The next myth relates to ancient giants. There is huge amount of data about giants and it’s very hard to tell which information is real and which is fiction, but here it goes. And this is topic which interest me the most so maybe there will be more postings about giants in the future. Here is the start:
The mythology and legends of many different cultures include monsters of human appearance but prodigious size and strength. “Giant” is the English word (coined 1297) commonly used for such beings, derived from one of the most famed examples: the gigantes (Greek “γίγαντες”) of Greek mythology.
In various Indo-European mythologies, gigantic peoples are featured as primeval creatures associated with chaos and the wild nature, and they are frequently in conflict with the gods, be they Olympian, Nartian, Hindu or Norse.
There are also accounts of giants in the Old Testament, most famously Goliath. Attributed to them are extraordinary strength and physical proportions.
Fairy tales such as Jack the Giant Killer have formed our modern perception of giants as stupid and violent monsters, sometimes said to eat humans, especially children (though this is actually a confusion with ogres, which are distinctly cannibalistic). The ogre in Jack and the Beanstalk is often described as a giant. However, in some more recent portrayals, like those of Roald Dahl, some giants are both intelligent and friendly, as in Gulliver’s Travels.
Biblical Old Testament
The Bible (Genesis 6:4-5) tells of giants called Nephilim before and after the Flood:
“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (Genesis 6:4-5KJV)
According to the Bible (Genesis 7:23), the Nephilim were destroyed in the Flood; however, further giants are reported after the Flood, including:
The Bible also tells of Gog and Magog, who later entered into European folklore, and of the famous battle between David and the Philistine giant Goliath. The 1st century historian Josephus, and the 1st-2nd century BC Dead Sea Scrolls give Goliath’s height as “four cubits and a span,” approximately 2.00 m or about six feet seven inches.The King James translation of the Bible reports the giant Goliath as “six cubits and a span” in height—about nine feet nine inches tall, (over 2.75 m) (1Samuel 17:4 KJV), but the Septuagint, a Greek Bible, gives Goliath’s height as “four cubits and a span” (~2.00 m).
Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus also described the Amorites as giants in his Antiquities of the Jews, circa 93 AD, indicating that fossil evidence still remained at that time.:”For which reason they removed their camp to Hebron; and when they had taken it, they slew all the inhabitants. There were till then left the race of giants, who had bodies so large, and countenances so entirely different from other men, that they were surprising to the sight, and terrible to the hearing. The bones of these men are still shown to this very day, unlike to any credible relations of other men.”
Old Testament Pseudepigrapha
The Book of Enoch describes “giants” as the offspring of Fallen angels and mortal women in 7:2.
Hinduism
In Hinduism, the giants are called Daityas. The Daityas (दैत्य) were the children of Diti and the sage Kashyapa who fought against the gods or Devas because they were jealous of their Deva half-brothers. Since Daityas were a power-seeking race, they sometimes allied with other races having similar ideology namely Danavas and Asuras. Daityas along with Danavas and Asuras are sometimes called Rakshasas, the generic term for a demon in Hindu mythology. Some known Daityas include Hiranyakashipu and Hiranyaksha. The main antagonist of the Hindu epic Ramayana, Ravana, was a Brahmin from his father’s side and a Daitya from his mother’s side. His younger brother Kumbhakarna was said to be as tall as a mountain and was quite good natured.
Native American mythology
According to Paiute oral history, the Si-Te-Cah or Sai’i are a legendary tribe of red-haired cannibalistic giants, the remains of which were allegedly found in 1911 by guano miners in Nevada’s Lovelock Cave. Furthermore, the Paiute creation story tells of “beautiful giants” who once lived between the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains. After giving birth to a disfigured child, the giants treated the child so poorly that the Great Spirit responded by making the land hot and desolate and allowing enemies to conquer the giants. Only two giants survived: Paiute and his wife, both of whose skin became brown from eternally living in the hot desert.
