and people are constantly indulging you in
doing whatever bizarro things you want, you certainly might not
be the best thing for you. But what we're talking
about today is King James the fourth Language experiments, because,
like you said, he was fascinated with the way people
(14:14):
communicate with each other, logistically, spiritually, all of that stuff,
just like how does it work? And why are we
driven to do it? Um? So like you do, in
he decided to take two newborn babies to be sent
to live on that isolated island of inch Keith that
we talked about, And not only were they raised by
mute women, they were deaf mute women. His goal was
(14:37):
to see what natural language the children would come out
with after a period of time. Um. There's not a
whole lot of documentation of the experiment itself, so we're
not quite sure exactly how long uh they lived on
this island, um, but we do know the experiment most
likely took place, and we're going to get into it now.
(14:58):
We know too that language deprivation experiments are often referred
to as the forbidden experiment, and that is because they
are just inherently cruel. It's something that we've seen throughout
history when people maybe had less, you know, concerned for
like scientific standards and ethics. But we've seen the Greeks
do this. Herodotus I believe he wrote that in the
(15:18):
seventeenth century b c UM. The Egyptian pharaoh somatic Uh
sent to infants to live with a shepherd in an
incredibly isolated part that in his kingdom, and he ensured
that they would never be spoken to. And Herodotus claimed,
according to his writings, much of their speech was nonsense,
but he believed they were babbling the words becos, which
(15:41):
is an ancient Phrygian word that means bread. Um. So
the pharaoh believed that Phrygia, rather than Egypt, was in
fact the oldest civilization because I mean that's the language
that came out with naturally, it was it was total swinging,
a mess, barely even a swing. Yeah. And as as
you know, folks, uh, this historian is famous for being
(16:04):
infamously unreliable, so take it with a grain assault. This
is not the only example, though. We know that the
Mughal Indian Emperor Akbar back in the sixteenth century also
reputedly raised children in isolation. And this guy found that
these children, when they were raised without the opportunity to
(16:28):
learn language in their formative years, they tended to remain
mute later and this will this plays a role in
the idea that there is a window, right, a window
of time in which certain things must be learned by
juvenile humans. It reminds me of of the case of
Genie in the young feral child who was living under horrible, abusive,
(16:52):
neglectful situations UM where she was basically kept in a room,
and she she was able to be taught to speak.
But if you don't have a need to speak, this
shows that you're probably not going to UM. More often
than not, kids in these kind of situations start to
develop sign language rather than actually speaking, because again, we
(17:13):
as children we learn by example. And Jeannie didn't speak
for a long time until she was then kind of shown,
you know, some exercises and ways to to pick it up,
and she did. But you're right, then, once you get
past a certain threshold, just like it is for adults
to learn a foreign language, it does become increasingly more
and more difficult and has nothing to do with some
(17:33):
innate language ability. I mean, it really is just about
how the brain is able to learn things. Yeah, it's
hardwire this is this is something I want to touch
on later too, because these experiments are ancient. But things
like this do occur much more recently than people may
like to assume. And we'll get to a a case of
(17:55):
romania in a little later in the show. Maybe. But
obviously you can have noble intentions, and it's a good
question to ask. They just didn't have the same kind
of concept of ethics that people have today. So obviously,
even if James were a king now in a modern monarchy,
(18:18):
he would still have an uphill battle ahead of him
if he wanted to try to do this experiment. And
even in his time, people believed that these experiments were
bad for kids. The Holy Roman emperor Frederick the Second
had tried to raise had tried to conduct a similar
experiment raising children this way, and people believe that the
(18:41):
children he had raised in silence without communication had all died,
and some people believed that those unfortunate children on inch
Keith died as well. But to the point you're making,
and that's a very good point we have to make.
There aren't really any credible records, Like there's not a
trail of correspondence from multiple people saying, Hey, what's up
(19:03):
with those kids on that island? I just wanted to
check in. Sorry, I've been busy being king. But don't
think I forgot. People guessed about the outcome of the experiment,
but a lot of that guessing was hearsay or second hand,
Like Sir Walter Scott said, Well, to me, the kids
probably just imitated whatever they heard from the local animals
(19:26):
around them, or maybe non language vocalizations from their adult caretakers.
Another guy, many decades later named Robert Lindsay said he
had heard the kids spoke perfect Hebrew. That's almost certainly
made up, right, And it's interesting that. But what do
(19:47):
you think the agenda is to make a claim like that? Um,
you one would think that they would claim that it
was you know, the King's English. You know that the
children naturally spoke. I mean, I guess there was reverence
for Hebrew culture because of you know, Christianity and all
of that, but I also know that there was division
and that jew Jewish people were often othered even in
(20:08):
this time, right, Yeah, the the Hebrew language is an
interesting claim. And you know, we have to also understand
that in this time a lot of scientific experiments suffered
from confirmation bias. Now I can't remember the name of
this guy, but back in the day in Europe, there
was a scientist, quote unquote, a learned man who did
(20:32):
what he thought was exhaustive research on the most attractive
face of a man, and he found, surprise, surprise, that
the most attractive, scientifically proven most attractive male face uh
did in fact look a lot like his big big
nose week week chin. You know, I think baldin or
(20:52):
something like that. So what we're saying is people kind
of dressed up their own opinions sometimes, and there may
have been kind of agenda with either Robert Lindsay or
whomever was telling them that. But when we speculate over
whether or not King James actually did this, we have
(21:14):
to also note that it could have been folklore. It
could have been just a tall tale, a legend. Because
we know he genuinely was a polyglot. We know that
he genuinely did love languages. So maybe this, along with
pre existing knowledge of other language deprivation experiments, maybe these
things combined to sound plausible enough, right, Like, maybe it
(21:38):
never happened, but everybody acknowledged it's something this dude would
have been into. Yeah, No, I completely agree. And um,
as we know, ultimately another King James was very responsible
for guiding the trajectory of Christianity with his King James
translation of the Bible. Um. And we know that there
are many translations of the Bible, but that was one
(21:59):
that kind of picked up the most steam, and it
was because he had the most cloud. So obviously that
love of language kind of ran in that in that
family to a to a degree. Um. And we know
also that the the history is kind of written by
the victors and the folks with the most power. So
I think that's very interesting to think about. Yeah, and
actually I want to kind of chime in here right here. No,
(22:20):
that King James you speak of is actually this James's
great grandson known as King James the sixth and King
James the First, depending on which which kingdom you're talking about,
But it's true. It just goes to show that language matters,
and that fascination obviously was something that was important to
a generation of of King James's. But you know, so
(22:43):
many people kind of question, uh, the validity of the
King James Bible, because a lot of it was built
around a pretty particular perspective of a monarch, you know, yes, yeah,
And to go back to our guy, James the fourth,
this is where we have to ask ourselves a little
bit more about what the written record would say. We
(23:06):
mentioned that earlier historian Robert Lindsay he's working in the
sixteenth century. He wrote a book called History and Chronicles
of Scotland. Uh. This was almost a hundred years after
the fact, by the way, and he does specifically mention
this alleged experiment. He says, the king also caused to
take one deaf woman and put her in inch Keith,
(23:28):
and give her two bairns b a I r n
s just kids with her, and furnish her in all
necessary things pertaining to their nourishment. Desiring hereby to know
what languages they had when they came to the age
of perfect speech. Some say they could speak Hebrew, but
for my part I know not, but from other people's reports,
(23:48):
so at least he was like, all right, some someone
told me it was Hebrew. It seems like they probably
wouldn't have done that. Maybe if someone was there teaching
them he threw, but that would be speaking to them.
That would render the experience or the experiment rather pointless.
So what happened to James? We know this experiment was
(24:09):
just one of the many things he did, but what
do you do after this? Well, um, he died and
some weird stuff happened to his body. He was considered Ultimately,
history kind of deemed him to be a pretty successful ruler.
