Stalin didn’t want ape-men after all
There was a piece in the Scotman last year about Stalin’s experiments with creating an ape-man hybrid for use as an ultimate warrior. A History Channel piece last night cast doubt on that assertion, and apparently Stalin had no use or desire for such experiments.
The show claimed Dr. Ilya Ivanov really did attempt creating the hybrid, but without specific direction from the government. Stalin did give Ivanov a scientific grant, but he gave out a lot of cash to anyone who was trying to advance science, so the money didn’t imply Stalin’s personal interest in that particular project. Ivanov’s main motivation was to curb the influence of the strong Russian church, from which he was afraid of persecution.
A small amusing portion towards the end involved a scientist questioning whether humans were indeed the most intelligent species on the planet. He said something to the effect of “I may be able to do calculus and play the piano, things that we’d associate with intelligence, but how useful would they be in the jungle?”, and so forth.
Look, in the last 10,000 years, humans have developed stuff like writing, agriculture, the crossbow, the Theory of Relativity and have walked on the moon. The extent of our closest competitors’ technology is using pointy sticks as weapons. Chimps and gibbons may be smart, but they’re not THAT smart.
