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- Jul 19, 2004
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Drop the knit picking and read the message.
Not only have I checked out Little's analysis, I've been checking the original sources (the Bureau of Ethnology reports).
Little didn't set his bar at 7 feet (for including unusually long skeletons); he set the threshold at 6 or 6.5 feet.
The figures in the 19th century reports refer to the measured length of the (decayed; disarticulated) skeletal remains in situ - not the living height attributed to the individual associated with a skeleton once re-assembled.
The only reference to a 7-foot layout of skeletal remains I can find in the 5th report states the bones completely disintegrated when being removed from the ground, so there's an open question as to whether they were ever fully recovered, much less forwarded to the Smithsonian.
Little's approach (more or less a demographic / statistical analysis) is wholly dependent on the numbers, and there's no solid basis for accepting his estimates of the overall population being sampled - especially considering the sites cover a wide range of geographical locations and who-knows-how-wide a range of time periods. These excavation reports pre-date radiocarbon and other dating methods.
In any case, Little's interesting approach and conclusions have nothing to do with Homo erectus, and are more appropriately to be discussed in any of the multiple FTMB threads that do address oversized western hemisphere humans / hominids, such as:
North American mound builders
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/north-american-mound-builders.14701/
Conspiracy To Hide Existence Of Ancient Giant Humans?!
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index...hide-existence-of-ancient-giant-humans.59331/
Giant skeletons
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/giant-skeletons.5837/
Giants
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/giants.10424/
The Nephilim, Biblical & pre-Historic Giants, etc
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/the-nephilim-biblical-pre-historic-giants-etc.3451/