The Giants Of Ancient America: “8′ Tall With Double Rows Of Teeth”

reply to post by Tsurugi
I can make this quick and easy...
The Manitoba History site says the following, which would appear to contradict the 'reports' that you cherry-picked from the article:

The foundation of the Mound Builder myth rested on the adoption of existing historical, classical and biblical sources to explain evidence associated with America’s pre-contact past. While a few eighteenth and nineteenth century American scholars used precursors of modern ethnographical and archaeological methods to argue that the mounds had been built by Native Americans, the majority of early mound enthusiasts preferred to engage in armchair speculation. Their application of European classical scholarship to America’s earthworks produced a variety of bizarre theories. The Mound Builders were presented by various mound enthusiasts as either giants, or white men, or Israelites, or Danes, or Toltecs, or at least in one instance, giant white Jewish Toltec Vikings. Manitoba History

Secondly, the volume of "Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology " that you linked to did not apparently have those paragraphs you quoted, so I would have to assume they came from secondary sources. When I went looking for some, I found the following in a volume which is clearly supportive of your theory. However, a couple of things stand out (emphasis mine):

In 1882…Smithsonian Executive John Wesley Powell…hired Cyrus Thomas …to head up the fieldwork for the Smithsonian’s newly created Bureau of Ethnology.
Thomas was a minister and an entomologist whose broadened interests included archaeology. He was, in other words, a bible-advocating, insect-adept archaeologists who believed in the mystery of a lost race at the time of his being recruited.

It goes on to say:

But Thomas's time was limited because of the large territory he was to explore...Thomas was forced to rely on the accounts of operatives in many cases. This Land

So...there certain appears to be a built-in bias, not to mention a lack of direct observation, to Thomas's conclusions - even acknowledged, if inadvertently, by those who are proponents of his revelations.

I mean really...would you still bet the farm? And I must thank you for prompting me to look around, because I can now place these 19th century 'anomalies' in their proper context.

reply to post by JohnnyCanuck


Eh, it does have those quotes, dammit. I spent hours looking for them. The OCR is atrocious, however(did you notice?), so searching word strings may not work. I will have to go dig them out again, I suppose.
Those quotes were meant to show that even after the intention was to show that the Natives were in fact the descendants of those who built the mounds, large skeletons were found. Thomas calls them "Indians" and "Indian mounds" throughout the report, regardless of size.
Did not mean to imply that Canada claimed to have giants. It was meant as a response to your claim that mythical "mound builders" were unnecessary for stealing land from natives in Canada and thus, no such myths existed.


Indeed the quotes were "cherry picked", and trimmed bare. I had maybe 8 characters shy of max when I posted, and it took a lot of trimming to get that, and some terse sentences that obviously were inadequate. Sorry.

Originally posted by Turkenstein
reply to post by jjkenobi

 

That trait runs in my family. My Great grand father, father, and nephew was born with it. It seems to hit every other generation.

My grandmother oddly had two sets of adult teeth. She was also 6'2". Her teeth weren't doubled...she just would lose her adult teeth and new ones would grow in. She had a lot of oddities...but they weren't on the surface (except her height)...she also had a set of teeth in her stomach...thought to be a fetus in fetu. ????? She was absolutely beautiful and ethereal. She died young at 58.


She was born in England and was of Spanish descent however....so she really has nothing to do with giants in the Americas.

Originally posted by Tsurugi
reply to post by JohnnyCanuck

 

Eh, it does have those quotes, dammit. I spent hours looking for them. The OCR is atrocious, however(did you notice?), so searching word strings may not work. I will have to go dig them out again, I suppose.
Those quotes were meant to show that even after the intention was to show that the Natives were in fact the descendants of those who built the mounds, large skeletons were found. Thomas calls them "Indians" and "Indian mounds" throughout the report, regardless of size.
Did not mean to imply that Canada claimed to have giants. It was meant as a response to your claim that mythical "mound builders" were unnecessary for stealing land from natives in Canada and thus, no such myths existed.


Indeed the quotes were "cherry picked", and trimmed bare. I had maybe 8 characters shy of max when I posted, and it took a lot of trimming to get that, and some terse sentences that obviously were inadequate. Sorry.

I agree that the OCR is atrocious, and I did not doubt that the quotes existed, which is why I went to secondary sources. No need to go to any further lengths as I take your word for it. The key elements are, as I see them:

a) Yes, there are even mounds reflective of the Mississippian Cultures up here. What is important is that, while there may have been a cultural influence starting in Central America...they were built by local FN.

b) It is apparent that Cyrus Thomas was not above taking a biblical perspective of the Mounds and their creators...recall that land theft aside, the FN do not appear in the Bible and as such, create quite a conundrum. I have seen a number of publications from that era which romanticised the Moundbuilders and invented a mythology in which the 'savage Indians' warred with these 'peaceful agriculturalists' and drove them away. We now know that's poop.

c) Thomas was taking information from other 'informants', presumably the same who were salting early 19th century newspapers with tales of giants.