Adrienne Mayor writes about the Si-Te-Cah in her book, Legends of the First Americans.She suggests that the ‘giant’ interpretation of the skeletons from Lovelock Cave and other dry caves in Nevada was started by entrepreneurs setting up tourist displays and that the skeletons themselves were of normal size. However, about a hundred miles north of Lovelock there are plentiful fossils of mammoths and cave bears, and their large limb bones could easily be thought to be those of giants by an untrained observer. She also discusses the reddish hair, pointing out that hair pigment is not stable after death and that various factors such as temperature, soil, etc. can turn ancient very dark hair rusty red or orange.
Greek mythology
Main article: Giants (Greek mythology)In Greek mythology the gigantes (γίγαντες) were (according to the poet Hesiod) the children of Uranus (mythology) (Ουρανός) and Gaea (Γαία) (spirits of the sky and the earth). They were involved in a conflict with the Olympian gods called the Gigantomachy (Γιγαντομαχία), which was eventually settled when the hero Heracles decided to help the Olympians. The Greeks believed some of them, like Enceladus, to lay buried from that time under the earth and that their tormented quivers resulted in earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
Herodotus in Book 1, Chapter 68, describes how the Spartans uncovered in Tegea the body of Orestes which was seven cubits long—around 10 feet. In his book The Comparison of Romulus with TheseusPlutarch describes how the Athenians uncovered the body of Theseus, which was of more than ordinary size. The kneecaps of Ajax were exactly the size of a discus for the boy’s pentathlon, wrote Pausanias. A boy’s discus was about twelve centimeters in diameter, while a normal adult patella is around five centimeters, suggesting Ajax may have been around 14 feet (~4.3 meters) tall.
The Cyclopes, usually children of Gods (Olympians) and nature spirits (nereids, naiads and dryads), are also compared to giants due to their huge size (Polyphemus, son of Poseidon and Thoosa, and nemesis of Odysseus and Jason, comes to mind).
Roman mythology
Several Jupiter-Giant-Columns have been found in Germania Superior. These were crowned with a statue of Jupiter, typically on horseback, defeating or trampling down a Giant, often depicted as a snake. They are restricted to the area of south-western Germany, western Switzerland, French Jura and Alsace.
Norse mythology
In Norse mythology, the Jotun (jötnar in Old Norse, a cognate with ettin) are often opposed to the gods. While often translated as “giants”, most are described as being roughly human sized. Some are portrayed as huge, such as frost giants (hrímþursar), fire giants (eldjötnar), and mountain giants (bergrisar).
The giants are the origin of most of various monsters in Norse mythology (e.g. the Fenrisulfr), and in the eventual battle of Ragnarök the giants will storm Asgard and defeat them in war. Even so, the gods themselves were related to the giants by many marriages, and there are giants such as Ægir, Loki, Mímir and Skaði, who bear little difference in status to them.
Norse mythology also holds that the entire world of men was once created from the flesh of Ymir, a giant of cosmic proportions, which name is considered by some to share a root with the name Yama of Indo-Iranian mythology.
An old Icelandic legend says that two night-prowling giants, a man and a woman, were traversing the fjord near Drangey Island with their cow when they were surprised by the bright rays of daybreak. As a result of exposure to daylight, all three were turned into stone. Drangey represents the cow and Kerling (supposedly the female giant, the name means “Old Hag”) is to the south of it. Karl (the male giant) was to the north of the island, but he disappeared long ago.
A bergrisi appears as a supporter on the coat of arms of Iceland.
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Other European mythology
In folklore from all over Europe, giants were believed to have built the remains of previous civilizations. Saxo Grammaticus, for example, argues that giants had to exist, because nothing else would explain the large walls, stone monuments, and statues that we now know were the remains of Roman construction. Similarly, the Old English poemSeafarer speaks of the high stone walls that were the work of giants. Even natural geologic features such as the massive basalt columns of the Giant’s Causeway on the coast of Northern Ireland were attributed to construction by giants. Giants provided the least complicated explanation for such artifacts.
Medieval romances such as Amadis de Gaula feature giants as antagonists, or, rarely, as allies. This is parodied famously in Cervantes’ Don Quixote, when the title character attacks a windmill, believing it to be a giant. This is the source of the phrase tilting at windmills.