(24:30):
His reign was relatively peaceful, but it was kind of
up ended by some wars with England, though they didn't
they weren't the aggressors, um. So there was a truce
with England that was broken in fourteen UM and James
had to prepare an invasion to support the Perkin Warbeck,
who was what you'd call a pretender to the English throne,
(24:52):
sort of an interloper um. The war was largely fought
in a few border areas and a seven year piece
was negotiated in December, but there were still little skirmishes
along these borders from time to time, and relations between
England and Scotland were did continue to kind of improve
(25:13):
and stabilize up until three and that's when James married
Margaret Tudor, who was the oldest daughter of King Henry
the seventh of England. And then, of course, a century later,
James's great grandson, the Stewart monarch, James the sixth of Scotland,
took the English throne. That the Bible guy. Yeah, that's
(25:37):
the Bible guy exactly. That's what he called himself. He's like,
I'm a Bible guy, right, who can take the scriptures anyway?
So so this, uh, this leads to an interesting situation. So,
because James the fourth is well respected in this region,
(26:01):
he is able to get a pretty equal seat at
the table of continental Europe. And then he goes into
conflict with King Henry the eight famous for that oldie
song I'm King Henry the Eighth, I'm Henry the Eighth.
I am uh there it is, thank you. And so
(26:22):
so he tries to team up with France against Henry
the Eighth, and when Henry the Eighth invades France in
fifteen thirteen, James has all his advisers saying, all right, man,
keep a cool head, keep a cool head, bro But
instead he says, no, forget it, I'm going into England.
So he trashes four castles, all in the month of
(26:44):
August thirteen. But then his army gets waxed. The opposing
forces mopped the floor with them. It's something called the
Battle of Flowden or Flawed in f L O D
D E N on September nine, and this is when
James the fourth passes away. He and most of his
nobles die in this conflict. His corps is not looking
(27:07):
what you would call open casket ready. He's been disfigured
by arrows. He eventually gets identified as people are going
through bodies after the battle, and then he his remains
are embalmed. He's putting a lead coffin and he's taken
from a place called Berwick back to London. And this
(27:27):
package is sent to the wife of Henry the eighth.
She takes the poor dead James's surcoat which is still
like it's bloody and it's ripped up because he did
not have a peaceful end, and she sends it back
to her husband. Catherine sends it to her husband, King
Henry the eighth, and she says something pretty metal. To
(27:48):
be honest with you, she says, use this as a
war banner. You know, forces see this dead guy's bloody coat.
That's psychological warfare right there. Um. I mean you gotta
think like he was like basically family with them too,
because Henry the Eighth was his brother in law. Right well,
(28:09):
monarchy's monarchies are super into being interrelated. Uh, but that's
an his body, right. Henry eventually gets back from France
and people think, well, we've got this, you know, habeas corpus,
we've got this guy's body. What should we do with it?
For many of us hanging out today and Nold maxim
sure you can agree. Uh, the idea would be like, hey,
(28:31):
barry the guy, he's dead. But they weren't happy with
that worthy Yeah. So um. He was in fact excommunicated
from the church um as a punishment for breaking that
Truce of Perpetual Peace, which is a great name for
a truce if you ask me, and that was signed
between Scotland and England two. And because of that, because
of that excommunication, the idea of a proper Christian burial
(28:55):
in consecrated church grounds just wasn't on the table now.
So the body of James was just left in a
wood shed of the Sheen Monastery to just kind of
you know, molder there, you know, and and like literally
like a like a tool shed. Even after the pope
granted permission for the burial, they were like, no, sorry,
(29:16):
this proceeds the purposes the word of God. So eventually
this you know, rotted corpse was just completely forgotten about
and somehow the head fell off. I mean that'll happen,
you know, if you leave something just to rot long enough,
that's gonna happen. And the story goes though there isn't
a ton of of uh, you know, documentation for this,
(29:39):
that some workers from the area played soccer with it,
kicked it around, um after which time Elizabeth, the first
master glazier, found it and took it home as a souvenir. Yeah,
and this wasn't quite the end. The head was eventually
take in the Great Saint Michael's Church in London. It
(30:03):
was dumped into a charnel pit. Eventually, the monastery where
the king's headless body was housed was demolished. We don't
know whether it was ever actually buried there. That church St.
Michael's also got torn down, and if you go there now,
I believe it is the site of a pub called
(30:24):
get this the Red Harry so things did not end well.
But one thing we do know from this story, whether
or not it is true or whether it's a tall tale,
we know that communication with children with babies, with infants
is tremendously important. We see other examples of this that
(30:47):
we're really heartbreaking, such as the problems with Romanian orphanages
that happened very very recently. And what what they found
is that these children were so neglected in these state orphanages.
They would just lay in cribs all day. Many weren't
clothed or fed or diapered on any set schedule. Um.
(31:09):
They would die from very minor diseases in some cases,
and then would have to be exposed to very serious
infections like HIV. This thing, it's interesting and this this
is I have a hard time articulating how disturbing this is.
These children in some cases, in many cases literally stopped
(31:31):
vocalizing because no one would answer their cries. They just
gave up. Wow, that's that's heartbreaking. Um, But we will
likely never know what happened to these children. That's the
fascinating part if you ask me, uh, is how did
they progress in their lives? You know, like were they
able to learn how to speak once they were returned
(31:52):
from the island. Were they returned from the island? Did
they live out their days on this island with nothing
but these these nurses to take care of them? And
since they were presu be much older what happened when
they passed? The island today is actually owned by a
like a Scottish multimillionaire, a guy named Tom Farmer who's
the founder of a company called quick Fit. And you
(32:14):
have to get his permission to check out the island
of inch Keith. To this day, I hear there's a
nice lighthouse, but yeah, you got you gotta check with
Tom first, And yeah, this is This is so fascinating
because history is shock full of experiments that seem bizarre
(32:34):
or an ethical, or just even a little bit absurd.
You might say, like gluey, you know, chicken feathers to
yourself and jumping off a building. But we have to
remember that each one of these experiments, even if they
do seem dare I say it ridiculous here in one
they are all a part of a great endeavor, which
(32:56):
is to understand the world a little bit better than
we did yesterday. And for that you can say you
know this is a noble thing. But if you are listening,
you're considering language experiments on children, don't do this. I
feel like that's that's not a hot take, right. We
could tell I think we're I think we're good. I
think I think we're all on the same page there.
(33:18):
But Ben, what are the kind of modern equivalent of
this kind of language experimentation that would be considered ethical?
Is it more modeling, kind of AI based stuff. I'm
just fascinated. You know. Obviously doing experiments on children, even
with permission is pretty frowned upon. But um have there.
I mean, I think honestly, the whole goal of this
experiment has probably been so disproven and kind of made
(33:42):
a bit of a mockria just by you know what
we know now today that people don't just come out
with some sort of natural, you know, language of God.
It is all about nature and nurture. So maybe these
kind of experiments are irrelevant largely today. Yeah, I mean
it would be honestly, things would probably be a lot easier.
The human species ever had a single language, and people
(34:04):
have in the past tried to manufacture or you know,
purposely create a one world language, such as oh, my gosh,
I know people, it's such as Esperanto. You know, William
Shatner did a film all in Esperanto and my friends
who speak Esperanto, because I actually know if you assure
(34:24):
me that it is hilarious because his accent is terrible.
Mr Shattner, if you're listening, that is not a ding
on you, sir, But you're right. Well. I'd love to
hear from people who work in the fields of you know, uh, studying,
language acquisition and children, and love to hear what the
what the future of that research is. And I wonder
(34:45):
how it can be modeled. But that's that's a story
for the future, and our show is about history. We
hope you enjoyed this. We can't wait to hear from you.
As always, Please check us out on the internet. Come on, man,
so close, going so well? All right? Max? Ready, it
(35:07):
was bound to happen sooner or later. What's that gudible time, gentleman?
The quizter way? Max? Have you not have you not
experienced this before? Is this new for you? I have
(35:29):
edited before, but I have never firsthand experienced it. But Jonathan,
how are you my friend? There are no friends here, Max, adversaries,
the quizter have traveled backward in time to quiz you
before the thing you'll talk about has been talked about.
