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Giant Skeletons

stu neville

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In "The Rough Guide to Unexplained Phenomena", by the great Rickard and Michell, there's mention of giant skeletons dug out of ancient Native American burial mounds, reports of which have been "thoroughly suppressed" by the establishment.

Any more info on this would be greatly appreciated...
 
There were a lot of reports of the discovery of giant bones in North America, especially in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Here is a typical one:

"Two giant skeletons were discovered in a large Indian burying ground located about four miles from Turkey Point, on Long Point Bay, south of Simcoe. The announcement was made on 5 September 1935 by W. Edgar Cantelon, curator of the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Antiquities. The discovery included a cache of arrowheads and potsherds but also the skeletons of giant human beings. Two newspaper reports appeared, but that seemed to be the end of the remarkable discovery. The provenance and present whereabouts of the bones of these giants are unknown." (Mysteries of Ontario by John Robert Colombo)

Most of the finds were probably mammoth or mastodon bones. (There was an interesting show on the Discovery Channel a few weeks ago about a man in New York state who found a mastodon skeleton literally in his back yard.) Hoaxes also occurred, such as the 'Cardiff Giant'.

More recent, and perhaps more credible, are the giant human skulls reportedly found on the island of Shemya, in the Aleutians, during the construction of a World War II airfield. (Briefly mentioned here: http://www.lauralee.com/news/grandcanyon.htm

Unfortunately, if there really is a cover-up it is not likely to be lifted soon. It is currently highly politically incorrect to suggest that there were any inhabitants of ancient North America other than the ancestors of the Native Americans. Recall the contoversy surrounding 'Kennewick Man'.
 
Naitaka - from the tone of the article I think they were referring to recent finds, not mastadon confusion, etc, but thanks for the info anyway; the link was fascinating (if it's true about the Smithsonian dumping anomalous stuff, this should be broadcast loud and wide..)

Interesting comment about political correctness: I wonder how many other Fortean subject investigations have been ignored or suppressed not because of scientists' refusal to accept evidence but due to concern that the evidence might hurt someone's (collective) feelings? (I should add I don't mean in the negative sense, i.e. for propoganda purposes...)
 
When the monks at Glastonbury excavated 'King Arthur's grave', they found a male skeleton about 9' tall.

Details on this page, along with several other UK giants.

(If you go to Steve's Home page and click Bio you find he's an author of books on conspiracy type stuff and also one on giants.)
 
Not really relevant to Native American burial mounds, but Man, Myth and Magic has this in its article on giants:

Pliny relates that in the time of Claudius Caesar there was a man named Gabbaras, brought by the emperor from Arabia to Rome, who was 9 foot 9 inches high, "the tallest man that has been seen in our times". The Emperor Maximus, so the story goes, was about eight or nine feet tall and of great bulk. He was in the habit of using his wife's bracelet as a thumb ring. His shoe was a foot longer than that of any other man and his strength was so great that he was able to draw a carriage which two oxen could not move.

The following are relevant and are quoted in RD Mysteries of the Unexplained:

Human skulls with horns were found in a burial mound at Sayre, Bradford County, Pennsylvania, in the 1880's. Except for the horny projections some two inches above the eyebrows, the men to whom these skeletons belonged were anatomically normal, though at seven feet tall, well above average height. It was estimated that they were buried about A.D. 1200. The find was made by a reputable group of antiquarians, including a Pennsylvania state historian and dignitary of the Presbyterian Church (Dr. G. P. Donehoo) and two professors (A. B. Skinner of the American Investigating Museum, and W. K. Morehead of Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts). Some of the bones were sent to the American Investigating Museum in Philadelphia, where they seem to have disappeared.
(Pursuit, 6:69-70, July 1973)

At the centre of one of the large Ohio burial mounds, excavators in 1891 found the skeleton of a massive man wrapped in copper armour. On the head was a copper cap, and copper moldings encased the jaws. The arms were clad in copper, and so were the chest and stomach. On either side of the head were wooden antlers encased in copper, and the mouth cavity was filled with immense but decayed pearls. Around the neck was a necklace of bear's teeth inlaid with pearls. Beside the skeleton of the giant lay that of a woman.
The remains were found at a depth of 14 feet in a mound 500 feet long, 200 feet wide, and 28 feet high.
(Nature, 45:157, December 17, 1891)

