Myths, legends, fairy tales agree on one thing: before the appearance of the human race and at the dawn of mankind, giants lived on our planet
Poles of growth
Science, statistics and our everyday ideas operate mainly with average values: average air temperature, average life expectancy … We also have a fairly clear idea of average human height - it fluctuates between 165 and 185 centimeters, in rare cases reaching or slightly exceeding 2 meters. However, in addition to the average values, there are also limit values: here the extremes of norm and pathology coexist. However, the conversation about pathologies is special, especially since outside the disease there have always been enough of those who can be classified as dwarfs or, conversely, giants.
The tallest man in the world is considered a native of the American city of Alton Robert Pershing Wadlow (1918-1940). During an examination at the hospital on June 27, 1940, his height was 2 m 72 cm with an arm span of 2 m 88 cm and a weight of 222.7 kg. The height of the currently living native of Northern Pakistan, Zafarullah Satti, is 2 m 31 cm. And 45-year-old American Sandy Allen weighs 209.5 kg with a height of 2 m 32 cm and wears the 50th shoe size. Still, no one has overcome the three-meter bar.
We are like locusts before them
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But no matter how tall a person reaches, this does not make him a giant. Giants of legends (giants, titans, giants) are not people, but representatives of a different biological species.
The sixth chapter of Genesis says: "… there were giants on earth, especially since the time when the sons of God began to enter the daughters of men, and they began to give birth to them: these are strong, glorious people from ancient times." True, it is further said: "And the Lord [God] saw that the corruption of men on earth was great, and that all the thoughts and thoughts of their hearts were evil at all times … And the Lord said: I will destroy from the face of the earth the men whom I have created …" Consequently, the primary cause of the Flood was not least of all these "ancient glorious people" - giants. However, the flood did not destroy them without exception.
After the exodus from Egypt, Moses sent scouts to inspect the land of Canaan. What appeared to their eyes? “… There we saw giants, the sons of Anak, from a gigantic family; and we were like locusts in our eyes before them, and we were the same in their eyes”(Numbers 13: 33-34).
The book of Deuteronomy mentions Og, the king of Bashan from the Rephaim family, whose bed was forged of metal, since no other material could withstand his weight: "… its length is nine cubits, and its width is four cubits, male cubits." A simple calculation shows that the length of the "iron bed" exceeded four meters, and reached two meters in width. Compared to the king of Basan, the Philistine Goliath might not seem too tall: according to the calculations of biblical scholars, his height was about three meters, chain mail and weapons weighed about 80 kg. That is why Goliath is considered a historical person - a very large man, but not a giant.
Son to father and brother to brother
The idea that in primitive times the Earth was inhabited by a race of giants, lived in almost every nation. Greek mythology even tells of three races - titans, giants and one-eyed cyclops. The Titans were not only the predecessors, but also the progenitors of the Olympian gods: one of them, Kronos, is the father of Zeus. However, this did not prevent a war for power between the gods and the titans to flare up, in which the latter were defeated. The titans were replaced by their half-brothers - giants, mortals, but no less powerful. The war with them - gigantomachy - also ended in victory for the Olympians.
German-Scandinavian mythology is even richer in stories about giants. This is evidenced by the poetic "Elder Edda" and the prosaic "Younger Edda". The first creature, according to the Eddam, was the "frost giant Ymir," who gave birth to a great many of his brothers from his armpits. The gods-ases appeared later and partly originated from the giants. As with the Greeks, it all ended in war, from which the gods emerged victorious. But a couple of giants still survived and gave birth to a new generation that harbored a fierce hatred of the gods. From the second battle of the gods and giants, no one will emerge alive; moreover, it will be the last and will result in the death of the whole world.
The Celts who inhabited the British Isles and much of Europe believed that the giants had lived in England before them and were defeated by the Trojan Brutus, who escaped after the fall of Ilion. In the battle only the giants Gog and Magog survived: taken prisoner, they served as gatekeepers in the palace of Brutus. Different legends are mixed here: Brutus - from the Roman myth; Gog and Magog - from the Bible, where they are associated with the nomadic northern tribes who invaded the Middle East; well, giants are a universal image.
Skull Skull Strife
The Biblical Encyclopedia, published a little over a century ago, stated: “… great-sized creatures existed after the flood, which is even confirmed by the human skeletons and bones found in the earth today, much larger than ordinary ones.”
And it's true: all over the world, huge bones were discovered that did not belong to any of the creatures known to science. Why not consider that they are giants? After all, the science of the restoration of bone remains, which was initiated by Georges Cuvier, was born only at the very end of the 18th century.