Tales of combat with giants were a common feature in the folklore of Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Celtic giants also figure in Breton and Arthurianromances perhaps as a reflection of the Nordic and Slavic mythology that arrived on the boats, and from this source they spread into the heroic tales of Torquato Tasso, Ludovico Ariosto, and their follower Edmund Spenser. In the small Scottish village of Kinloch Rannoch, a local myth to this effect concerns a local hill that apparently resembles the head, shoulders, and torso of a man, and has therefore been termed ‘the sleeping giant’. Apparently the giant will awaken only if a specific musical instrument is played near the hill. Other giants, perhaps descended from earlier Germanic mythology, feature as frequent opponents of Dietrich von Bern in medieval German tales – in later portrayals Dietrich himself and his fellow heroes also became giants.
Many giants in English folklore were noted for their stupidity.A giant who had quarreled with the Mayor of Shrewsbury went to bury the city with dirt; however, he met a shoemaker, carrying shoes to repair, and the shoemaker convinced the giant that he had worn out all the shoes coming from Shrewsbury, and so it was too far to travel.
Other English stories told of how giants threw stones at each other. This was used to explain many great stones on the landscape.
Giants figure in a great many fairy tales and folklore stories, such as Jack the Giant Killer, The Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body, Nix Nought Nothing, Robin Hood and the Prince of Aragon, Young Ronald, and Paul Bunyan. Ogres and trolls are humanoid creatures, sometimes of gigantic stature, that occur in various sorts of European folklore. An example of another, Slavic, folklore giant is Rübezahl, a kind giant from Wendish folklore who lived in the Giant Mountains (nowadays on the Czech–Polish border).
In Kalevala, Antero Vipunen is a giant shaman that possesses mighty spells dating to the creation. Epic hero Väinämöinen sets out to learn these spells from him, but Vipunen is buried underground, and when Väinämöinen digs him out, he is accidentally swallowed by Vipunen. Väinämöinen then forces Vipunen to submit and sing the spells out by hammering his insides. An analysis by Martti Haavio is that Vipunen is not physically large, but his familiar animal (astral form) is a whale. The depiction is not found in the majority of Finnish original stories, and most probably originates from the book’s compiler Elias Lönnrot.
Possible Fossil Evidence
Through the centuries, certain archaeologists have searched for fossil evidence of a race of giants. Alleged evidence includes:
- The Giant of Castelnau: Estimated at 11 feet, 6 inches tall. Discovered by the anthropologist Georges Vacher de Lapouge at the Bronze Age cemetery of Castelnau-le-Lez, France in the winter of 1890.
- 1894 press accounts mentioned a discovery of bones of human giants unearthed at a prehistoric cemetery at Montpellier, France. Skulls “28, 31, and 32 inches in circumference” were reported alongside other bones of gigantic proportions which indicated they belonged to a race of men “between 10 and 15 feet in height.” The bones were reportedly sent to the Paris Academy for further study.
- The remains of the Si-Te-Cah or Sai’i, a legendary tribe of red-haired cannibalistic giants, which were allegedly found in 1911 by guano miners in Nevada’s Lovelock Cave.However, the size and nature of the fossil remains has been disputed by Adrienne Mayor in the book, Fossil Legends of the First Americans.
There you have some history and mythology about giants and then I gather some evidence of existence of the giants. First a man who has found a giant skull called Ed Conrad:
“There was a time when Conrad regarded the integrity of the scientific establishment as beyond reproach. But after seven years of dealing with paleontologists and archaeologists, he said he has found them to be a devious and untrustworthy bunch whose actions in relation to him have been downright dishonest and deceitful.”
“Conrad believes his discovery has frightened members of the archeological/ paleontological establishment out of their wits. They dread the truth, he says, because they know their cozy little clique will be gone with the eons. No longer will they be able to sup at the trough of Darwinism, enjoying soft jobs with huge salaries.”
This is the boulder with the human skull protruding that Ed Conrad discovered in 1982, about a year after finding the specimen resembling the anthropoid skull. It was found in the same general area in precisely this position, with the jawbone facing downward. The Smithsonian had admitted that the protrusion does indeed resemble a human skull.
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This giant skull, embedded in solid rock, presents several problems for materialists.
