The Origins of Ancient Giants

Disclaimer:  I cannot, of course, prove the absolute origins of ancient giants, but I will be presenting this post to you in which I lay out exactly the way I went about coming up with the obvious conclusions I provide.  I also give you the resources and links to go find out more, but I suspect that once you read this, you will shake you head in wonder at these people, who may not have been good people, may not have been the dominant man on this earth, but who had a definite part in our outcome and perhaps some mysteries that still linger.

Sometimes, working backwards is the best plan when trying to determine the origins of a people. The giant-sized, slope-headed ancient ones found around the world were also found with clues. 

Some of these clues include a desire to mine copper, seafaring capabilities beyond others of the time, cannibalism, and conquering the natives, as well as succumbing to the Natives' wrath, according to Native legends. 

Geography
 

Their giant skeletons have been found in a vast amount of places, pretty much always near water - lakes, major rivers or coastlines.  If the legends and some of the finds are true that they were light-haired, light-skinned, they were not adapted to some of the southern and equatorial regions they found themselves exploring by sea which explains the red ochre.

The ancient giants buried their kind with red ochre. Why did they paint them with this? Well, they were reportedly a white-skinned, fair-haired people living in tropical climates - they were protecting their skin and, as they buried their own, they prepared them for the great time in the sky with red ochre.  Me, being redhead and of Celtic/Scandinavian descent, I understand the need to protect myself in sunny southern climates, so I simply asked myself "what would I do in a southern exposure in ancient times?"  Answer: Red ochre was commonly used for that purpose.

Knowing where they ended up (around the world) is one thing, but where did they launch from?  And, who was their daddy? 

 (Below is a chart I made of just a smattering of the finds around the world)

