3. Frederick II’s Language Experiment
via.en.wikipedia.org
The Holy Roman Emperor was the most powerful man in Europe during the Middle Ages, a man to whose whims it was wise to bow. One such man was Frederick II, who ruled European Catholics from 1197-1250. He was a keen exponent of scientific experiments, aided by an Italian monk who secretly hated both Fred and the rest of humanity. Needless to say, most of the experiments involved spectacular cruelty that even the Old Testament’s God would be envious of.
Frederick’s medieval mischiefs included trapping a fully grown man in a barrel with only a tiny hole in the top, through which he hoped to see the soul of the unfortunate victim escape. He was also fond of feeding two prisoners before sending one out to hunt and one to bed in order to see who digested their food quicker; the only way to find out was by disembowelling them both. Still, the emperor’s creepiest caper was when he decided to find out what mankind’s natural language – i.e. the language of God – was. The experiment consisted of depriving two infants of any human interaction to see what happened when their voices matured. Presumably, they would begin to speak the same language that Adam and Eve did in a fictional fable from thousands of years previously.
Needless to say, the experiment failed miserably. The infants were not only deprived of language, but any vestige of humanity whatsoever. They sadly died both feral and psychotic.
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