In the 1800s and early 1900s, traveling circuses provided hours of amusement for attendees. But there was a dark side to many- specifically- the sadly misnamed freak show. Most exhibited were the unfortunate victims of medical conditions that lead to de-humanizing exploitation- the most negatively influential were of those displayed as apelike, evolutionary missing links- rather than created in the image of God.
Up Next in Origins
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S1E2 Freakshow: Tragic Tales of Evolu...
Portrayals as ‘missing links’ took a fearful toll on many unfortunate people involved in the human Freak Show industry. As evolutionary ideas grew among the scientific community, naturalistic ideas of man’s origins were disseminated among the general public through such exhibits. Once popularized...
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S1E3 Freakshow: Fueling the Fire of "...
The demeaning exploitation of people as sideshow freaks helped propagate a much more insidious belief which gained steam and became normalized in Western society—the belief in scientific racism. Darwin’s publications catalyzed scientific racism into mainstream acceptance, justifying the belief th...
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S1E4 Freakshow: The Holocaust before ...
The Herero genocide was a systematic campaign of racial extermination that included the use of concentration camps and medical experimentation and is considered the first genocide of the 20th century. Belief in Darwin’s missing links led directly to belief in Darwin’s law of survival of the fitte...
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