Equador 1928	8-9 feet (bodies lost in shipping to university?)	Stone coffins
Phillipines 1928	17- feet tall and other 13-foot tall ones
India 1960	11-foot man – assumed large ape—not ape-like bones	Stones, charcoal bits, flints, metal bowl
Rome 1969	Each occupant 6-1/2 to 8 feet tall.	50 tiled coffins
Crittendon, AZ 1891	12 feet tall, long hair	Clay sarcophagus, bird-shaped hat, bones crumbled to dust.
Winslow, AZ 1891	Giant skull (a Stetson set atop of it made the hat look like a tiny party hat)
Nevada, 1911 , cave	6-1/2 to 9 feet tall, red hair
Nevada 1931 cave	8-10 feet tall,	Wrapped in gum covered cloth like a mummy,
Nevada 1939	7 feet 7 inches tall
Indiana 1879 mound	Lots of skeletons, one was 9 feet 8 inches. Lost in flood	A necklace of mica, a small human figure of fired clay with flint embedded, flints and axes not like natives work.
Ohio 1897  mound		22-inch copper axe, weighed 38 pounds
Indiana 1925 mound	8 skeletons, 8-9 feet tall, (scattered and lost)	Wearing heavy copper armor.
New York 1880s	5 skeletons – 1 was 11 feet tall
Pennsylvania mound	68 men, none less than 7 feet tall. Sent to museum promptly “lost.”
New York 1886	8-foot tall skeleton
Minnesota 1885 mounds	Six skeletons 7-8 feet tall, receding foreheads, buried upside down, bones crumbled when in contact with air.
Minnesota 1885 mounds	More giant skeletons found with receding foreheads and buried upside down.
Minnesota mound	Titan-sized bones,	Huge, flat cooking pans, stone axe head – 28 inches long, 14 inches wide, 11 inches thick, 300 pounds!
Minnesota mound 1896	9 foot skeleton
Minnesota mound	Bones of 7-foot tall men
Minnesota Mound 1888	Seven gigantic skeletons 7-8 feet tall
Minnesota mound 1882	Ten giant skeletons	Horses of bones and animals thought to not be in America before Europeans arrived.
California 1833, bones given to tribe	Skeleton over 12 feet tall inside coffin, double rows of teeth	Stone coffin, surrounded by carved shells, massive stone axe, flint spear tips, tablets covered in unknown script . Medicine man said these were the alhegewi, an ancient giant tribe here before the Indians that the Indians fought and killed off.
China	12-15 feet tall	Arrow that was 6-1/2 feet long
China	Ancient Japanese came upon a Chinese shore and a tribe over 11 feet tall
Tennessee 1821	Skeletons 7 feet tall.
Ohio mound 1879	9-feet 8-inch tall
Utah mound	6-feet 6-inches
Ohio mound	Enormous proportions	Clay coffin, sandstone slab, heiroglyphs
Minnesota 1883	10 skeletons gigantic size
West Virginia 1884	7-feet 6-inches	Massive stone temple chamber
Pennyslvania 1885	7-feet 2-inches	Vault with carvings on it
California 1885 cave	Mummified woman 6-feet 8-inches holding an infant
Ohio 1895	20 skeletons seated, facing east, jaws and faces twice the size modern man	Beside each body, a bowl with hieroglyphs
Kentucky 1965	8-feet 9-inches
Nevada 1877	Bone found from leg showed modern man but 12 feet tall. Rock it was found in was of the Jurassic Dinosaur era!
Australia	Footprints prove race of ancient 12-foot tall giants	Clubs and hammers over 300 pounds.
Utah cave	2 mummies of large stature	45 stone stacked boxes wrapped in juniper bark and pine pitch to keep waterproof, swords, tools, copper, metal plates,
Utah 1930s, Univ of Utah and Brigham Young skeletons	12 skeletons 8-feet to 10-feet., hand and finger bones nearly reached the kneecaps.	Stone roof covered in pitch, stone chest with 12 bodies in spoke like fashion around it, inside chest metallic records recording their 12 lives.
New York 1871	200 giants found in cemetery, most 7-9 feet tall. Most skulls broken or dented as if in battle.	String of beads around each neck. Axes and skimmers made of stone, stone pipes in some jaws, tomahawks and axes, pipes with dog heads carved into them.
Ohio 1872 mound	3 skeletons over 8 feet, double rows of teeth, crumbled when exposed to air.
Minnesota  1885	The remains are completely petrified, and are of gigantic dimensions. The head is massive, measures 31-1/2 inches in circumference. but low in the os frontis, and very flat on the top. The femur measures 26-1/4 inches. and the fibula 25-1/2 inches, while the body is equally long in proportion. From the crown of the head to the sole of the foot. the length is 10-feet 9-1/2 inches. The measure around the chest is 59-1/2 inches. This giant must have weighed at least nine hundred
California 1898	Female 7-feet 6-inches Tail-like appendage
Texas 1974 (chalk mountain) Sealed in cave	7-foot woman
California 1810	6-toed giant
Montana 1924	Huge human molar found in strata that was between 30 and 75 million years old.
California	Skull with massive jaw and double rows of teeth all around
Shemya-island in the Aleutians 1943	Huge human bones found next to mastodon and mammoth bones. Skulls were 22” to 24” long, the skeletons 24-feet tall. Skulls had 2-inch holes in them.
Australia	10-12 feet and over	Clubs, pounders, chisels, knives, weighing up to 25 pounds
Australia	25- feet tall
Australia	20-feet tall
Australia	Footprints of 17-foot tall man
Iowa	Mummified giants 10-feet tall, sitting cross legged, arms crossed over legs. Distinctly red hair	Stone slabs, massive archway and capstone
Arizona	50 giant skeletons 10-14 feet tall
West Virginia 1856	10-foot 9-inch skeleton
Turkey 1950s tomb Sent to creationist museum Texas	Femurs measured 47.24 inches – making them 14-16 feet tall

Giant skeletal remains have been found vastly in the South Pacific, South America, North America, the UK, France, China, Siberia, Australia - you name it! 

These people were not only ancient, but they were smart! In fact, much of what we homo sapiens did in our jump in technology was almost surely from their example, as was seen in the Moundbuilding areas of Midwest America and the reed-building people of Lake Titicaca. It would appear they made their way to the continent of New Guinea/Australia (still attached) by boat over 60,000 years ago!