A skeleton nine feet eight inches tall was recovered from a stone burial mound at Brewersville, Indiana, in 1879. A mica necklace was around the neck, and a crude human image of burnt clay embedded with pieces of flint stood at the feet. The mound, between 3 and 5 feet high and 71 feet in diameter, was excavated by Indiana archaeologists, scientific observers from New York and Ohio, a local physician, Dr Charles Green, and the owner of the property on which the mound stood, a Mr Robinson.
The bones were kept by the Robinson family in a basket in a nearby grain mill. They were lost when a flood swept away the mill in 1937.
(The Indianapolis News, November 10, 1975)

In 1911 miners began to work the rich guano deposits in Lovelock Cave, 22 miles southwest of the Nevada town of Lovelock. They had removed several carloads of guano when they came upon some Indian relics. Soon afterward a mummy was found; reportedly it was that of a 61/2-foot-tall person with "distinctly red" hair.
According to the legends of the local Paiute Indians, a tribe of red-haired giants - the Si-te-cahs - were once the mortal enemies of the Indians in the area, who had joined forces to drive the redheads out. John T Reid of Lovelock, a mining engineer avidly interested in Indian lore, became convinced that the mummy substantiated the Paiute legend, and in the years that followed devoted himself to proving it. Included in his growing file on redheaded giants were descriptions of hair robes once worn by a few Paiutes: the hair was human and it was a reddish-brown colour.
In the meantime the discoveries at Lovelock had generated interest among archaeologists, and in 1912 the University of California at Berkeley and the Nevada State Historical Society sent Mr L. L. Loud to investigate the cave. Loud found the archaeologicaldeposits so disturbed in the rough-and-tumble of the mining operation that he only salvaged artifacts, which he took back to the University of California.
Twelve years later in 1924, the Museum of the American Indian in New York sent out a Mr M. R. Harrington to excavate the cave. He too collected artifacts and no bones. He apparently requested that one whole skeleton be reburied. Probably this was to appease the Indian employers, who were upset that such disrespectful treatment was accorded the remainsof the deceased.
But the legend of the red-haired giants persisted. In the next few years skeletal remains were found in the Lovelock area. Measuring the length of the unearthed femurs, Reid and others deduced that they belonged to a people ranging from 6 to 91/2 or 10 feet in height.
Anthropologists, however have stated that the tallest skeleton studied so far in the region was only 5 feet 11 inches, a not inconsiderable size in that time and place, but hardly a giant. Furthermore, they have pointed out, when mummies with black hair are removed from a dark cave into daylight, the hair often turns red. No-one has ben able to establish whether this happened to the Lovelock mummies.
Today a few of the remains - a skull, some bones, and artifacts - can be seen at the Humboldt Museum in Winnemucca, Nevada. Artifacts from the Lovelock area are also displayed at the Nevada State Historical Society's Museum in Reno, but no bones. And no mention is made of a giant people. Anthropologists concede however that redheaded Indians did exist in the West.
(Nevada State Historical Society Quarterly, Fall 1975, pp153 - 67; telephone interview with Amy Dansie, Nevada State Historical Society, Reno, Nevada.)
This item has a photograph of the Lovelock skull beside a 12 inch ruler, but my scanner's not working at the mo.
 
The lore surrounding the Lovelock finds seems a bit suspect. In one report they're described as mummies, in another skeletons. The artifacts are on display but the bones are not. The argument for reburial to show respect for the dead seems to fall down when the article says that the red-haired giants were enemies of ALL the local native Indians. Why should they want to be so respectful of their declared enemies?
The anthropologists' theory that the black hair of mummies found in caves turns red in daylight doesn't seem to ring true.
And if the startling thing about this find was the colour of the hair, why is it a skull that's on display in the museum and not a mummy's head complete with hair?
There are a few anomalies here, but whether they arise from a desire to suppress the truth is difficult to say.
 