“And it may seem harmless to you now that its been exposed. But, did you know that over 500 people obtained their PhD’s by writing their thesis on “the Piltdown Man”? I dare say, no one took back those PhDs after it was exposed, and those people taught hundreds of thousands of people.” Wyatt, Newletter Five
In 1982 Dr. Lyall Watson stated: “The fossils that decorate our family tree are so scarce that there are still more scientists than specimens. The remarkable fact is that all of the physical evidence we have for human evolution can still be placed, with room to spare, inside a single coffin!”
Likewise, a 1994 article in Time Magazine admitted that: “Yet despite more than a century of digging, the fossil record remains maddeningly sparse. With so few clues, even a single bone that doesn’t fit into the picture can upset everything. Virtually every major discovery has put deep cracks in the conventional wisdom and forced scientists to concoct new theories, amid furious debate.”
Prior to more recent developments of techniques for dating by means of radioactive materials, there were fundamentally only two methods of estimating the age of a fossil. The first was the geological level at which the specimen was found.
The second, applying more particularly to human fossils, was the general appearance: whether apish and “primitive,” or essentially like modern man. These two criteria are still largely applied, since the majority of the more ancient remains of early man are completely fossilized and C-14 methods of dating cannot be used.
But it has long been recognized that if the fossil remains of early man are arranged according to their degree of primitiveness, the order will be found to contradict the series arranged on the basis of antiquity as established by the levels at which they are found.”
GIGANTOPITHECUS” & “MEGANTHROPUS”
There is no controversy about these facts; there was a race or group of people found in Australia called “meganthropus” by anthropologists. These people were of very large size–estimated between 7 to 12 feet tall, depending on what source you read.
These people were found with mega tool artifacts, so their humaness is difficult to question. Four jaw fragments and thousands of teeth have been found in China of “gigantopithecus blacki”–named after the discover. Based on the size of the teeth and deep jaws, its size has been estimated at around 10 feet and as tall as 12 feet, 1200 pounds. (Photo:Giant human femur reportedly found in Turkey)
The “problem” is that human fossils are the rarest of all, and generally, only the hardest bones, jaws, teeth and skulls survive. As with most “early man” artistic recreations, a great deal of the individual is surmised.
The question is, is gigantopithecus a man or an ape? I personally have no opinion, but it is clear that very large men did live once. Scientists are of course afraid of being ridiculed and rather than estimate the size of the individuals possessing larger skulls and teeth than “us”, they prefer to use the term robust.
Anthropologists spend quite a bit of time trying to decide what is an ape, what is a man, who they believe descended from who and the like. Now, most consider gigantopithecus an ape,(its more convenient to the theory of evol) but the co-discover at least, and many others still see no difference between the teeth and jaws of Giganto than other so-called ancestors.
As we said, everyone believes that meganthropus with his mega-tools was a “man”. Tools have been found in the same area as giganto as well, but the tendency has been to associate them with other “types’ found at the same location.
There were giants on the earth in those days…
Good videos are made by Steve Quayle:
Steve Quayle is a survivalist, conspiracy theorist, anti-government, pseudo-religious, anarchist, and self proclaimed prophet. He has his own website at stevequayle.com and radio show. He, in the past, has appeared on the Coast-to-Coast AM show, with George Norry on a regular basis.
He is a very intelligent and well spoken, informed individual. He has written a number of books on various subjects, to include Giants, Fallen Angels, and other survivalist-apocalyptic related literature.Just IMHO, the more you listen to him, the more sense he makes! Psychologically, you’re better off watching football and reading the gossip column. Else beware, you’ll get sucked in to expecting the world to end on a daily basis and raided by the local SWAT team, whilst barricaded in your basement, with guns, ammo, and food supply. 😉
None-the-less, he is a very intriguing, enigmatic, and entertaining. He’ll definitely stretch your imagination to new limitations! 🙂
Here is one of his videos (8 parts) about Giants and Nephilims:
Then there is a cave where they have found bones of giants and burned human bones called “The Breitenwinner Cave”:
What it is:
A Bavarian catacomb located in a cave on the German/Swiss border containing thousands of normal, and not so normal, giant, human bones. The normal size bones are found burned and brittle in a massive mound of bones, wood, and ash. The giant bones are buried, or arranged in a ritualistic manner.What it might be:
Is this a massive burial cave for an ancient race of giants? Is it a possible crematorium for the missing prisoners of Stalag 383, a nearby Nazi prisoner of war camp, with a nasty reputation?OR Is it both?