In fact, there is evidence, even presented by researchers in anthropology, that local people bound their children's heads to appear more like these ancient slope-headed people. (see yesterday's post on how long people have been in America).  The Peruvians tell of these white-skinned, red-haired giants as being both cannibalistic and also able to build the most impressive drinking wells which apparently are still standing today and were lined by an amazing coating, showing sophisticated knowledge. 

Some of the "otamid" skull types that are similar to giants are found greatly in the Americas and when researchers studied them, they found they were not of the Amerind type (American Indian), but resembled an Australian/South Pacific variety more closely. Still, they stood alone as being quite unusually shaped and naturally elongated.

(Otamid skull found in Humboldt Basin near Lovelock Cave, Nevada in the 1960s)

Some tribes in America have been classified as this Otamid type, such as the Karankawa, and no doubt the giant skulls found in the ancient mounds of the Midwest, as well were called this (and described as elongated and powerful) with jaws meant for carnivores, giving them perhaps aggressive and cannibalistic tendencies as meat-eaters. 

There appears to be some bias among researchers when finding these "primitive" or "archaic" skull shapes. They see it as a lesser human or more primitive throwback. What they are seeing is a parallel evolved human from a different lineage, no better or worse, simply different ancestors (with perhaps a bigger leap on evolution - more on these potential ancestors coming later in this post). 

The skull (above) was called an Otamid (see this post) and pretty much any skulls that possessed sloping foreheads, pronounced brow ridges, mental foramen in front of first molars, and os inca bone in the back (elongated) were part of this "primitive" type that researchers cannot associate with what we consider "Native Americans" origins. 

In fact, in Australia, the oldest man found was Mungo Man who had no physical associations with local Aboriginal People and was extraordinarily tall (see Mungo Man below). So, you have a native group "aborigines" and these "others" as we have here in America with Amerind people and "otamids."  We are comparing basically ourselves (homo sapiens) with a parallel evolving human offshoot and so it is apples and oranges.

It would appear that the most imposing threat is to our collective ego is that these divergent people, who were quite different than us, were hitting the continents before we ever deigned to hoof it to them. They had a considerable jump on us during the evolutionary process. In fact, they had left Africa long before homo sapiens' ancestors, perhaps by hundreds of thousands of years!

The very process of leaving their place of origin so many thousands of years before modern man's lineage should have given them a technological advance that comes from testing new places, new conditions, new food sources, and mastering staying alive and surviving for thousands of generations - adapting over time.

Mungo Man (below) dated around 45,000 years ago in Australia. He, or his ancestors, no doubt arrived by boat and populated many of the sea islands around Australia. This jump on seafaring before us "homo sapiens natives" reveals advanced brain power and also the potential to have evolved separately in other regions approached by sea. What we consider "Natives" of these continents were truly second migrations - migrations of homo sapiens into lands already settled by the giants' ancestors. 

Interestingly, the Solomon Islands, Easter Island, Peru, New Guinea, Indonesia, and all the other areas there in the South Pacific have legends of and bones of ancient giant people who did not match the local natives. The Solomon Islands even report them still living there in the mountain caves (more on that in a future post on whether giants still exist). 

Where did these long-headed people come from? How did they arrive on continents before homo sapiens?

Well, we do know around 13,500 years ago (Clovis), man's technology jumped fast. Was this when man was exposed to these ancient giants? Ironically, researchers swear Amerind people arrived in America just after ice age around 11,000 years ago so how were there advanced technology arrow points in 13,500 years ago in New Mexico? Hmmmm.. Source: Whether Clovis toolmaking technology was native to the Americas or originated through influences from elsewhere is a contentious issue among archaeologists.

(BTW, quit your damned in-fighting and get onboard open-minded research without any predetermined notions, so-called "researchers"!)

 

 (Mungo Man, Australia's oldest find)

Mungo man are the oldest remains of a man in Australia. He lived about 42,000 to 60,000 years ago to near Lake Mungo in Australia. Described as gracile (tall/slender) and not like aborigine in appearance. In fact, Mungo man was buried with red ochre on him (often noted on ancient giants); his full height measuring 77 inches (6 feet 5 inches) which was abnormally tall for any aborigine.

