What happens when you put babies on a remote island, tell their caretakers to keep their mouths shut, and wait to see which language the kids start babbling in?
Well, if you’re King James IV of Scotland, you’d call it “science.” If you’re anyone else, you’d call it “an elaborate prank that went too far.”
Welcome to one of history’s weirdest linguistic experiments; where curiosity met cruelty, and the results were, well, awkwardly inconclusive.
The Mad King’s Quest for Answers
King James IV, who ruled Scotland in the late 15th century, wasn’t your average monarch.
Sure, he loved battles and castles like the rest of them, but he had a side hustle: playing scientist. He fancied himself a Renaissance man and was particularly obsessed with language. The big question bugging him?
What was the original human language? Was it Hebrew? Greek? Latin? Or something older, more primal; perhaps the lost language of God?
And because this was the Middle Ages, where ethics took a back seat to royal whims, James decided the best way to settle the debate was through a highly unethical live experiment.
Enter: the island of Inchkeith and two very unlucky infants.
The Experiment: Babies on Mute
Here’s how James’s experiment went down: two newborns were handed over to a pair of caretakers with very specific instructions – no talking. At all. Not a peep.
The idea was that, deprived of spoken language, the babies would eventually start speaking whatever tongue came naturally to humans. You know, like a linguistic time machine but with fewer ethical boundaries.
The caretakers were effectively turned into glorified babysitters with duct-taped mouths (metaphorically, of course). They could feed, clothe, and care for the babies, but under no circumstances could they utter a single word.
What could possibly go wrong?
A Silent Island of Chaos
The chosen location for this bizarre social experiment was Inchkeith, a remote, windswept island in the Firth of Forth.
With its isolation and harsh conditions, it wasn’t exactly baby paradise. It’s unclear how the infants fared during their time on the island because, shockingly, medieval kings weren’t great at keeping detailed lab notes.
But let’s be real: they probably cried, a lot.
James, meanwhile, sat back in his royal chambers, likely expecting a courier to show up with breaking news like, “Your Majesty, the babies have invented Egyptian!” Spoiler: that never happened.
The (Alleged) Results
According to some accounts, the babies eventually started speaking…drumroll…Phrygian.
Yes, you heard that right.
Phrygian, an ancient language of Asia Minor that hadn’t been in vogue since before the Roman Empire. How did the babies pull that off?
Did they find a Phrygian-English dictionary washed up on the shore? Or did the caretakers cheat and whisper ancient vocab lessons when no one was looking?
Historians are understandably skeptical.
Some think the entire story was exaggerated, while others argue the “results” were just made up to please the king. Because let’s face it; telling James, “Sorry, they just cried and pooped,” probably wasn’t an option.
Was James the First to Try This?
Turns out, James wasn’t breaking new ground with his experiment. History is littered with rulers who thought silence was the key to linguistic enlightenment.
Pharaoh Psamtik I of Egypt reportedly tried something similar centuries earlier, with equally murky results. Apparently, “let’s see what babies say if we ignore them” was the medieval version of a TED Talk; wildly speculative and lacking peer review.
The Ethics: What Ethics?
By modern standards, this experiment was about as ethical as putting a cat in a box to see if it’s alive or dead (looking at you, Schrödinger).
The infants were essentially guinea pigs in a linguistic Hunger Games, while their caretakers were reduced to mute, medieval nannies.
And yet, in James’s defense or at least in the defense of his bizarre curiosity; he wasn’t alone.
The Middle Ages were a time when kings dabbled in all kinds of wacky experiments, from alchemy to astrology.
If you were rich, bored, and powerful, why not try to unravel the mysteries of the universe by traumatizing a few subjects?
The Legacy of Silence
Despite its ethical and scientific shortcomings, James’s experiment did leave a peculiar mark on history.
It’s often cited as an example of early psychological and linguistic research, albeit of the “what were they thinking?” variety.
More importantly, it highlights the human obsession with understanding the origins of language; a question that still fascinates scientists today.
As for the babies? Their fate remains a mystery. Did they grow up to speak Phrygian, as legend claims? Or did they just grunt and cry until someone gave up and started talking to them?
The records are silent – pun intended.
Modern Lessons from a Medieval Mess
James IV’s experiment might be laughable now, but it serves as a reminder of how far science has come (and how far it still has to go).
Today, researchers study language development with actual ethical guidelines, fancy brain scans, and consent forms. But the fundamental question; what is the root of human language? remains unanswered.
Maybe James was onto something after all, albeit in the clumsiest, creepiest way possible. Or maybe he was just a bored king looking for a distraction from the monotony of medieval ruling.
Either way, his peculiar experiment lives on as a quirky footnote in the annals of linguistic history.
Epilogue: A Royal Flop, but a Fascinating One
The King of Scotland’s language experiment didn’t deliver the groundbreaking answers he’d hoped for, but it did succeed in giving us a story that’s equal parts hilarious and horrifying.
It’s a tale of royal curiosity, medieval pseudoscience, and the eternal quest to answer life’s biggest questions; even if you have to sacrifice a bit of common sense along the way.