A typical case of this kind is the story of the Lucerne giant. Giant bones were found near this Swiss city in 1577. Local luminaries racked their brains for a long time and in the end they invited an expert from Basel - Dr. Felix Plater. The great connoisseur of anatomy declared that the bones belong to a giant more than six meters tall, and even depicted his alleged appearance. Numerous engravings were made from the sketch; for some time the giant even adorned the coat of arms of Lucerne. The bones were put on public display. In the 19th century, they were studied by the German zoologist Johann F. Blumenbach, who established that the remains belonged to a mammoth, well studied by that time!
Long before the rise of Greek civilization, elephants were extinct in Europe. But the skulls of the extinct archidiscodons, exceeding the size of the largest African elephant, were found: huge, somehow subtly resembling human ones and … with a hole in the middle of the forehead! The modern Austrian paleontologist Otenio Abel writes: “The navigators of Homeric times, who found such skulls on the coast of Sicily, had never seen elephants and naturally decided that in front of them were the skulls of huge one-eyed creatures. Perhaps this is how the myth of the Cyclops originated."
The Greek philosopher, poet, magician, healer and preacher of secret teachings Empedocles of Akragant (495–435 BC) identified in such a find the skull of the cyclops Polyphemus described in the Odyssey. Two millennia later, Giovanni Boccaccio examined another elephant skull from Sicily and also declared that it was the mortal remains of Polyphemus. He even calculated the height of the Cyclops, which, according to his calculations, reached 90 meters. And in the 17th century, Father Kircher, a German Jesuit and scientist with a wealth of knowledge in many areas and an even richer imagination, adhered to the same point of view. Only according to his calculations, the cyclops was only ten meters in height.
According to the "fisherman's law"
Alas, the bones of humanoid giants have not been found. There is no conclusive evidence for the existence of a race of giants. True, there are mysterious artifacts that haunt specialists. The Greek geographer Pausanias (II century AD), the author of the first guidebooks, testifies that at the bottom of the Sront River in Syria, a well-preserved human skeleton, whose height is 5.5 meters, was discovered. The Spanish conquistadors in one of the Mayan temples discovered a human skeleton, so stunning them with its dimensions that, by order of Cortez, the find was sent to the Pope. In the 70s of the last century, a footprint of a person with a length of 80 centimeters was discovered in Tanzania!
Among those who study the issue, the point of view, according to which the most likely source of all legends about giants, is the eternal human tendency to exaggeration, has gradually triumphed. Most religions agree that in ancient times people lived in the Golden Age. They were not only better and braver, but also distinguished by excellent health and longevity: Adam and the early patriarchs lived to an incredible age. The Scripture does not mention the growth of these people, however, in the 18th century, fanatical biblical scholars calculated that the growth of Adam reached 37 meters, and Noah was a little over 30, as the distance from the Golden Age, the growth of people gradually decreased.
Historians and natural scientists of the past have adhered to a more modest size. Before the natural cataclysm, they believed, a civilization of people about 4 meters tall lived on our planet. The air temperature was then higher, the oxygen content in the atmosphere was higher, the water was oversaturated with calcium, which favored the growth of the skeleton. Supporters of this concept argue that our ancestors willingly named enemies (especially the defeated ones) giants. After all, if the enemy is a giant, victory over him is more honorable. As for the stupidity and cruelty of giants often mentioned in fairy tales, they also correlate with human psychology: why endow the enemy with beauty and intelligence! Everything is in accordance with the "fisherman's law": with each new story, the fish caught gets bigger and bigger …
But were they all the same?
In 1941, while conducting excavations on the island of Java, the German paleontologist von Königswald removed several molars from the ground, and then the whole jaw of an ancient primate, eight times larger than that of a modern gorilla. This is how Meganthroрus paleojavanicus ("the giant man of ancient Java") was revealed to the world. In subsequent years, in South China, South Africa and Java, the remains of an even larger creature were discovered - it was named Gigantopithecus. Von Königswald considered gigantopithecus a relatively recent monkey. But his colleague Weidenreich suggested that homo sapiens evolved from gigantopithecus, passing in development through the stages of meganthropus and pithecanthropus, with each previous species being larger than the next.
Already today, English paleontologists in the Mongolian town of Uulakh have found the remains of a gigantic humanoid creature in a 45-million-year-old rock. The skull seems to be like that of a great ape, but other anthropological signs suggest that the creature was intelligent and could speak; the skeleton is also close to the human, except for the size - about 15 meters! American paleontologists were skeptical about the find. (But ufologists were very pleased with the statement about "a creature that developed outside the laws of our evolution"!) However, many scientists tend to see in the gigantopithecus a distant relative of a person who lived in the Middle and Early Pleistocene epochs.
Yuri Suprunenko