Genetics

Source:  In 2001, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from the Lake Mungo 3 (LM3) skeleton was published and compared with several other sequences. It was found to have more than the expected number of sequence differences when compared to modern human DNA (CRS). A portion of the mtDNA of LM3 survives in modern humans as a segment found in chromosome 11 (which incidentally genetic anomalies in chromosome 11 can cause gigantism and albinism).

The divergence of the LM3 sequence before the MRCA of contemporary human sequences (in other words, the MRCA showed up in what we refer to as "Mitochondrial Eve" from Africa from which our modern humans' mitochondrial DNA descends from about 100,000 to 200,000 years ago) is indicated by its grouping with the Insert sequence (Fig. 1B), which other reports have suggested diverged before the MRCA of sequences in living humans.

Comparison of the mitochondrial DNA with that of ancient and modern Aborigines has indicated that Mungo Man is not related to Australian Aborigines. The results indicated that Mungo Man was an extinct subspecies that diverged before the most recent common ancestor (Mitochondrial Eve at 100,000 to 200,000 years ago) of contemporary humans. These results, if correct, may support the multiregional origin of modern humans hypothesis.

Conclusion on DNA:  The LM3 Sequence Belongs to an Early Diverging mtDNA Lineage.  Unfortunately, the results caused such controversy in the community of research that many demanded a redo of the DNA sequencing and at that point the local Natives, who were allowed to keep the remains because they were deemed "indigenous," would not allow more testing. This kind of bottleneck in advancement of our knowledge is promoted by governments who allow anything of an ancient human nature to be given to local natives, whether they are related or not. 

(LM3 - striped bars above - Mungo Man)

Summing this up, these "Mungo Man/otamid" people diverged from us before Mitrochondrial Eve, so over 100,000 to 200,000 years ago, giving us a big enough divergence in our evolution that they were quite different than us. But, where did they diverge to? We know they ended up in Australia at least 60,000 years ago (but experts say as much as 125,000 years ago), so where were they evolving for the extra time? Just remember what it was like in the year 1000 and now in the year 2000 - now times that knowledge obtained in 1000 years by ten times and, yes, they had gained lots of knowledge.  

In fact, wherever bands of them dropped off and remained on islands and continents, over time they likely evolved differently, just as races among modern humans have developed variety based on locations.  But, still, who the hell did these giants' ancestors come from?

What isolated conditions allowed them to be so very different than us and with different coloring, height, and intelligence? The key was their mobility. They left Africa before Mitochondrial Eve dawned the age of us modern humans and before the mass exodus from the continent. So, they bred in other continents where our ancestors were not yet and evolved in other circumstances. Thus DNA showed Mungo Man was not related to aborigines who came from the later exit from Africa. Mungo Man's people had been away from the continent of Africa long before aborigines' Mitochondrial Eve gave way to their race of homo sapiens.


In fact, you might say the giants' ancestors were the first migration everywhere! And, homo sapiens "Natives" were second migration.

If you want to get your mind screwed up a bit more, consider this - if Mungo Man from Australia did not come from Mitochondrial Eve as the rest of us (at least humans we legitimately know about), then where did he come from? An earlier form of man, correct? Let's look at a potential culprit for their earliest form -

(Heidelbergensis - looks rather otamid, eh?)

Heidelbergensis - They believe this fellow exited Africa before Mitochondrial Eve, around 300,000 years ago (she spawned modern man around 100,000 years ago in Africa).  This gives them almost 200,000 years jump spreading out through the world before modern man's ancestor left the home continent.

 Source:   According to Lee R. Berger of the University of Witwatersrand, numerous fossil bones indicate some populations of heidelbergensis were "giants" routinely over 2.13 m (7 ft) tall and inhabited South Africa between 500,000 and 300,000 years ago.  500,000 year-old hafted stone points used for hunting are reported from Kathu Pan 1 in South Africa, tested by way of use-wear replication. This find could mean that modern humans and Neanderthals inherited the stone-tipped spear, rather than developing the technology independently. (Yes, we learned from them!)  

(Neanderthal skull, above) 

Heidelbergensis supposedly had descendents; Neanderthal and Denisovans.