(35:50):
So my first question to you, hey man, come on,
don't don't give away the what magic? What have what
have you had talked about already that hasn't happened yet. Oh,
we've talked about language deprivation experiments, very famous one because
you see R. Berlin. It's quite quite fortuitous because my
(36:12):
scenarios have nothing what's ever to do with that? But
I mean, you know, you're very presence often deprives those
around you of language because they're so busy cringing. There's
a lot of there's a lot of there's a lot
of of of of speechless mouths when I come up. Yes,
(36:32):
welcome to the the cringe eest segment of any podcast
in existence, the equist segment, where I will present to
our beloved co hosts three scenarios. It is their duty
to determine which a vegan scenario? Three what scenarios? It's
(36:53):
just you ruined the way I say that word now
like in my day to day life. It's just part
of part of my gig. Man. I mean, there's a
whole like job description and right up there was ruined
scenarios for Ben Bolan to check that out right, So great,
I'm glad to help you. So for for folks who haven't,
(37:15):
for a fellow ridiculous historians who haven't had the experience
of hearing this segment before, do you want you want to?
You want to give us a quick and dirty breakdown? Also,
I was working on it, but I kept getting interrupted. Right,
So give you three scenarios, two of which are true
and one that I made up seas, and then the
(37:37):
two of you must determine which of the three scenarios
is the fake, and you will have a few minutes
to determine. You get to discuss amongst yourselves. And if
you wish to ask me a question, you must first
preface that question by following an arbitrary rule that I
set typically thirty seconds after I stopped talking. Know, I've
(38:00):
got it. I've got it in this case, and you'll
understand why when I ask when you want to ask
a question me, I'm getting mixed up. It's been a
long time. How are you guys doing? No? Never mind,
when I I'm ready to have you asked a question
you say whale of a tale, and then you ask
a question whale of a tale, and then you can
(38:22):
ask a question of me. Otherwise, just talk amongst yourselves.
Are you prepared for your three scenarios? Get on with it, quister. Yeah,
I've got the grandfather clock. We spent way too much
money on in my apartment. So it's been let me
tell you moving that he didn't even buy a pizza.
Moving that up to your boy, What a day that was?
(38:45):
All right? Here are your three scenarios. Scenario one. In
eighteen fifty the English Channel Submarine Telegraph Company attempted to
create the first telegraph wire connection between Dover, England, and Calais, France.
After laying the cable under the sea, and before either
(39:06):
England or France could establish a good connection, the line
went dead. The newspapers placed blame upon a nameless French
fisherman who thought he had discovered a weird type of seaweed,
perhaps won with gold in the middle, and had cut
the line through Scenario number two. In eighteen fifty five,
(39:26):
Norway laid a subsea cable to the isolated archipelago of Svalbard,
where whalers had established communities The experiment came to an
abrupt end when Tineus Olsen, the engineer stationed at Svalbard,
begged to be retrieved. He claimed that the whalers had
threatened him and had been trying to destroy the cable
(39:47):
with their ship anchors. It would take another fifty years
before Norway established a permanent cable connection with Svalbard. Scenario three.
In eighteen fifty eight, the U. S Ship Niagara and
the British ship Agamemnon met in the middle of the Atlantic,
spliced two very long cables together, and then sailed in
(40:09):
opposite directions, spooling out cable along the way. The Niagara
went to Newfoundland, Agamemnon went to Ireland. The cable established
the first transatlantic communication wire between the UK and North America,
but it only worked for about two months before the
chief electrician, wild Man white House fried the cable with
(40:29):
too much voltage. Begin Okay, I am running to the
clock on one second, guys, go uh, these are all
pretty good, pretty good. I've heard of Svalbard that seems
like a real or maybe it's I've seen it like
it's like a piece of ikea furniture. Um wouldn't that
(40:49):
be devious, especially after saying it with such intention. Every
time he said what's it called again, Jonathan, it almost
sounds like, yeah, okay, sorry, I was a quiet that
was like I said, they you for aswing that without me?
That was that was just that was just catering to
my ego. That was just for old times quail of
a jail. Yes, Master Berlin, could you give us just
(41:14):
the dates of those three the first when eighteen fifty
for the English Channel between Dover and Clay, eighteen fifty
five between the mainland of Norway and SMaL Bard at
eighteen fifty eight for all Ireland to Newfoundland. Okay, so
this this to mean nol This means that they all occurred,
(41:37):
or two of them at least occurred in a very
close span of time, right, I mean, but this is
sort of like a This represents these sort of clashes
of like old and new kind of where it's like
I think most of these involved well that's not sure.
The second one, in particular involved is like a fisherman
not realizing what underwater cable was and mistaking it for
(41:58):
something that seems like a stress. I feel like, you know,
if if if folks are out in the world. They're
seeing this infrastructure being laid. You know, if they're professional
seafaring folk, then they're gonna be aware of this stuff,
unless they're like, you know, from another time, like in
the Sino Man or something. Just to interrupt that that is,
that is part of the That is part of the
first scenario, not the second one. Just so that just
(42:21):
so that you know which ones you're picking. Okay, So
the first one also had a bit of good old
fashioned greed right seaweed with believes there were going for
the goal. That's okay, So that's the one I'm gonna
maybe cancel out. Um, I don't know, man, I'm gonna
go asval Bard? Are you gonna go as val Bar?
Then we're we're a little a little because for some reason,
(42:46):
I just wanted to pick the third one, not because
of the content, but because of the way that the
quisters sayings val Bard to bring attention to it. Um,
what do you think you want to consult Max? We
got we can game show of this, We can show
a friend and you guys want me in. I am
with nol. Initially hearing them, I was like, it's the
(43:08):
number two, That's what I'm gonna go with all right,
then let's lock it in three two one number two
Max Max. What the hell did I do to you?
All right? Listen, I had a good thing going. You
come in, you ruin everything. Number two was the made
up seas right, So number one with the French fisherman
(43:32):
who cut through the wire thinking that it was a
strange form of seaweed, That's what the newspapers reported. It
was not necessarily what actually happened. What probably happened was
that the cable, which had no armor sheathing on it,
rubbed against the rocks because of the action of waves
and broke apart on its own. But the newspapers reported
(43:55):
that it was potentially a French fisherman who just played
did not know better and cut through it, And of
course the Agamemnon and the Niagara did in fact meat
in the middle of the ocean. This was the second attempt.
The first time they tried to go from Ireland all
the way to Newfoundland with one ship picking up where
the end of the cable left off for ship number one,
(44:17):
but that did not work. It broke apart, and so
they ended up trying it again, and they started in
the middle of the Atlantic and went opposite directions that
worked for about two months. It also took sixty seven
minutes for Queen Victoria's message to be sent across the
Transatlantic cable to arrive for President James Buchanan. And it
(44:39):
wasn't even she said. She said, Dear Jimmy, BRIT's rule,
Americans drool love Vicky Vicky Taylor's all this time. I
didn't realize that it took so long for those messages
to be transmitted. That's interesting. Well, if you would like
to learn more about why you can listen to tech stuff,
because I totally just corded episodes about it, so Smith, Yeah,
(45:03):
that that is true. Jonathan. In addition to being our
nemeses again long time listeners, you know this well, you
do so many things. You've got the best tech podcast
out there on the internet, as verified and confirmed by
US here at Ridiculous History, comes out five days week
(45:24):
uh and it is also one of the older shows
on our network. It's one of the first podcast we
ever started doing. If you want to learn anything about technology,
that is your go to. But that's not all you do,
is it? Qrist No No No. I also host a
co host a show called large Ner drawn Kaleider that
publishes every Thursday, where I and believe it or not,
(45:45):
my friend, Yes, I do have one named Ariel. She
and I talked about the latest geek news of the week,
and then we mash up two geek properties that never
should meet one another and say, what would happen if
they had a baby? Is she all so a soulless
supervillain type figure? She's real? She goes to another podcast. Yeah,
(46:06):
she's yes, exactly, she's my She's my podcast girlfriend from Canada.
And then, finally, finally, I host a show called The
Restless Ones, which is all about talking with very important
executives about technology and leadership. And that one is a
al right, fine, fine, fine, I'm giving you a hard times.
(46:28):
Sometimes I fall asleep when I especially man, if you
if you asked me to q a an episode, forget it.
