The Experiment Where Babies Were Raised With No Language

In the 13th century, a Holy Roman Emperor took newborns from their mothers and ordered nurses to raise them in total silence. He wanted to find out what language humans would speak if no one taught them one. He thought he'd hear Hebrew, or Greek, or Latin — the original tongue of Eden. What happened instead changed everything we understand about what makes us human. This video traces Frederick II's forbidden experiment from the 1200s through 800 years of accidental repetitions — the foundling homes of the 1940s where babies died of being unloved, the 13-year-old girl found in a Los Angeles back bedroom in 1970, and the 27-year-old man who didn't know language existed until someone showed him a single word. Together they answer a question philosophers have asked for centuries: is there a self underneath the words, or is the self made of them? Stay until the end. The last line will sit with you. 🎥 Watch Next:The Experiment Where a Father Raised His Son With a Chimpanzee    • The Experiment Where a Father Raised His S...   --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sources Salimbene di Adam, Cronica (~1282) — primary medieval source for Frederick II's language experiment Spitz, R. A. (1945). Hospitalism: An Inquiry into the Genesis of Psychiatric Conditions in Early Childhood. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, Vol. 1 Curtiss, S. (1977). Genie: A Psycholinguistic Study of a Modern-Day "Wild Child". Academic Press Fromkin, V., Krashen, S., Curtiss, S., Rigler, D., & Rigler, M. (1974). The Development of Language in Genie: A Case of Language Acquisition Beyond the "Critical Period". Brain and Language, 1(1), 81–107 Schaller, S. (1991, rev. 1995). A Man Without Words. University of California Press Lenneberg, E. H. (1967). Biological Foundations of Language. Wiley — for the original critical period hypothesis Pinker, S. (1994). The Language Instinct. William Morrow 🔔 Subscribe for more. 💬 Comment below: do you remember the moment you first understood a word? #psychology #linguistics #anthropology #humannature #history #LivedThroughIt