We have found that Neanderthal likely had the red-haired gene, so red-headed giants are not a stretch, though his living in Europe apparently made him rather short and stocky according to fossil finds. He had a big cranial capacity and good coloring for an ancient giant and skull shape, as well, but he's missing the height, though his ancestor (Heidelbergensis) certainly was tall. 

(Heidelbergensis jaw, above)

(Lovelock cave jaw above with modern human within for comparison)

Source: "You would not want to run into Homo heidelbergensis on a deserted sidewalk. Some specimens were more than 7 feet tall with thick bones. They were also cannibalistic at times, which means they knew how to fight other archaic humans (and considering their biological directive was to eat-stay alive-and procreate, you don't eat your mating pool, but you do eat others you see as useless for the purpose of creating offspring, but useful as fuel - like humans feel about cows, apparently). Their brains were smaller than those of Neanderthal or Homo sapiens—that’s a tactical disadvantage, but they probably fought with an animalistic ferocity."
 

Where exactly did these Heidelbergensis people go? They were said to evolve into Neanderthal (DNA can be found in Europeans) and Denisovan (Denisovan DNA can be found in aborigines and Pacific Islanders). So, we know at some point in Asia and Europe, Neanderthal and Denisovans were able to mate with homo sapiens who had finally sprinted out of Africa.

The missing piece here is the cannibalistic tendencies and the height - which are described beautifully in Heidelbergensis, but it would appear from fossil records (so far) he seemed to evolve into more contemporary human forms of Denisovans and Neanderthal. 

The question now becomes - what would have happened if two people from the same ancestry (Denisovans and Neanderthal) were to mate? We know nothing of Denisovan's makeup; skull, height and appearance. What if Denisovan got his height from their shared ancestor, Heidelbergensis, and Neanderthal developed red hair? Now you might have two "relatives" who could mate and create a more robust version of attributes in their genetic heritage of red hair and tall height, powerful jaw and cannibalistic tendencies. They would take on exaggerated features from their shared heritage.

We have believed that Neanderthal and Denisovans went extinct, but what if they simply created the next generation of descendents to Heidelbergensis; these people who lived alongside Native people who referred to them as giants and spoke of them in their legends of old; these giants who were, very likely, the first modern settlers of the entire world before homo sapiens?

We know for a brief time they mated with our early modern man because their DNA can be found in us from very long ago, but there appeared to be a time when they no longer could mate with us and we were too divergent from one another. 

There is nothing to say they did not mate between themselves and they likely did. We have a molar and a finger bone from a Denisovan, so we haven't enough material to really understand their height or skull or other attributes, but we know what we eventually got when they mated with modern humans and we know what Neanderthal got when he mated with modern humans, but we do not have a good picture of what Neanderthal and Denisovans created....
 
This concept I present has merit, in that a tall race of people, who were not of Mitochondrial Eve were the ancestors of what would come to be known tens of thousands of years ago, as the giants in legends told by ancestors of natives and today are referred to as the "ancient giant skeletons" discovered around the world. 

And this scenario would begin with a single ancestor - Homo Heidelbergensis.

The new fella needs a name and I still stick behind my own happy name of Homo clivus frons.  He's really no more Heidelbergensis as Neanderthal or Denisovan was at this point, tens of thousands of years ago when they were in giant menacing form upon the earth.  The giants had some relic forms of the skull shapes, less exaggerated than in their ancestors', but still showing their heritage, and retained some features from their lineage such as like red hair and tall height.

In fact, some archaeologists would have dug them up and looked at a primitive-appearing skull and been confused how something so "new" could look so "old." Understandably this is what was happening in the 1800s and well into the 1900s.  

The really sinister point of all of this is that researchers may not have wished to recognize that bigger brained Neanderthal and his cousin were the ancestors of a race of people who hit the sea and had technology and settled lands before homo sapiens did. This, in fact, may be the basis of the "giant coverup."

Conclusion

Let me leave you on a chilling note: Perhaps the greatest question now isn't who or even where or maybe even how, ancient giants spread around the world and evolved into the giants we found in the earth at mounds and in caves, but perhaps whether they still exist today?