That's that's Z time. Oh yes, bit of Inside Baseball.
This is funny. So we were talking. We got on
air and had said, Jonathan, you know, it's it's good
to see you. How are you. Uh we it's been
(46:48):
too long. We name drop you at the end of
every episode, and then there was a temperature on our recording.
You could feel it palpably mower in the room and
he said, oh, I've heard it. I was like, you
don't listen to our show. It's all good fun. It's
(47:08):
all in good fun. We love you, Jonathan and your
your your alter ego the Quister, and always glad when
you darken our doorstep and lower our zoom room podcast temperature.
I hope that the two of you have a wonderful
conversation about the thing that everyone else has already heard. Yes,
thank you, we we do too. Oh god, you're really
(47:30):
messing my head up on this one. Me gone Quister,
Quister out and there he goes, there he goes. You know, um,
I hate to see him leave, but love to watch
him walk away. Yeah, Like I prefer it when he
just kind of de materializes into a puff of smoke.
That's always nice. Yeah, it's this the smoke budget is well.
(47:50):
You know, that's a lot of inside baseball folks, but
we're we're hard at work. Max. You have survived your
first encounter with Jonathan Strickland a k. The Quister. You'll
never be the same. Though, you'll never be the same
now it stays with you it gets, It gets into
your soul. So I think at this point maybe the
three of us, uh call it a day, gets some
(48:11):
rest and recuperation from that. Well, it's not that bad.
We won you know, be a credit for that too, now, now,
not all credit. I I was, I was, I was
barking up the right tree. You just joined me in
that tree and helped sway. Ben. And for the I
get fifty, you get fifty, band gets zero. Okay, that
sounds fair. What do you say? Yeah, I'm fine with that.
(48:33):
I have a good friend. Street name is zero. Well, then,
the first and foremost we must thank our super producer
Max Williams for rescuing us from the tyranny of the quister,
who we will also think with you know less sincerity, um.
But also thanks to you, Ben Hey, thanks to you
for coming over to the light side. You know, I
(48:53):
believe in the benefits of democracy, so you know, historically
I'm trying to pull everybody in on on so many things.
So the power of voting matters, folks. That's that's our
takeaway there. Yeah uh, and thanks of course to Alex Williams,
Thanks to Christopher Aciotis, thanks to Eve's Jeff Coat. Thanks
to Jonathan Strickland ak the Quister, who has just done
(49:17):
so much for the tourism industry of small Bard, which
is a very interesting place. By the way, it's one
of the few places. It's one of the easiest places
to migrate to in all of Europe because the weather
is a little rough. Thanks also to let's see who else. Oh,
thanks to Gabe. Yeah, thanks to Gabe Luisier for hipping
(49:37):
us to this incredibly fascinating topic that we have definitely
already recorded. Yeah, yeah, we'll do. Okay, we'll do okay,
it's all lies. We'll see you next time, folks. For
more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen of your
(50:00):
favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in this one that we're all
pretty excited about. That's our super producer, the one and
only Mr Max Williams. Give him a hand. Uh, my
name is Ben. I gotta say I love this one.
It's it's terrible, it's horrific. I did some research for
(00:49):
an unrelated project on this, and uh, I don't know.
I would say that you and I both are lovers
of language, right, we're no pun left behind guys. Well,
then I actually prepared for this episod by not speaking
for a week, uh, in the hopes that when my
my mouth opened and I spoke on this episode, out
would come the original language of Eden, God's intended language
(01:11):
for humanity. But it turns out I just still speak
kind of broken English. Well, what what week was that?
Because you and I were hanging out this weekend? Man, man,
don't don't come on, man, Let me have my dreams
very at the very least, my my thin subterfuge. It
was a bit, man, I was a bit yes, and
come on, um no, it's true though I I didn't
(01:33):
do that. But um, it's an interesting concept, isn't it.
The notion that if you are not exposed any language
at all, that you may come out with the very
language that God intended. The implication there being the languages
somehow passed down from on high and not some sort
of like learned trait involving, you know, paying attention to
(01:54):
other people are doing, and that it's a living language,
that it evolves over time, and you know, different languages
exist because of different trial and error attempts throughout history.
Right right right, there was this idea of an ancient
idea that if humans would stop bothering children with their
own pesky habits of language, that children would, as you say,
(02:15):
speak the way that God intended them to. This story
has has so many threats to pull, but let's start
with an island that you may not have heard of
unless you are from Scotland. It's a tiny place. It's
called inch Keith. The atomology, I think ultimately just means
wooded aisle, which is a little bit of a down
(02:38):
because I was hoping there was a guy named Keith
somewhere in the Island's passed and there was like an
inch thing going on. But if you go to this aisle,
this island is about three miles north of Edinburgh, you
will see that it has you know, it has a
pretty deep past. It was used to quarantine people suffering
(02:58):
from contagious sickness, is especially a syphilis which they called,
get this, the Grand Gore, Grand Gore back in the day.
That sounds like a muppet villain or something like that,
like the trash heap you know from Fraggle Rock, or
like in Dark Crystal. You have to you have to
(03:19):
the Grand Gore. But the thing this island is most
famous for nowadays is a very sad and as we
will find, not unique experiment that is believed to have
taken place in when then King of Scotland, James the
Fourth said I gotta do an experiment with as few
(03:42):
people as possible, and he set up something today, a
language experiment that remains a fascinating rabbit hole. And what
we'd like to do is explore a little bit about James,
who was a smart guy. For the record, going into this,
it's important to know where you hear all the crazy
stuff we're gonna say about him. James was a smart
(04:04):
guy for his time and Uh, maybe not the most ethical.
Would you agree with that? Yeah? He was. I mean,
you know, I gotta give the guy a little slack.
It was a different time. Well, he didn't necessarily hurt anybody.
What he did would now be considered incredibly unethical. And
what he did was take two newborn infant babies, uh
(04:24):
and sequester them on the island of inch Keith and
have them raised by mute nursemaids. He would of course
give them all the things they needed to be nourished physically,
though not spiritually or like, intellectually or emotionally. Maybe emotionally.
They probably gave them hugs, but they did not give
them bedtime stories or you know, sing them songs or anything,
because they could not speak. The idea being that if
(04:47):
this happened, supposedly they would naturally, like you said, Ben,
in the same way the babies can swim out of
the womb, come out with this language he referred to
oftentimes as the language of Eden, you know, the first
language of man, and by manny, we mean like, you know, humankind.
But let's go a little bit more into the history
of this island. It is around three miles north of
(05:09):
Edinburgh in the middle of Scotland's Firth of Fourth area.
Just a real tongue twister, and it has had a
bit of a checkered past. In the twelfth century it
was used as a stopping point for boats and ferries
going from Edinburgh to Fife, and then a couple of
centuriears later. It had a strategic position that allowed it
(05:31):
to be very useful in the Scottish Wars of Independence.
It was constantly being you know, um besieged by various
invading English forces. Uh, during the Anglo Scottish Wars. Then
in the fifteenth century, like you said, Bennett was kind
of like a plague quarantine island, like that one they
were trying to send Hannibal Lecture two where you the
(05:51):
view of a tree, you know, maybe get to walk
on the beach, all that stuff. But then that was all,
you know, a subterfuge, as we know you've seen the film.
But let's go to James the Fourth Now, Ben, what
say you, yeah, yeah, let's go. So a bit of
background about our boy. James was born in fourteen seventy
three on seventeenth of March. So if you just do
(06:15):
some quick math you'll realize that he was pretty young
when he did this experiment, okay, And he was King
of Scotland from fourteen eighty eight until his death in
September nine, fifteen thirteen. He was just like fifteen when
some rival nobles who were opposed to his father started
(06:39):
using him as a figurehead. In a four eight rebellion,
his father was killed under mysterious circumstances and as kind
of a a punishment or a penance for somehow playing
a role in patricide. James the fourth would wear a
heavy iron chain around his waist for the rest of
(07:01):
his life. And a lot of this is coming from
a great little website we'd like to recommend called Undiscovered
Scotland dot co dot uk. So he got into the
royalty game pretty early. It's just fifteen when he gets coordinated.
