SIZE MATTERS
Tall Tales
The notion of human giants having once roamed this Earth has long been within the realm of speculation. Every so often, a seemingly impossibly large skeleton is allegedly unearthed, or a vastly oversized ancient tool is found, making researchers ask themselves, “Who could have possibly wielded that?” Even before such evidence confounded us, numerous ancient cultures also considered the question.
The ancient King of Sumeria (modern day Iraq), Gilgamesh, who ruled in 2500 B.C., was depicted on stone tablets fighting a lion. The scale of the depictions made him appear to tower over the lion, putting him at around 14-feet tall.
The Native Americans spoke of a race of giants that migrated to the southwest, including Arizona, Nevada and Utah. One of these “giant” tribes, the Paiute, were said to be 12-feet tall with flaming red hair. It is said that, a menace to all other tribes, they were chased into a cave, trapped inside, and then burned to death. In the 1920’s, one cave in Lockport, Nevada, was excavated and the skeleton of an 8 to 10 foot tall man was supposedly discovered.
Irish tradition tells of a giant race of blacks who arrived from Africa via Spain. It has been speculated that in ancient Rome, Julius Caesar’s army was populated by a number of black giants. It has further been speculated that giant men of color sailed from Africa to construct Stonehenge, manually lifting the stones to put them in place. Of course, there were also the great legends of giants that existed in Greek and Norse tradition, as well as the giants of the Bible, though most of these accounts have been relegated to mythological status, rather than historical accounts.
64-Pound Hammer
In the coastal town of Llandudno in North Wales is the Great Orme Copper Mine, which dates back 3,500 years ago to the Bronze Age. Archaeologists who have been conducting research at the mine for decades have unearthed more than 2,500 hammers from the location.
Today’s sledgehammers – the largest class of hammers – typically weigh about 10 pounds. The largest sledgehammers can weigh in the neighborhood of 20 pounds. An average-sized grown man who demolishes masonry for a living would be able to wield the 20-pounder perhaps for only a few hours before getting tired. However, give him something heavier and it would nearly be impossible to use on a prolonged basis. So when archaeologists at this very location in North Wales discovered 64-pound sledgehammers with 9-foot handles, they were baffled. Who could have possibly swung these behemoth tools? Giants of course. The archaeologists estimated that it would have taken a person three times taller than the average human, perhaps up to 18-feet, to lift and wield it.
Similar to the theory of an ancient black race building Stonehenge, there are additional theories that giants, using their great might and their tools similar to the hammer found at the Great Orme Copper Mine, were responsible for building some of the massive ancient megalithic monuments that we know of today.
Megalithic Monuments
The Great Pyramids of Giza. The Easter Island stones. The Orcadian stones. Is it possible that these were all constructed by an ancient race of human giants?
To the modern human who visits such megalithic monuments, it is quite astounding to consider that our ancient ancestors were able to assemble these structures, built with stone blocks that weigh tons, without the benefit of modern technology. Typically, we assume that they created some sort of a mechanical advantage in order to lift the stones and erect the structures. But is it possible that a race of giant humans, perhaps up to 20-feet tall with a level of strength that was several times greater than the strongest human, could have erected these monuments simply by moving the stones by hand? Consider that such a giant, lifting one of these stones, might have been the equivalent of a modern day human lifting a heavy cinder block up a flight of stairs. Perhaps of all the theories that exist of how the pyramids were constructed, this is one of the most far-fetched. However, if giant humans did in fact exist, than it becomes considerably more plausible.
So shouldn’t we be able to ascertain from fossil records if giant humans actually existed? Not exactly.
Tangible Assets
Fossil remains are perhaps our greatest tangible asset for determining what life on Earth was like thousands and millions of years ago. However, modern humans have only been able to collect and name about 250,000 fossil species – this is estimated to be less than 2% of all species that have ever lived on the planet. The reason we have such a small record of fossils is because on average, species appear in only a few layers of the fossil record before they disappear.
Perhaps these giant humans about whom we speculate, have not left behind a fossil record, or at least one that we have found. Ultimately, the truth remains to be discovered on whether giant humans actually once did roam this Earth.