I know lots of archaeologists, and I am in regular touch with Americans, too. None of them speak of such discoveries. I have been exposed to two serious questions in Ontario - Sheguiandah, and the so-called Norse Silver - and both have been resolved.

There is still much to be learnt and the paradigm is open to change when proof is provided. Look at the way Kennewick Man was able to work through the politics. Look at the new theories of the peopling of the Americas. All you need is proof alongside the imagination.

Deganawidah, a cultural and personal hero who established the Iroquois 6 nations confederacy, the world's oldest all inclusive democracy, who some claim is a direct model for the US constitution, was rumoured to have two rows of teeth
He had to use Hiawatha as an interpreter and spokesman because of the dificulty he had in speaking...

I know the indigeonious peoples have been right before in their recollections

Don't know if it has been posted before but the video is now private anywhere else i can see this? it sounds interesting.

reply to post by JohnnyCanuck


Ah, thanks, I was not looking forward to tracking those down again, haha.

I agree that Thomas had some odd preconceptions...a sort of mishmash of tattered christian theology and vague ideas about a master race predating man. For him to be hired by Powell for the job of a "systematic study" with the ostensible aim of proving the mound sites to be the heritage of the modern Native peoples was definitely weird. Powell, supposedly, was sympathetic to the Natives and sought to change the contemporary view of them as "savages" by proving they were the actual mound builders.
Sadly, in one of the ironic twists of 'unintended consequenses' that so often plague such good intentions, the systematic study also methodically destroyed most of the sites completely. And many that survived the study were broken up by colonial farmers who had previously taken great care of them, but lost interest when they were no longer considered relics of a lost civilization. Doubtless you know this already but it does fascinate me.

I agree with what seems to be your basic premise, which is that there are political, religious, and racial components to consider here, along with a good deal of bigotry and dogmatism...and once those are taken into account there is little room left for giants(hardee har har, etc.).

And yet there are enough interesting tidbits left to still leave me wondering. Like the dozen or so documented receipts of what seemed to be overly large(7-8 ft, as in the Report) human remains by respected colleges or museums other than the SI, who did not lose them or have them stolen but later shipped them to the SI, and have documents for that. And a couple of those, the SI Records Dept. has in modern times reported that it does actually have its own documents duly recording receipt of said items, but that no further documentation appears to exist.
Or the possibility that the large human bones reported by Thomas did exist but were intentionally 'misplaced' by Powell in a fit of activist zeal he no doubt would have considered justified...and may have been unnecessary, if such beings were a unique subset of the Native genotype... like albinism or something along those lines.
Then there are the reported finds from 1900+, which is beginning to be a tad late for expansionist purposes, though admittedly there are plenty of other motives to take the place of that one...but some of them do not offer any discernible gain for the person(s) making the report. Like reports made when doing some economic endeavor like digging foundations for a commercial building, subsequent to which all construction is brought to a halt so the specialists can come in, leaving the entrepreneur twiddling thumbs and adding up the red numbers.
Or the fact that the Natives themselves speak clearly of two distict races of large people: the red haired ones, and the blackbeards that showed up later and wiped the Reds out(and also were cannibals).
The Aztecs and the Inca called the area around and to the North of what is now Mexico City "The land of the Giants".

And, lastly, of the most significance to me, but least to anyone else as it is purely anecdotal, my brother and I are avid artifact hunters and where we live(on the eroded side of the Edwards Plateau in S. TX) is a treasure trove of paleo-artifacts, much of it untouched on private land. We obtained permission to do some sifting on land belonging to family of friends, and we came across bone bits where we were digging into the wall of a dry gorge, maybe 15-20ft below surface. All we saw was bits; unidentified fragments and some teeth and a bit of jaw, but it was obviously hominid(or rather, it was an omnivorous mammal, but no quadruped normal to the area). So we alerted the family patriarch, showed location of site, and left, after which the Sheriff was called in case it was a contemporary issue of missing person or homicide. It wasn't, and on Sheriff's advice, UT@A was called. Nerds arrived the following day and did some poking about, and unearthed and assembled a nearly complete by highly fragmented skeleton, which they said was well over 7.5ft tall.
There's more to the story but that's the gist of it; purely anecdotal I know but it brought the idea of ancient giants out of the realms of 12-15ft tall seeming impossibilities and down to 7-8ft possibilities. It could have been an aberration, or a fluke or mistake or any number of things, yes.