And one thing that's fascinated about him I always found
was that he was actually good at his job. You know,
(07:22):
we're not saying he's a perfect person, right. He took
to it quickly and was considered to be the most effective, well,
the first effective monarch out of the Stewart line. Yeah, yep,
and he expanded the navy. He was known for keeping
a cool head in military affairs and being a solid leader.
(07:43):
But as we alluded to earlier, James was also super
into the arts and sciences. He was a monarch, but
that wasn't all he was. In fact, he is probably
out of every other Scottish king, he is the one
who is most often brought up as being a what
(08:04):
you would call a renaissance man today. He likes history, poetry, literature, medicine, science.
He wants to learn about the world. Yep, he licensed
the very first printing press in Scotland. UM. He was
a notable patron of the arts. Um he you know,
helps support numerous you know creators, bards for example, songwriters.
(08:26):
He even studied, you know, dentistry and surgery. I don't
know that he hopefully he didn't perform any amateur dental
or or surgical procedures, but you never know. The king
he's certainly wasn't beyond the room of possibility. But he
also was super into alchemy, which I think we're both
fascinated by as well, been largely from stuff we talked
about on our other podcast, Stuff that don't want you
(08:48):
to know. I think we have a whole episode on
alchemy that's folks to check out in which we almost
certainly talk about John Damien, who is King James is
most trusted and you know, supposedly adapt ALcom anybody that
doesn't well, we'll get to that for sure. Not only
could you not fly, he pulled kind of a Marty
McFly kind of situation. Um that we'll get to in
(09:09):
just a second. But John Damien was you know, what,
what what what? What James would have considered an adept alchemist.
What we know today is that was not really a thing.
It was largely being very good bulleit, being able to
kind of convince people that you had these abilities. It
was sort of It's interesting culturally because it straddled that
(09:30):
line between magic and science, right man. Yeah, Alchemy gave
the human species a lot of advancements. It's a precursor
to what we call chemistry today. And they were conducting
a lot of experiments that may have seemed unorthodox at
the time and may seem ill informed, but in many ways,
(09:51):
the alchemists of this era were trailblazers. John Damiens unfortunately
perhaps most from umber today for an experiment he did
with flights and this is this is also mentioned in
article by Paul Anthony Jones, the King of Scotland's peculiar
(10:12):
language experiment over with our friends of mental flows. Here's
what Here's what Johnny D did, which is why I'm
gonna call him. He he thought, you know, well things
with feathers, birds, many of them can fly. He thought,
so why don't I get some feathers together and will
(10:34):
I'll make some wings. They're the size of a man
for out of chicken feathers. And then I'm gonna jump
from Sterling Castle whereas he said, he's uh, King James
is located and he says, you know, I get enough altitude,
your highness, I'll be able to fly straight through France.
This was maybe true for a couple of seconds. He
(10:54):
did reach great speeds, but they were all you know,
he was. He reached great speed going downward, and he
broke his leg. He survived, though. Unfortunately, falling and flying
are not the same thing, even if they both take
place in the air. Um and I mentioned Marty McFly earlier,
and I'm referring to the fact that in every iteration
of Back to the Future, Biff Marty's nemesis ends up
(11:15):
falling into a pile of manure, showing the history repeats
itself no matter what you do, or at the very least,
it often rhymes right, ben um. But that's exactly what happens.
Told Johnny D. He tumbles out of the sky into
a massive dung heap. Nothing worse than that, having to
walk away from a failed experiment covered in excrement, but
it admittedly did cushion his fall and keep him from dying. Instead,
(11:39):
he did just suffer a broken leg and uh likely
a heavily bruised ego, And then he ended up blaming
the types of feathers on it. Right, What was that? Yeah? Yeah,
he said, he said, Look, your Highness, my ideas are solid.
The hidden feathers I used must have been so attracted
to that pile is below that it made me crash.
(12:02):
And what we're saying with this anecdote is that the
King is an open minded guy. For his time, he
wants to He wants to pursue stuff. He believes the
world is both understandable and worth understanding, which is something
I am principle agree with. But that's chief amongst his
intellectual interests. The stuff that he really dug was his
(12:25):
love of language. He spoke multiple languages. This guy spoke English, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish,
she threw some Flemish in there, and people were amazed
that he wasn't He wasn't putting up a front about this.
(12:47):
He really did speak these languages, and as a linguist,
he was constantly asking himself, how do people notice speak?
And how come people are the only animals he wondered,
Uh that I know of that can use language? Nowadays,
(13:08):
we know that's not entirely true. By the way Wales
communicate with through song right, and it has a lot
in common with languages, and birds seem to also be
able to communicate certain concepts, especially Corvett's shout out um.
But he, like I, I think we both read that sometimes.
(13:30):
This guy, who again is the King of Scotland, he's
got stuff to do. This guy would sit around and
just watch people talk. He would just watch their mouths move.
It's a little weird, huh, It's cool again. I plub
the guy for his thirst for knowledge, But he also
seemed like a bit of a sociopath. I don't know
most kings, it's easier for them to fall into that trap,
(13:52):
given that you're just constantly surrounded by yes man. Not
to say the sociopaths are made, but certainly, if you
have those tendencies and people are constantly indulging you in
doing whatever bizarro things you want, you certainly might not
be the best thing for you. But what we're talking
about today is King James the fourth Language experiments, because,
like you said, he was fascinated with the way people
(14:14):
communicate with each other, logistically, spiritually, all of that stuff,
just like how does it work? And why are we
driven to do it? Um? So like you do, in
he decided to take two newborn babies to be sent
to live on that isolated island of inch Keith that
we talked about, And not only were they raised by
mute women, they were deaf mute women. His goal was
(14:37):
to see what natural language the children would come out
with after a period of time. Um. There's not a
whole lot of documentation of the experiment itself, so we're
not quite sure exactly how long uh they lived on
this island, um, but we do know the experiment most
likely took place, and we're going to get into it now.
(14:58):
We know too that language deprivation experiments are often referred
to as the forbidden experiment, and that is because they
are just inherently cruel. It's something that we've seen throughout
history when people maybe had less, you know, concerned for
like scientific standards and ethics. But we've seen the Greeks
do this. Herodotus I believe he wrote that in the
(15:18):
seventeenth century b c UM. The Egyptian pharaoh somatic Uh
sent to infants to live with a shepherd in an
incredibly isolated part that in his kingdom, and he ensured
that they would never be spoken to. And Herodotus claimed,
according to his writings, much of their speech was nonsense,
but he believed they were babbling the words becos, which
(15:41):
is an ancient Phrygian word that means bread. Um. So
the pharaoh believed that Phrygia, rather than Egypt, was in
fact the oldest civilization because I mean that's the language
that came out with naturally, it was it was total swinging,
a mess, barely even a swing. Yeah. And as as
you know, folks, uh, this historian is famous for being
(16:04):
infamously unreliable, so take it with a grain assault. This
is not the only example, though. We know that the
Mughal Indian Emperor Akbar back in the sixteenth century also
reputedly raised children in isolation. And this guy found that
these children, when they were raised without the opportunity to
(16:28):
learn language in their formative years, they tended to remain
mute later and this will this plays a role in
the idea that there is a window, right, a window
of time in which certain things must be learned by
juvenile humans. It reminds me of of the case of
Genie in the young feral child who was living under horrible, abusive,
(16:52):
neglectful situations UM where she was basically kept in a room,
and she she was able to be taught to speak.
