Monday! Today we will learn about some giant skeletons :) This is a bit long, because I got carried away. Oops.
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The Bible speaks of a race of giants, called the Nephilim, who supposedly walked the earth. My son, giggling, showed me a few pictures of enormous human skeletons, like this one:
A giant skeleton! Goodness gracious!
And this one:
Oooh...here's another one!
Well, in all my years of accumulating vast troves of utterly useless trivia, I could not recall EVER hearing about giant skeletons, aside from
Piltdown Man. Clearly, further research was needed.
First, I ended up here.
And I read this:
Genesis chapter 6 tells us, "There were giants in the earth in those days". -snip-
Ron Wyatt, on one of his first trips to the Ark site, discovered Noah's house and the grave of his wife, Mrs. Noah. He claims the sarcophagus was 18 feet tall. Now when we hear this, we think it to be incredulous. But is it really? What would we expect a 900 year old person to look like, who lived in a much better environment than ours? Would we expect them to be exactly like us, or different? I would certainly expect them to be different. And the Bible says "there were giants in those days". So according to our best and most reliable source - the Bible - we should expect them to have been very large indeed (the Bible never exagerates).
So what does the fossil record show? Well this is where things get interesting. Giant ancient humans would fly in the face of evolution. It would show that we have actually devolved, not evolved. Since the 1800's, there have been many written accounts of giant human fossils having been found. Additionally, very large tools have been found, which only very large people could have used.
The author continues, a bit hysterically IMO, about how none of this "evidence of the Nephilim" has been preserved by the Smithsonian, et al. But she has an explanation:
From the biblical perspective isn't it a rather simple matter to figure out what is going on here?-- Lucifer is all about 'deception' and he can ill afford to have all this confirmation of the veracity of ancient Bible stories. The difficulty factor in arguing against the Bible's credibility would take a quantum leap if there were museums full of Nephilim fossils and artifacts all around the world. We wouldn't expect the Devil - the Great Deceiver - to want us to know about any giant human fossils. Just like he has managed to keep the other great Bible discoveries from the world, we would expect the same with this. No, the devil has gotten everyone to believe in evolution (the great delusion). One of the things I hope we have all realized from this website is the relative ease with which the "powers that be" can successfully keep major facts from the general public. The information in page serves as one example of the Devil's ability to accomplish globe-spanning deception and cover-ups.
Well. To each their own. However, if you read down the page, she has compiled quite a long list of giant skeleton discoveries. Interesting. But
Ron Wyatt is a fraud. Another debunking of Ron Wyatt's claims
here. On to the
next.
It is unknown why scientists have remained silent about the discovery of 18 giant human skeletons which were found in burial grounds in the state of Wisconsin back in May of 1912. They were in mounds next to Lake Delavan, Wisconsin. The excavation site was supervised by Beloit College. The allegedly massive size of the skeletons and lengthened skulls did not fit into any scientific concept that was in textbooks of the day. They were massive and not believed to be any type of normal human beings.
These alleged findings were first reported on May 4, 1912. It stated that these skeletons had heights which ranged from 7.6 feet up to 10 feet and the skulls were much bigger than the heads of any type of person who lived inside America today. The story also said the skulls had double rows of teeth, six toes on each foot and six fingers on each hand. It was also reported that these bones were believed to belong to beings that could have even been aliens.
Since that time, there have been at least 200 digs that claims other “giants” have been discovered. However, such finds have failed to make the news since around the 1950’s for the most part. It seems that the majority of people just do not believe in this type of thing, because it sounds like complete nonsense. However photographs have been taken to record the finds as the picture with this article shows.
This article has too many links to properly block-quote, but has some good stuff :)
This author also mentions the double rows of teeth in the skulls, and six fingers and six toes on each hand and foot.
Well, this was in the newspaper, so it must be true...
Mmm. There are newspaper articles from all over the US, even the New York Times (in 1882) about giant skeletons being dug up. But I have been to the Smithsonian, and several Natural History museums, and I have never seen one.
This explains the recent furors.
Commentary:
This classic leg-pull has now been circulating via email, blogs and forums for several years and has even been published by some news outlets as factual. In fact, the "giant skeleton" images that travel with these messages are not photographs depicting real discoveries but instead clever manipulations. A lot of recipients would be quick to doubt the authenticity of the images. However, submissions indicate that the high quality of the fake images coupled with the vaguely plausible explanations that accompany them are apparently enough to convince many recipients that the "discoveries" are genuine.
