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Green Children By Samuel Foust

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The Green Children of Woolpit There have been many legends and myths told throughout history. There are so many different versions and theories of these stories that have been formed by one’s opinions of what they think happened. There are usually no hard facts to prove details of these events, or if they even occurred. One of these stories is the green children of woolpit. There are many different opinions and theories about it. Although there are many accounts of this story, they are all pretty similar in telling the same story. It starts with two children, a girl and a boy, with green tinted skin who had wondered to the village of Woolpit speaking a foreign language. The boy eventually died when he and his sister became ill, but the …show more content…

The argument that Foust presents is “The reason I believe they are aliens is their green skin and the language they spoke was all unknown and mysterious to us humans. Also, the place filled with perpetual twilight is not a place that is on Earth” (Foust n.p.). Even though I do not agree with this theory, it is sensible as to why one would believe this. Without being presented with the facts of the matter, it could seem as if there would be no other explanation other than aliens. However, the green skin is easily explained by illness. The language the children might have seemed strange to the villagers of woolpit, but they could have just been speaking Dutch, which is the language that most Flemish people speak. Since the children were Flemish fleeing from their hometown, they most likely used underground passages and even maybe sewer holes, it is possible the children could have mistaken the places they traveled as being in perpetual twilight. In Foust’s essay “Green Children Are Aliens”, he presents the logical fallacy, Hasty Generalization, which means the author jumps to conclusions based on little evidence. This logical fallacy is used when Foust says “The reason I believe they are aliens is their green skin and the language they spoke was all unknown and mysterious to us humans.” Foust provides little evidence to prove his theory that the children were aliens, the only evidence he provides is they had green skin and spoke a language the villagers could not understand. There are so many possibilities of what the green skin could have been caused by such as: arsenic poisoning, hypochromic anemia, malnourishment, etc. Just because they had green skin does not mean they were aliens. Also, the language the children spoke may have been just strange to the villagers of Woolpit, chances are they were speaking Dutch. Dutch is the common

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