But if you don't have a need to speak, this
shows that you're probably not going to UM. More often
than not, kids in these kind of situations start to
develop sign language rather than actually speaking, because again, we
(17:13):
as children we learn by example. And Jeannie didn't speak
for a long time until she was then kind of shown,
you know, some exercises and ways to to pick it up,
and she did. But you're right, then, once you get
past a certain threshold, just like it is for adults
to learn a foreign language, it does become increasingly more
and more difficult and has nothing to do with some
(17:33):
innate language ability. I mean, it really is just about
how the brain is able to learn things. Yeah, it's
hardwire this is this is something I want to touch
on later too, because these experiments are ancient. But things
like this do occur much more recently than people may
like to assume. And we'll get to a a case of
(17:55):
romania in a little later in the show. Maybe. But
obviously you can have noble intentions, and it's a good
question to ask. They just didn't have the same kind
of concept of ethics that people have today. So obviously,
even if James were a king now in a modern monarchy,
(18:18):
he would still have an uphill battle ahead of him
if he wanted to try to do this experiment. And
even in his time, people believed that these experiments were
bad for kids. The Holy Roman emperor Frederick the Second
had tried to raise had tried to conduct a similar
experiment raising children this way, and people believe that the
(18:41):
children he had raised in silence without communication had all died,
and some people believed that those unfortunate children on inch
Keith died as well. But to the point you're making,
and that's a very good point we have to make.
There aren't really any credible records, Like there's not a
trail of correspondence from multiple people saying, Hey, what's up
(19:03):
with those kids on that island? I just wanted to
check in. Sorry, I've been busy being king. But don't
think I forgot. People guessed about the outcome of the experiment,
but a lot of that guessing was hearsay or second hand,
Like Sir Walter Scott said, Well, to me, the kids
probably just imitated whatever they heard from the local animals
(19:26):
around them, or maybe non language vocalizations from their adult caretakers.
Another guy, many decades later named Robert Lindsay said he
had heard the kids spoke perfect Hebrew. That's almost certainly
made up, right, And it's interesting that. But what do
(19:47):
you think the agenda is to make a claim like that? Um,
you one would think that they would claim that it
was you know, the King's English. You know that the
children naturally spoke. I mean, I guess there was reverence
for Hebrew culture because of you know, Christianity and all
of that, but I also know that there was division
and that jew Jewish people were often othered even in
(20:08):
this time, right, Yeah, the the Hebrew language is an
interesting claim. And you know, we have to also understand
that in this time a lot of scientific experiments suffered
from confirmation bias. Now I can't remember the name of
this guy, but back in the day in Europe, there
was a scientist, quote unquote, a learned man who did
(20:32):
what he thought was exhaustive research on the most attractive
face of a man, and he found, surprise, surprise, that
the most attractive, scientifically proven most attractive male face uh
did in fact look a lot like his big big
nose week week chin. You know, I think baldin or
(20:52):
something like that. So what we're saying is people kind
of dressed up their own opinions sometimes, and there may
have been kind of agenda with either Robert Lindsay or
whomever was telling them that. But when we speculate over
whether or not King James actually did this, we have
(21:14):
to also note that it could have been folklore. It
could have been just a tall tale, a legend. Because
we know he genuinely was a polyglot. We know that
he genuinely did love languages. So maybe this, along with
pre existing knowledge of other language deprivation experiments, maybe these
things combined to sound plausible enough, right, Like, maybe it
(21:38):
never happened, but everybody acknowledged it's something this dude would
have been into. Yeah, No, I completely agree. And um,
as we know, ultimately another King James was very responsible
for guiding the trajectory of Christianity with his King James
translation of the Bible. Um. And we know that there
are many translations of the Bible, but that was one
(21:59):
that kind of picked up the most steam, and it
was because he had the most cloud. So obviously that
love of language kind of ran in that in that
family to a to a degree. Um. And we know
also that the the history is kind of written by
the victors and the folks with the most power. So
I think that's very interesting to think about. Yeah, and
actually I want to kind of chime in here right here. No,
(22:20):
that King James you speak of is actually this James's
great grandson known as King James the sixth and King
James the First, depending on which which kingdom you're talking about,
But it's true. It just goes to show that language matters,
and that fascination obviously was something that was important to
a generation of of King James's. But you know, so
(22:43):
many people kind of question, uh, the validity of the
King James Bible, because a lot of it was built
around a pretty particular perspective of a monarch, you know, yes, yeah,
And to go back to our guy, James the fourth,
this is where we have to ask ourselves a little
bit more about what the written record would say. We
(23:06):
mentioned that earlier historian Robert Lindsay he's working in the
sixteenth century. He wrote a book called History and Chronicles
of Scotland. Uh. This was almost a hundred years after
the fact, by the way, and he does specifically mention
this alleged experiment. He says, the king also caused to
take one deaf woman and put her in inch Keith,
(23:28):
and give her two bairns b a I r n
s just kids with her, and furnish her in all
necessary things pertaining to their nourishment. Desiring hereby to know
what languages they had when they came to the age
of perfect speech. Some say they could speak Hebrew, but
for my part I know not, but from other people's reports,
(23:48):
so at least he was like, all right, some someone
told me it was Hebrew. It seems like they probably
wouldn't have done that. Maybe if someone was there teaching
them he threw, but that would be speaking to them.
That would render the experience or the experiment rather pointless.
So what happened to James? We know this experiment was
(24:09):
just one of the many things he did, but what
do you do after this? Well, um, he died and
some weird stuff happened to his body. He was considered Ultimately,
history kind of deemed him to be a pretty successful ruler.
(24:30):
His reign was relatively peaceful, but it was kind of
up ended by some wars with England, though they didn't
they weren't the aggressors, um. So there was a truce
with England that was broken in fourteen UM and James
had to prepare an invasion to support the Perkin Warbeck,
who was what you'd call a pretender to the English throne,
(24:52):
sort of an interloper um. The war was largely fought
in a few border areas and a seven year piece
was negotiated in December, but there were still little skirmishes
along these borders from time to time, and relations between
England and Scotland were did continue to kind of improve
(25:13):
and stabilize up until three and that's when James married
Margaret Tudor, who was the oldest daughter of King Henry
the seventh of England. And then, of course, a century later,
James's great grandson, the Stewart monarch, James the sixth of Scotland,
took the English throne. That the Bible guy. Yeah, that's
(25:37):
the Bible guy exactly. That's what he called himself. He's like,
I'm a Bible guy, right, who can take the scriptures anyway?
So so this, uh, this leads to an interesting situation. So,
because James the fourth is well respected in this region,
(26:01):
he is able to get a pretty equal seat at
the table of continental Europe. And then he goes into
conflict with King Henry the eight famous for that oldie
song I'm King Henry the Eighth, I'm Henry the Eighth.
I am uh there it is, thank you. And so
(26:22):
so he tries to team up with France against Henry
the Eighth, and when Henry the Eighth invades France in
fifteen thirteen, James has all his advisers saying, all right, man,
keep a cool head, keep a cool head, bro But
instead he says, no, forget it, I'm going into England.
So he trashes four castles, all in the month of
(26:44):
August thirteen. But then his army gets waxed. The opposing
forces mopped the floor with them. It's something called the
Battle of Flowden or Flawed in f L O D
D E N on September nine, and this is when
James the fourth passes away. He and most of his
nobles die in this conflict. His corps is not looking
(27:07):
what you would call open casket ready. He's been disfigured
by arrows. He eventually gets identified as people are going
through bodies after the battle, and then he his remains
are embalmed. He's putting a lead coffin and he's taken
from a place called Berwick back to London. And this
(27:27):
package is sent to the wife of Henry the eighth.
She takes the poor dead James's surcoat which is still
like it's bloody and it's ripped up because he did
not have a peaceful end, and she sends it back
to her husband. Catherine sends it to her husband, King
Henry the eighth, and she says something pretty metal. To
(27:48):
be honest with you, she says, use this as a
war banner. You know, forces see this dead guy's bloody coat.
That's psychological warfare right there. Um. I mean you gotta
think like he was like basically family with them too,
because Henry the Eighth was his brother in law. Right well,
(28:09):
monarchy's monarchies are super into being interrelated. Uh, but that's
an his body, right. Henry eventually gets back from France
and people think, well, we've got this, you know, habeas corpus,
we've got this guy's body. What should we do with it?
For many of us hanging out today and Nold maxim
sure you can agree. Uh, the idea would be like, hey,
(28:31):
barry the guy, he's dead. But they weren't happy with
that worthy Yeah. So um. He was in fact excommunicated
from the church um as a punishment for breaking that
Truce of Perpetual Peace, which is a great name for
a truce if you ask me, and that was signed
between Scotland and England two. And because of that, because
of that excommunication, the idea of a proper Christian burial
(28:55):
in consecrated church grounds just wasn't on the table now.
