The horrifying Human Zoos: Shocking photos reveal how zoos around the world kept ‘primitive natives’ in enclosures as Westerners gawped and jeered at them just 60 years ago

• Horrifying images show how black and Asian people were ‘displayed’ in zoo enclosures around the world
• ‘Human zoos’ designed to emphasise cultural differences between Europeans and people deemed primitive
• Millions visited the shocking enclosures in the early 20th century both in America and across Europe

These shocking pictures show how so-called ‘human zoos’ around the world kept ‘primitive natives’ in enclosures so Westerners could gawp and jeer at them.

The horrifying images, some of which were taken as recently as 1958, show how black and Asian people were cruelly treated as exhibits that attracted millions of tourists.

Inhumane shows held across the Western world were designed to emphasise the cultural difference between Europeans and people who were deemed primitive.

Some of the people in the exhibits, in the late 19th and early to mid 20th century, were treated like animals and many died. They included Ota Benga, a Congolese man exhibited in New York’s Bronx Zoo in 1906, who was shockingly described as a ‘missing link’ of evolution.

 

 

The shameful industry also affected indigenous Australians in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Indigenous Australians were kept alongside animals and paraded around the world in what was dubbed ‘The Human Zoo’.

Australian Cinematographer Philip Rang, who is working on the film, said Aboriginal people were put on display as ‘boomerang throwing savages’ around North America and Europe.

‘Indigenous humans from all parts of the colonised world were exhibited in World Exhibitions, Zoos, Freak Shows, circuses such as PJ Barnum’s Greatest Show on Earth, and reconstructed ethnic villages in Europe,’ he told Daily Mail Australia earlier this year.

 

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