3. Giant Remains and Other Testimonies
The story of giants
becomes even more intriguing once Europeans established (or
perhaps, re-established) contact with
the Americas during the great age of exploration, for many of the
early explorers, from Vespucci, Sir Francis Drake, De Soto, to the
great Coronado, report their encounters with giants. Pedro de
Castaeda, for example, a member of Coronado’s expedition, stated
that some of the Cocopa Indians were giants “who could carry logs
that six of the Spaniards couldn’t budge.”165 Even more
fantastically, one of Magellan’s crew reported that when Magellan’s
fleet had anchored at Port San Julian “they were greeted by... a
native giant” who was so tall “that our heads scarcely came up to
his waist, and his voice was like that of a bull.“166 The place seemed a
veritable haven of giants and remains of giants:
When Sir Francis Drake anchored at the same place in 1578, he didn’t see as big a giant, but did report that men well over seven feet in height were there. When Anthony Knyvet visited in 1592, he wrote of men ten to twelve feet in height. Several skeletons ten to eleven feet long were discovered there in 1615 by crewmen from the Dutch schooner Wilhelm Schouten.When Commodore Byron visited in 1764, he also found giants there. He later wrote in his log that there were men there “of a gigantic stature.” One of his officers wrote of their height ”... some of them are certainly nine feet, if they do not exceed it.” This proved to be the last sighting of giants in the region.167
Such multiple
sightings from so many different witnesses, whose political agendas
were, moreover, often in conflict with each other, makes collusion
unlikely, and make it more likely that there really were giants in
South America as recently as 300 years ago.168
As indicated by the
quotation from Saint Augustine that began this chapter however, it
is the remains of the giants that perhaps tell the most interesting
part of the story, for there is more to it than merely people of
large stature.
a. Double Dentition
Giant researcher
Stephen Quayle has assembled a veritable catalogue of testimonies
and legends. Among a lengthy list of reports of giant remains of
varying heights, Quayle notes that many of these remains bear a
very unusual feature:
• In 1833, soldiers digging at Lompock Rancho, California, discovered a male skeleton 12 feet tall. The skeleton was surrounded by carved shells, stone axes, other artifacts. The skeleton had double rows of upper and lower teeth. Unfortunately, this body was secretly buried because the local Indians became upset about the remains.169
• A giant found off the California Coast on Santa Rosa Island in the 1800’s was distinguished by its double rows of teeth.170
• In Ohio in 1872, an earthen mound was discovered to contain three skeletons that in life would have stood at least eight feet tall. Each also had double teeth in front as well as in back of their mouth and in both upper and lower jaws.171
• Near Toledo, Ohio, 20 skeletons were discovered with jaws and teeth “twice as large as those of present day people.” The account also noted that odd hieroglyphics were found with the bodies.172
• Miners in Lovelock Cave, California, discovered a very tall, red-haired mummy in 1911. This mummy eventually went to a fraternal lodge where it is used for “initiation purposes.”173
• The Catalina Islands, off California, are the home of dwarf mammoth bones that were once roasted in ancient fire pits. These ....were eaten by human-like creatures who were giants with double rows of teeth.174
What interests us
here is the fact that not all reports of giant remains (and I have
listed but a very few of Quayle’s extensive catalogue) include the
mention of double rows of teeth, but clearly, there are enough
mentions to suggest that at least some of these creatures were
carriers of a very unique gene, if not of a very different genetic
make-up altogether.
But what was the
purpose of such double dentition? No
one knows for sure, but there is an interesting suggestion in the
literature - both ancient and modern — concerning giants. The Old
Testament book of Numbers records that not only was Canaan, the
“promised land,” a land full of giants, but that these giants
inhabited a land “which eateth up the inhabitants thereof,”
implying cannibalism was a favorite practice of giant races.175 Even the children’s
fairy tale of Jack and the Beanstalk records that the giant of the
story is a man-eater.
b. Sexedigitism
There is yet another
unusual feature reported for some giants. The Old Testament book of
II Samuel (III Kings in the Catholic and Orthodox versions),
21:19-22 records that one such Canaanite giant “had on every hand
six fingers, and on every foot six toes.” This is repeated in I
Chronicles 20:6. Even more peculiar is the fact that ancient Mayan
images of their kings often depict them as having six fingers and
six toes.176