So the body of James was just left in a
wood shed of the Sheen Monastery to just kind of
you know, molder there, you know, and and like literally
like a like a tool shed. Even after the pope
granted permission for the burial, they were like, no, sorry,
(29:16):
this proceeds the purposes the word of God. So eventually
this you know, rotted corpse was just completely forgotten about
and somehow the head fell off. I mean that'll happen,
you know, if you leave something just to rot long enough,
that's gonna happen. And the story goes though there isn't
a ton of of uh, you know, documentation for this,
(29:39):
that some workers from the area played soccer with it,
kicked it around, um after which time Elizabeth, the first
master glazier, found it and took it home as a souvenir. Yeah,
and this wasn't quite the end. The head was eventually
take in the Great Saint Michael's Church in London. It
(30:03):
was dumped into a charnel pit. Eventually, the monastery where
the king's headless body was housed was demolished. We don't
know whether it was ever actually buried there. That church St.
Michael's also got torn down, and if you go there now,
I believe it is the site of a pub called
(30:24):
get this the Red Harry so things did not end well.
But one thing we do know from this story, whether
or not it is true or whether it's a tall tale,
we know that communication with children with babies, with infants
is tremendously important. We see other examples of this that
(30:47):
we're really heartbreaking, such as the problems with Romanian orphanages
that happened very very recently. And what what they found
is that these children were so neglected in these state orphanages.
They would just lay in cribs all day. Many weren't
clothed or fed or diapered on any set schedule. Um.
(31:09):
They would die from very minor diseases in some cases,
and then would have to be exposed to very serious
infections like HIV. This thing, it's interesting and this this
is I have a hard time articulating how disturbing this is.
These children in some cases, in many cases literally stopped
(31:31):
vocalizing because no one would answer their cries. They just
gave up. Wow, that's that's heartbreaking. Um, But we will
likely never know what happened to these children. That's the
fascinating part if you ask me, uh, is how did
they progress in their lives? You know, like were they
able to learn how to speak once they were returned
(31:52):
from the island. Were they returned from the island? Did
they live out their days on this island with nothing
but these these nurses to take care of them? And
since they were presu be much older what happened when
they passed? The island today is actually owned by a
like a Scottish multimillionaire, a guy named Tom Farmer who's
the founder of a company called quick Fit. And you
(32:14):
have to get his permission to check out the island
of inch Keith. To this day, I hear there's a
nice lighthouse, but yeah, you got you gotta check with
Tom first, And yeah, this is This is so fascinating
because history is shock full of experiments that seem bizarre
(32:34):
or an ethical, or just even a little bit absurd.
You might say, like gluey, you know, chicken feathers to
yourself and jumping off a building. But we have to
remember that each one of these experiments, even if they
do seem dare I say it ridiculous here in one
they are all a part of a great endeavor, which
(32:56):
is to understand the world a little bit better than
we did yesterday. And for that you can say you
know this is a noble thing. But if you are listening,
you're considering language experiments on children, don't do this. I
feel like that's that's not a hot take, right. We
could tell I think we're I think we're good. I
think I think we're all on the same page there.
(33:18):
But Ben, what are the kind of modern equivalent of
this kind of language experimentation that would be considered ethical?
Is it more modeling, kind of AI based stuff. I'm
just fascinated. You know. Obviously doing experiments on children, even
with permission is pretty frowned upon. But um have there.
I mean, I think honestly, the whole goal of this
experiment has probably been so disproven and kind of made
(33:42):
a bit of a mockria just by you know what
we know now today that people don't just come out
with some sort of natural, you know, language of God.
It is all about nature and nurture. So maybe these
kind of experiments are irrelevant largely today. Yeah, I mean
it would be honestly, things would probably be a lot easier.
The human species ever had a single language, and people
(34:04):
have in the past tried to manufacture or you know,
purposely create a one world language, such as oh, my gosh,
I know people, it's such as Esperanto. You know, William
Shatner did a film all in Esperanto and my friends
who speak Esperanto, because I actually know if you assure
(34:24):
me that it is hilarious because his accent is terrible.
Mr Shattner, if you're listening, that is not a ding
on you, sir, But you're right. Well. I'd love to
hear from people who work in the fields of you know, uh, studying,
language acquisition and children, and love to hear what the
what the future of that research is. And I wonder
(34:45):
how it can be modeled. But that's that's a story
for the future, and our show is about history. We
hope you enjoyed this. We can't wait to hear from you.
As always, Please check us out on the internet. Come on, man,
so close, going so well? All right? Max? Ready, it
(35:07):
was bound to happen sooner or later. What's that gudible time, gentleman?
The quizter way? Max? Have you not have you not
experienced this before? Is this new for you? I have
(35:29):
edited before, but I have never firsthand experienced it. But Jonathan,
how are you my friend? There are no friends here, Max, adversaries,
the quizter have traveled backward in time to quiz you
before the thing you'll talk about has been talked about.
(35:50):
So my first question to you, hey man, come on,
don't don't give away the what magic? What have what
have you had talked about already that hasn't happened yet. Oh,
we've talked about language deprivation experiments, very famous one because
you see R. Berlin. It's quite quite fortuitous because my
(36:12):
scenarios have nothing what's ever to do with that? But
I mean, you know, you're very presence often deprives those
around you of language because they're so busy cringing. There's
a lot of there's a lot of there's a lot
of of of of speechless mouths when I come up. Yes,
(36:32):
welcome to the the cringe eest segment of any podcast
in existence, the equist segment, where I will present to
our beloved co hosts three scenarios. It is their duty
to determine which a vegan scenario? Three what scenarios? It's
(36:53):
just you ruined the way I say that word now
like in my day to day life. It's just part
of part of my gig. Man. I mean, there's a
whole like job description and right up there was ruined
scenarios for Ben Bolan to check that out right, So great,
I'm glad to help you. So for for folks who haven't,
(37:15):
for a fellow ridiculous historians who haven't had the experience
of hearing this segment before, do you want you want to?
You want to give us a quick and dirty breakdown? Also,
I was working on it, but I kept getting interrupted. Right,
So give you three scenarios, two of which are true
and one that I made up seas, and then the
(37:37):
two of you must determine which of the three scenarios
is the fake, and you will have a few minutes
to determine. You get to discuss amongst yourselves. And if
you wish to ask me a question, you must first
preface that question by following an arbitrary rule that I
set typically thirty seconds after I stopped talking. Know, I've
(38:00):
got it. I've got it in this case, and you'll
understand why when I ask when you want to ask
a question me, I'm getting mixed up. It's been a
long time. How are you guys doing? No? Never mind,
when I I'm ready to have you asked a question
you say whale of a tale, and then you ask
a question whale of a tale, and then you can
(38:22):
ask a question of me. Otherwise, just talk amongst yourselves.
Are you prepared for your three scenarios? Get on with it, quister. Yeah,
I've got the grandfather clock. We spent way too much
money on in my apartment. So it's been let me
tell you moving that he didn't even buy a pizza.
Moving that up to your boy, What a day that was?
(38:45):
All right? Here are your three scenarios. Scenario one. In
eighteen fifty the English Channel Submarine Telegraph Company attempted to
create the first telegraph wire connection between Dover, England, and Calais, France.
After laying the cable under the sea, and before either
(39:06):
England or France could establish a good connection, the line
went dead. The newspapers placed blame upon a nameless French
fisherman who thought he had discovered a weird type of seaweed,
perhaps won with gold in the middle, and had cut
the line through Scenario number two. In eighteen fifty five,
(39:26):
Norway laid a subsea cable to the isolated archipelago of Svalbard,
where whalers had established communities The experiment came to an
abrupt end when Tineus Olsen, the engineer stationed at Svalbard,
begged to be retrieved. He claimed that the whalers had
threatened him and had been trying to destroy the cable
(39:47):
with their ship anchors. It would take another fifty years
before Norway established a permanent cable connection with Svalbard. Scenario three.