So far, there have been two popular variants of the hoax. The first variant (Example 1 above) claims that a skeleton of a gigantic human was discovered during a gas exploration in the south east region of the Arabian desert and sports an attached photograph to "prove" the claim. However, the cleverly created image of the giant skeleton is actually an entry in an image manipulation contest by artist "IronKite" in which participants were instructed to create "a picture of an archaeological discovery that looks so real, had it not appeared at Worth1000, people might have done a double take".
-snip-
Even if you do believe that a race of giants once walked the Earth, you can rest assured that these photographs do not depict some of their remains. In their original context as part of a Worth1000 contest, the status of the images as purely fictional "archaeological discoveries" is quite clear. Apparently, however, some unknown prankster stole IronKite's image from its original setting, added some seemingly relevant text, and sent it on its way. Perhaps due largely to the talent of its creator, the image has circulated ever since. In due course, others have apparently added more Worth1000 images to the hoax messages.
Snopes, of course, also confirmed the recent "discoveries" as a
Worth1000 hoax.
But...I had to continue to search for information on those ancient skeletons. I found this National Geographic article, but the giant was only 6'8". I'm not impressed.
This article has pictures of a mummified 15" finger, but the finger has vanished. Huh.
And then this article takes a reasonably dispassionate tone:
“On the earth there once were giants.”- Greek poet Homer, 400 B.C.E.
Few Americans alive today are aware that once real giants roamed this land – giant red-haired humans.
Most Americans believe that the Native Americans were the first to inhabit the North American continent. Yet there were others – a much more ancient race that walked the hills and valleys, the plains and deserts of the pre-Colombian Americas.
Evidence of giant humans – people seven to ten feet tall – exists in the fossil records, tools and other artifacts recovered from archaeological digs.
The article is worth reading, if you have the time. It also goes into detail about how the artifacts were handed over to the Smithsonian...and were never seen again.
Homer did mention the Cyclops in The Odyssey, describing them as one-eyed giants. But National Geographic may have the explanation for that.
I searched for more information on the "Smithsonian cover-up" and found this:
Unlike the skeptics, we did find some hoaxes in the reports and detailed a few important ones in the book. Most notable of these was the "Tampa, Florida Giants" reported in newspapers in 1922-1927. It was a very intriguing hoax involving a land speculator, the Smithsonian, and newspapers. We also found that many other reports seemed to simply vanish as they were followed. This means that they were typically second or third hand stories where someone told someone that someone told them that some men digging somewhere found some large skeletons. The trail of this type of story essentially ended at the initial publication, which was often in a local history book compiled from various residents' recollections.
We also found that many internet sites and some books touting the giant skeletons apparently added sentences and "facts" to the original source. Many "giant" skeleton pictures reported on the internet and in some books are not correctly cited. For example, pictures of a supposed giant skeleton excavated at Serpent Mound wasn't excavated at Serpent Mound and the "giant" was a picture from a normal-sized skeleton excavated at Chillicothe. Many other stories were intriguing and had paths to multiple sources, but they were not sufficient in terms of what we might call proof. However, the fact is that a substantial proportion of the old reports of large or "giant" skeletons were written factually and are backed up by the archaeological evidence. At the same time, it became clear that modern archaeologists and some skeptical bloggers essentially loathe this fact so much that they go to great lengths to execrate those who take the topic seriously.
One intriguing set of giant skeleton reports we found factual was the Chickasawba Mound (Arkansas) reports of many large skeletons found at the site. We visited the site and met with archaeologists at the nearby state Archaeology Field Station. An archaeological publication we found before going to the site (and one they also handed us as we arrived at the station - the same report) related that many skeletons ranging from 8 to 9 feet in length had been found there. As late as 1976 a 7-foot-tall skeleton was found at the site.
In conclusion: I don't believe in the Nephilim, but I'm open to a race of giants. Which is not the same as saying that I believe that they actually existed. But maybe they did, and had red hair, too :)
Wishing everyone a happy Monday! The drywall guy is starting today, so I have to keep working on the basement. Will host when I can. Also...this is meant to be a "cabinet of curiosities" diary, not a religious commentary. I thought that the different perspectives and explanations offered by the creationist and scientific sites were quite interesting and worth including.