Science and Culture Today Discovering Design in Nature
Screen Shot 2019-02-26 at 12.46.29 PM (2)
Latest

Human Zoos and a Cruel Past: A Visit to Washington University

Categories
Bioethics
Evolution
Share
Facebook
Twitter/X
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email
Washington University

The history in Human Zoos, the new documentary by John West, is far from ancient or far away. It was not that much more than a century ago that, applauded by mainstream science, Americans placed human beings in zoo-like settings to be gawked at by spectators as evolutionary “missing links.”

Click here to display content from YouTube.
Learn more in YouTube’s privacy policy.

Recently Dr. West visited the campus of Washington University in St. Louis, where the 1904 World’s Fair was held. Take a look inside the university’s Cupples Hall where, down in the basement, psychological tests, “including pain testing,” were conducted on native peoples. These specially imported human beings, including African pygmies, formed the “anthropology exhibits” at the Fair.

As the St. Louis Republic asked at the time:

Will the pygmies, brought last week to the World’s Fair, prove Darwin’s theory of the missing link?

Will a study of the little black children of the African jungles shed light on the theory evolved by Darwin as regards the evolution of the human race?

Doctor WS McGee, chief of the Anthropology Department of the World’s Fair, is convinced that it will.

Students and scientists incline to the same opinion.

You can now see Human Zoos for free on YouTube. It should serve as a call to humility on the part of evolution proponents, whose science is marred by such a cruel past.

Human Zoos

David Klinghoffer

Senior Fellow and Editor, Evolution News
David Klinghoffer is a Senior Fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. He is the author of seven books including Plato’s Revenge: The New Science of the Immaterial Genome and The Lord Will Gather Me In: My Journey to Jewish Orthodoxy. A former senior editor at National Review, he has contributed to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and other publications. He received an A.B. magna cum laude from Brown University in 1987. Born in Santa Monica, CA, he lives on Mercer Island, WA.

© Discovery Institute