In eighteen fifty eight, the U. S Ship Niagara and
the British ship Agamemnon met in the middle of the Atlantic,
spliced two very long cables together, and then sailed in
(40:09):
opposite directions, spooling out cable along the way. The Niagara
went to Newfoundland, Agamemnon went to Ireland. The cable established
the first transatlantic communication wire between the UK and North America,
but it only worked for about two months before the
chief electrician, wild Man white House fried the cable with
(40:29):
too much voltage. Begin Okay, I am running to the
clock on one second, guys, go uh, these are all
pretty good, pretty good. I've heard of Svalbard that seems
like a real or maybe it's I've seen it like
it's like a piece of ikea furniture. Um wouldn't that
(40:49):
be devious, especially after saying it with such intention. Every
time he said what's it called again, Jonathan, it almost
sounds like, yeah, okay, sorry, I was a quiet that
was like I said, they you for aswing that without me?
That was that was just that was just catering to
my ego. That was just for old times quail of
a jail. Yes, Master Berlin, could you give us just
(41:14):
the dates of those three the first when eighteen fifty
for the English Channel between Dover and Clay, eighteen fifty
five between the mainland of Norway and SMaL Bard at
eighteen fifty eight for all Ireland to Newfoundland. Okay, so
this this to mean nol This means that they all occurred,
(41:37):
or two of them at least occurred in a very
close span of time, right, I mean, but this is
sort of like a This represents these sort of clashes
of like old and new kind of where it's like
I think most of these involved well that's not sure.
The second one, in particular involved is like a fisherman
not realizing what underwater cable was and mistaking it for
(41:58):
something that seems like a stress. I feel like, you know,
if if if folks are out in the world. They're
seeing this infrastructure being laid. You know, if they're professional
seafaring folk, then they're gonna be aware of this stuff,
unless they're like, you know, from another time, like in
the Sino Man or something. Just to interrupt that that is,
that is part of the That is part of the
first scenario, not the second one. Just so that just
(42:21):
so that you know which ones you're picking. Okay, So
the first one also had a bit of good old
fashioned greed right seaweed with believes there were going for
the goal. That's okay, So that's the one I'm gonna
maybe cancel out. Um, I don't know, man, I'm gonna
go asval Bard? Are you gonna go as val Bar?
Then we're we're a little a little because for some reason,
(42:46):
I just wanted to pick the third one, not because
of the content, but because of the way that the
quisters sayings val Bard to bring attention to it. Um,
what do you think you want to consult Max? We
got we can game show of this, We can show
a friend and you guys want me in. I am
with nol. Initially hearing them, I was like, it's the
(43:08):
number two, That's what I'm gonna go with all right,
then let's lock it in three two one number two
Max Max. What the hell did I do to you?
All right? Listen, I had a good thing going. You
come in, you ruin everything. Number two was the made
up seas right, So number one with the French fisherman
(43:32):
who cut through the wire thinking that it was a
strange form of seaweed, That's what the newspapers reported. It
was not necessarily what actually happened. What probably happened was
that the cable, which had no armor sheathing on it,
rubbed against the rocks because of the action of waves
and broke apart on its own. But the newspapers reported
(43:55):
that it was potentially a French fisherman who just played
did not know better and cut through it, And of
course the Agamemnon and the Niagara did in fact meat
in the middle of the ocean. This was the second attempt.
The first time they tried to go from Ireland all
the way to Newfoundland with one ship picking up where
the end of the cable left off for ship number one,
(44:17):
but that did not work. It broke apart, and so
they ended up trying it again, and they started in
the middle of the Atlantic and went opposite directions that
worked for about two months. It also took sixty seven
minutes for Queen Victoria's message to be sent across the
Transatlantic cable to arrive for President James Buchanan. And it
(44:39):
wasn't even she said. She said, Dear Jimmy, BRIT's rule,
Americans drool love Vicky Vicky Taylor's all this time. I
didn't realize that it took so long for those messages
to be transmitted. That's interesting. Well, if you would like
to learn more about why you can listen to tech stuff,
because I totally just corded episodes about it, so Smith, Yeah,
(45:03):
that that is true. Jonathan. In addition to being our
nemeses again long time listeners, you know this well, you
do so many things. You've got the best tech podcast
out there on the internet, as verified and confirmed by
US here at Ridiculous History, comes out five days week
(45:24):
uh and it is also one of the older shows
on our network. It's one of the first podcast we
ever started doing. If you want to learn anything about technology,
that is your go to. But that's not all you do,
is it? Qrist No No No. I also host a
co host a show called large Ner drawn Kaleider that
publishes every Thursday, where I and believe it or not,
(45:45):
my friend, Yes, I do have one named Ariel. She
and I talked about the latest geek news of the week,
and then we mash up two geek properties that never
should meet one another and say, what would happen if
they had a baby? Is she all so a soulless
supervillain type figure? She's real? She goes to another podcast. Yeah,
(46:06):
she's yes, exactly, she's my She's my podcast girlfriend from Canada.
And then, finally, finally, I host a show called The
Restless Ones, which is all about talking with very important
executives about technology and leadership. And that one is a
al right, fine, fine, fine, I'm giving you a hard times.
(46:28):
Sometimes I fall asleep when I especially man, if you
if you asked me to q a an episode, forget it.
That's that's Z time. Oh yes, bit of Inside Baseball.
This is funny. So we were talking. We got on
air and had said, Jonathan, you know, it's it's good
to see you. How are you. Uh we it's been
(46:48):
too long. We name drop you at the end of
every episode, and then there was a temperature on our recording.
You could feel it palpably mower in the room and
he said, oh, I've heard it. I was like, you
don't listen to our show. It's all good fun. It's
(47:08):
all in good fun. We love you, Jonathan and your
your your alter ego the Quister, and always glad when
you darken our doorstep and lower our zoom room podcast temperature.
I hope that the two of you have a wonderful
conversation about the thing that everyone else has already heard. Yes,
thank you, we we do too. Oh god, you're really
(47:30):
messing my head up on this one. Me gone Quister,
Quister out and there he goes, there he goes. You know, um,
I hate to see him leave, but love to watch
him walk away. Yeah, Like I prefer it when he
just kind of de materializes into a puff of smoke.
That's always nice. Yeah, it's this the smoke budget is well.
(47:50):
You know, that's a lot of inside baseball folks, but
we're we're hard at work. Max. You have survived your
first encounter with Jonathan Strickland a k. The Quister. You'll
never be the same. Though, you'll never be the same
now it stays with you it gets, It gets into
your soul. So I think at this point maybe the
three of us, uh call it a day, gets some
(48:11):
rest and recuperation from that. Well, it's not that bad.
We won you know, be a credit for that too, now, now,
not all credit. I I was, I was, I was
barking up the right tree. You just joined me in
that tree and helped sway. Ben. And for the I
get fifty, you get fifty, band gets zero. Okay, that
sounds fair. What do you say? Yeah, I'm fine with that.
(48:33):
I have a good friend. Street name is zero. Well, then,
the first and foremost we must thank our super producer
Max Williams for rescuing us from the tyranny of the quister,
who we will also think with you know less sincerity, um.
But also thanks to you, Ben Hey, thanks to you
for coming over to the light side. You know, I
(48:53):
believe in the benefits of democracy, so you know, historically
I'm trying to pull everybody in on on so many things.
So the power of voting matters, folks. That's that's our
takeaway there. Yeah uh, and thanks of course to Alex Williams,
Thanks to Christopher Aciotis, thanks to Eve's Jeff Coat. Thanks
to Jonathan Strickland ak the Quister, who has just done
(49:17):
so much for the tourism industry of small Bard, which
is a very interesting place. By the way, it's one
of the few places. It's one of the easiest places
to migrate to in all of Europe because the weather
is a little rough. Thanks also to let's see who else. Oh,
thanks to Gabe. Yeah, thanks to Gabe Luisier for hipping
(49:37):
us to this incredibly fascinating topic that we have definitely
already recorded. Yeah, yeah, we'll do. Okay, we'll do okay,
it's all lies. We'll see you next time, folks. For
more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen of your
(50:00):
favorite shows.
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