But to me, that experience, plus all the points listed previous, serve to keep the question open, in my mind.


P.S. Canada has all the Mastodons and Mammoths and Sabre-toothed Tigers and Toxodons and Giant Ground Sloths. It doesn't need giants.

reply to post by HappyWarrior


See my post on the previous page, it has a full version of Viera's hour long presentation on the subject.

Originally posted by Logarock

Originally posted by rimjaja
reply to post by nighthawk1954

 

There is a decent book. On this called Genesis 6 by Stephen Quayle

Heres the problem with the giant issue as we have it here in this vid........the giants spoken of in Genesis were way taller than 9 foot. Fee-fi-fo-fum sort of things. The giants spoken of as living in Canna were about 10 feet.

There is a cause for excessive growth in height - some parasites get into the human body and migrate towards the brain where they cause cysts. In some cases, they can reach the pituitary gland and cause pressure. This leads to unstopped growth or Gigantism.

en.wikipedia.org...

Then there is the Giant of Castelnau:

en.wikipedia.org...

"It is of some interest that in 1894, press accounts mentioned a further discovery of bones of human giants unearthed at a prehistoric cemetery at Montpellier, France (5 km Southwest of Castelnau) while workers were excavating a water works reservoir. 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."

reply to post by JohnnyCanuck


Aside from the subject of overly large humanoids, what do you think of the occasional report of writing or glyphs being found? Are there any reports if similar things up in Canada?

Originally posted by Tsurugi
reply to post by JohnnyCanuck

 

Aside from the subject of overly large humanoids, what do you think of the occasional report of writing or glyphs being found? Are there any reports if similar things up in Canada?

Nothing of an Egyptian/Ogham/Hebrew nature. (and as my prof once said "As an epigrapher, Barry Fell was one heck of a marine biologist") Lots of First Nations 'rock art', in fact I'm reasonably close to one of the better known sites: the Peterborough Petroglyphs

Some miscellaneous news regarding giants

(Delete the 'x' in "httpx")

httpx://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=336&dat=19020130&id=kdQ0AAAAIBAJ&sjid=B1QDAAAAIBAJ&pg=1950,4827732

httpx://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=757&dat=19671215&id=KrZNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=nkQDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3779,3081424

httpx://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1368&dat=19140628&id=HB5QAAAAIBAJ&sjid=NgoEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4153,4776342

httpx://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1368&dat=19280812&id=4M8wAAAAIBAJ&sjid=_w4EAAAAIBAJ&pg=4349,1602371

httpx://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1499&dat=19321216&id=YKhQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=1iEEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4302,5522202

httpx://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2209&dat=19130128&id=hfY_AAAAIBAJ&sjid=P6QMAAAAIBAJ&pg=3568,3123691

httpx://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=266&dat=19910613&id=YtwrAAAAIBAJ&sjid=imQFAAAAIBAJ&pg=5614,4304098

Since I'm fully prepped to see these giants..

Where did the freaking video go ? Is there still some place I can watch it ?

Turkenstein
That trait runs in my family. My Great grand father, father, and nephew was born with it. It seems to hit every other generation.

Happens to most mammals that inbreed. Polydactyly. My grandpa's relatively isolated farm had cats with 7 toes on each foot. Made it a little easier to chase mice down in the snow.

Harte
Archaeological digs don't sell newspapers anymore, is the reason, I'd say.

Maybe if they'd find more missing links or buried spaceships or gold from Atlantis that wouldn't be the case!

Blue Shift

Turkenstein
That trait runs in my family. My Great grand father, father, and nephew was born with it. It seems to hit every other generation.

Happens to most mammals that inbreed. Polydactyly.

Oh, Snap!

You gonna take that Turkenstein?

It's an older thread. Maybe Turkenstein isn't here anymore.

Harte

Harte

Blue Shift
Happens to most mammals that inbreed. Polydactyly.

Oh, Snap!
You gonna take that Turkenstein?

Hey, the truth hurts. Wasn't his/her fault the family got isolated.

Blue Shift

Harte

Blue Shift
Happens to most mammals that inbreed. Polydactyly.

Oh, Snap!
You gonna take that Turkenstein?

Hey, the truth hurts. Wasn't his/her fault the family got isolated.

I think you're right.

IIRC, there warn't nuthin but the Turken families and the Stein families living up in that holler.

Harte

Just want to chime in and say that people with Gigantism often have double rows of teeth (Andre the Giant, for example).

Though I am not really a proponent of this sort of thing, the double rows of teeth really make it plausible. It it at all possible that people with this disorder were bred for their size?

In Search of Giants is now one of the ever present made for TV Docudramas.. I caught the first episode last night, and have to say I'm slightly intrigued.