Latest news related to Giants was this newsarticle about mummified giant finger:
A giant finger was discovered in Egypt in 1988. The finger was almost 16 inches long and is estimated to have been from the hand of a being that would have stood around 16 feet in height. Swiss archaeologist Gregor Spörri released the photo to the newspaper Bild last year. The picture were taken in 1988 during his private trip to Egypt.
The finger was later stolen. Was it real or a hoax? There are reputed to be giant human mummies in Egypt that have been hidden by archaeologists. The stolen giant human finger allegedly came from a giant mummy found in graves around Giza pyramids.
What you are looking at is a gigantic, nearly 16 inches long, mummified humanoid finger and the creatures height would hve been over 16.4 feet! In 1988, Spörri on the last day of a private trip to Egypt, he met an old man from a grave robber dynasty. The meeting was took place in a farm-house in Bir Hooker, 100 kilometers northeast of Cairo.
After paying, $300 Spörri had a look at the grave robber’s treasure which was the skin and bone wrapped in old rags
Spörri told BILD.de: “It was an oblong package, smelled musty. I was totally flabbergasted when I saw the dark brown giant finger.”
I was allowed to take it in hand and also to take pictures; a bill was put next to it to get a size comparison. “The bent finger was split open and covered with dried mold.” It was surprisingly light maybe a few hundred grams My heart was up to his neck. That was incredible. In size to a matching body should have been about 15 feet tall”
Were there giants in Egypt? The Roman historian Flavius Josephus reported in 79 AD in his history of the Jewish War that “There were giants. Much larger and different than normal people. Horrible to look at. Who has not seen with his own eyes, he can ot believe that they have been so enormous. ” Josephus also says that in the vicinity of Hebron during the time of Moses that “There were till then left the race of giants, who had bodies so large, and countenances so entirely different from other men, that they were surprising to the sight, and terrible to the hearing. The bones of these men are still shown to this very day, unlike to any credible relations of other men”
Some think the finger may have belonged to a Gigantopithecus blacki.
Gigantopithecus is an extinct genus of ape that existed from roughly nine million years to as recently as one hundred thousand years ago, in what is now China, India, and Vietnam, placing Gigantopithecus in the same time frame and geographical location as several hominin species.The fossil record suggests that individuals of the species Gigantopithecus blacki were the largest apes that ever lived, standing up to 3 m (9.8 ft), and weighing up to 540 kg (1,200 lb)
A comparison graph of a 1.8-m-tall human male in comparison to Gigantopithecus blacki (left) and G. giganteus (right): This graph is based on orangutan proportions while standing upright.The first Gigantopithecus remains described by an anthropologist were found in 1935 by Ralph von Koenigswald in an apothecary shop. Fossilized teeth and bones are often ground into powder and used in some branches of traditional Chinese medicine.[5] Von Koenigswald named the theorized species Gigantopithecus.[6]
Since then, relatively few fossils of Gigantopithecus have been recovered. Aside from the molars recovered in Chinese traditional medicine shops, Liucheng Cave in Liuzhou, China, has produced numerous Gigantopithecus blacki teeth, as well as several jawbones.[3] Other sites yielding significant finds were in Vietnam and India.[2][4] These finds suggest the range of Gigantopithecus was southeast Asia.
In 1955, 47 G. blacki teeth were found among a shipment of ‘dragon bones’ (aka, “oracle bones”) in China. Tracing these teeth to their source resulted in recovery of more teeth and a rather complete large mandible. By 1958, three mandibles and more than 1,300 teeth had been recovered. Gigantopithecus remains have come from sites in Hubei, Guangxi, and Sichuan, from warehouses for Chinese medicinal products, as well as from cave deposits. Not all Chinese remains have been dated to the same time period, and the fossils in Hubei appear to be of a later date than elsewhere in China. The Hubei teeth are also larger.