For information about giants in American pre-history, you should check out the following site :-

greatserpentmound.org/articles/articles.html
Link is dead.
The defunct site's articles concerning giants can still be accessed via the Wayback Machine:

A Tradition of Giants
https://web.archive.org/web/20020602182333/http://greatserpentmound.org/articles/giants.html

Holocaust of Giants: The Great Smithsonian Cover-up
https://web.archive.org/web/20020611070530/http://greatserpentmound.org/articles/giants3.html
 
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Creech Hill (aka Lamyatt Beacon) in Somerset has some folklore attached to it about a giant figure that waylays travellers crossing the hill at night. An achaeological dig on the hill in the late '70s found the remains of a Romano-Celtic temple and a small adjacent, possibly Christian, cemetary. One of the graves contained the remains was of a man who was 6 foot 6. Another contained a woman who was 6 foot. Remarkably tall for someone living in the 5 or 6th century AD, and in one way linking nicely with the folklore of the immediate area ;)
 
There are still giants about:

Grave mistake for Uganda's tallest man
Uganda's tallest man has died, but his funeral in the eastern Uganda district of Tororo was delayed by an all too predictable problem.

The longest coffin ever seen in the area could not fit in the normal sized grave, which had been dug by the villagers as John Apollo Ofwono's last resting place.

The 43-year-old and undisputed tallest man in Uganda, measuring 2.68m (8 ft 9 inches) died last Friday of diabetes at Mulago Hospital in Kampala City.

Thousands of mourners on Monday, streamed into Yokolo Village to the West of Tororo to pay their last respects to the man who narrowly missed entering the Guinness Book of Records as the world's tallest man.

Both the funeral service and the speeches by various politicians and village traditional leaders went on smoothly.

Special grave

But the problems started when the Catholic priest leading the funeral service told some of the friends and relatives of the dead man to carry the body to the special grave completed with white wall tiles.

First, there was a stampede around the grave as everybody rushed forward to get a good position from where they could drop some earth into the grave in accordance with the burial tradition.

Then the mourners were surprised when the master of ceremonies announced that, due to some technical problems, the coffin could not be lowered.

It transpired that the villagers who were hired to dig the grave had seriously underestimated the length of the coffin.

Tororo Resident District Commissioner John Kizza and local MP Ogola Akisoferi praised the mourners for their patience as the grave diggers took 45 minutes to elongate the grave by three more feet before John Apollo Ofonwo could finally be lain to rest.
 
Having just read 'Fortean Studies' Vol. 2, it quotes alot of excerpts from 'The Gentleman's Magazine' which describe finds of giant skeletons. Some of these are 25 foot+!!
 
If one wishes to maintain in a great giant the same proportion in limb as that found in an ordinary man he must either use a harder and stronger material for making the bones, or he must admit a diminution of strength in comparason with men of medium stature; for if his height be increased inordinately he will fall and be crushed under his own weight. Whereas if the size of a body be diminished, the strength of that body is not diminished in the same proportion; indeed the smaller the body the greater its relative strength.
Galileo

the strength of a bone is proportional to the cross-sectional area and thus to the square of their linear dimension.

David V Goliath. I don't think Goliath stood a chance
 
From today's Guardian: "One man’s two-decade quest to let the ‘Irish Giant’ rest in peace"

Following Charles Byrne's death at just 22, his body was illicitly obtained and his 7ft 7" skeleton displayed at the Hunterian Museum for over 200 years.
Is it time to let him rest in peace?

Byrne.png



https://www.theguardian.com/culture...de-quest-to-let-the-irish-giant-rest-in-peace
 
From today's Guardian: "One man’s two-decade quest to let the ‘Irish Giant’ rest in peace"

Following Charles Byrne's death at just 22, his body was illicitly obtained and his 7ft 7" skeleton displayed at the Hunterian Museum for over 200 years.
Is it time to let him rest in peace?

View attachment 62462


https://www.theguardian.com/culture...de-quest-to-let-the-irish-giant-rest-in-peace
If his family or his descendants wish it to be buried in the normal way, then I would say yes, as if the Hunterian Museum had obtained the skeleton of the stolen corpse, then they have no right to say "it belongs to them, or that they have the right to hold it for future study."
 
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