Characteristics
Gigantopithecus’s method of locomotion is uncertain, as no pelvic or leg bones have been found. The dominant view is that it walked on all fours like modern gorillas and chimpanzees; however, a minority opinion favors bipedal locomotion, most notably championed by the late Grover Krantz, but this assumption is based only on the very few jawbone remains found, all of which are U-shaped and widen towards the rear. This allows room for the windpipe to be within the jaw, allowing the skull to sit squarely upon a fully erect spine as in modern humans, rather than roughly in front of it, as in the other great apes.
The majority view is that the weight of such a large, heavy animal would put enormous stress on the creature’s legs, ankles, and feet if it walked bipedally; while if it walked on all four limbs, like gorillas, its weight would be better distributed over each limb.
Diet
The jaws of Gigantopithecus are deep and very thick. The molars are low-crowned and flat, and exhibit heavy enamel suitable for tough grinding.[8] The premolars are broad and flat and configured similarly to the molars. The canine teeth are neither pointed nor sharp, while the incisors are small, peglike, and closely aligned. The features of teeth and jaws suggested that the animal was adapted to chewing tough, fibrous food by cutting, crushing, and grinding it. Gigantopithecus teeth also have a large number of cavities, similar to those found in giant pandas, whose diet, which includes a large amount of bamboo, may be similar to that of Gigantopithecus.
In addition to bamboo, Gigantopithecus consumed other vegetable foods, as suggested by the analysis of the phytoliths adhering to its teeth. An examination of the microscopic scratches and gritty plant remains embedded in Gigantopithecus teeth suggests they ingested seeds and fruit, as well as bamboo
Gigantopithecus blacki
Gigantopithecus blacki is only known through fossil teeth and mandibles found in cave sites in Southeast Asia. As the name suggests, these are appreciably larger than those of living gorillas, but the exact size and structure of the rest of the body can only be estimated in the absence of additional findings. Dating methods have shown that G. blacki existed for about a million years, going extinct about 100,000 years ago after having been contemporary with (anatomically) modern humans (Homo sapiens) for tens of thousands of years, and co-existing with H. erectus before the appearance of H. sapiens.
Morphology
Based on the fossil evidence, adult male Gigantopithecus blacki are believed to have stood about 3 m (9.8 ft) tall and weighed as much as 540 kg (1,200 lb), making the species two to three times heavier than modern gorillas and nearly five times heavier than the orangutan, its closest living relative. Large males may have had an armspan of over 12 ft (3.6 m). The species was highly sexually dimorphic, with adult females roughly half the weight of males.[4] Due to wide interspecies differences in the relationship between tooth and body size, some argue[citation needed] that it is more likely that Gigantopithecus was much smaller, at roughly 1.8 m (5.9 ft).
The species lived in Asia and probably inhabited bamboo forests, since its fossils are often found alongside those of extinct ancestors of the panda. Most evidence points to Gigantopithecus being a plant-eater.
Its appearance is not known, because of the fragmentary nature of its fossil remains. It possibly resembled modern gorillas, because of its supposedly similar lifestyle. Some scientists, however, think it probably looked more like its closest modern relative, the orangutan. Being so large, Gigantopithecus possibly had few or no enemies when fully grown. However, younger, weak, or injured individuals may have been vulnerable to predation by tigers, pythons, crocodiles, Dinofelis, hyenas, bears, and Homo erectus.
So much information and so little time. It’s up to you if you want to find more information about Giants. The Net is full of it and the hardest thing is to find the information which could be reliable and backed up with some facts. This information is just brought to wake up your interest towards these Giant beings, which I think once walked on Earth. Or what do you think about for example Russian boxer called Nikolai Valuev, is he a normal person? I think he is a descendant of a Giant:
Nikolai Sergeyevich Valuev (Russian: Николай Сергеевич Валуев Russian pronunciation: [nʲɪkɐˈlaj sʲɪrˈɡʲejɪvʲɪtɕ vɐˈlʊjɪf]; born 21 August 1973) is a retired Russian professional boxer and former two-time WBAheavyweight champion. In his last fight (on 7 November 2009), he lost the title to David Haye as a result of a 12-round majority decision. Three days after the fight, Valuev announced his retirement.
Then I just have to post a great song called “Penetration” from a band called “Nefilim”:
Huh… what a post and remember to stay tuned for more CREATURES FROM BEYOND!