Giants Ancient Greece. How myths were born.

In the mythology of Ancient Greece, there are stories about giants (giants and cyclops) and heroes with superhuman strength (Hercules, Cadmus, Perseus). According to the historian and folklore researcher Adrienne Mayor, the Greek myths may have had a real basis. Meyer's hypothesis is described in an article in National Geographic magazine.

Greek authors, including the historian Herodotus in the 5th century BC. e., as well as the writer and traveler Pausanias in the II century AD. e., mentioned the mysterious finds of the remains belonging to the giants. Huge, chaotically scattered skeletons came across on the shores washed away by sea waves, and the soil of hills and cliffs, subjected to weathering, exposed giant scattered bones.

“Since the 19th century,” she says, “paleontologists have discovered large accumulations of giant bone remains of extinct mammals in the very places where the ancient Greeks found the bones of giant heroes.” According to Meyer, in fact, the Greeks found individual fossilized bones of such animals as, for example, the southern elephant, which was the ancestor of the mammoth. Not knowing how to explain the origin of these bones, the Greeks apparently considered them to be the skeletons of giants.

Compared to a creature of such incredible size, any inhabitant of ancient Greece would have seemed like a dwarf. In many places in the Mediterranean, parts of the petrified skeletons of mammoths, elephants and other animals that lived here tens of thousands of years before the Greeks were found. Relatively fragile parts of the skeleton, such as the bones of the skulls, are mostly not preserved, in contrast to the more massive ones, such as the shoulder blades and femurs, which resemble those of a human.

“In the ground, they also found the tusks of extinct mammoths,” Meyer says, “and it seemed to them that these were natural formations, like precious stones and minerals. The ancient Greeks gave them the name "elephas". This word they began to call elephants when they saw them for the first time. And this probably happened no earlier than in the 4th century BC. e., when the soldiers of Alexander the Great made a campaign against Babylon and were met by phalanxes of war elephants of the Persians. By that time, myths about giants and giants were firmly rooted in the minds of the Greeks.

It is possible that the finds of huge bone remains, arousing fantasy, became the basis for legends about giants, especially since there were no other explanations. Or perhaps the myths arose first, and then when the bones caught the eye of the Greeks, they imagined mythical heroes and villains in the flesh.

Source: National Geographic Russia August/2004

Vadim Titov - Paleontological prototypes of giants and cyclops

What connection did our ancestors find between the bones of extinct giant animals and mythical creatures? What were the paleontological prototypes of giants and cyclops? Mammoths, ancient elephants, rhinos. How can an elephant's skull be mistaken for that of a giant cyclops?

The Cardiff Giant - the greatest hoax of the 19th century

The opening of the giants is temporarily postponed ...

http://antropogenez.ru/interview/365/

On the filming of the film "City of Giants": you can not play with thimbles

http://antropogenez.ru/interview/474/

Hypotheses about giant (or dwarf) human ancestors are already part of the history of anthropology...

http://antropogenez.ru/quote/476/

Jules Verne about the discovery of the "giant skeleton" (fragment of the story "Bluff. American manners")

http://antropogenez.ru/quote/481/

The further fate of the finds turned out to be no less mysterious than the very fact of their discovery and in many respects resembled the story with the skull of a neoanthrope - the "man of the dawn", which turned out to be a very skillful craft. After the finds of "Adam and Eve" were carefully photographed and described, and Gilliam himself made a scientific report on this subject, they were transferred to Melbourne to one of the private museums, where they were subjected, as it was claimed, to the most thorough scientific tests. And all these tests confirmed the correctness of Gilliam's preliminary dating (however, all this is according to Gilliam's group).

The "father" of the finds did not allow them a large number outsiders, although he was preparing to put them on scientific display. The skeletons were guarded day and night by the dedicated people of Gilliam, but on the night of October 9, 2000 ... they suddenly disappeared.
The disappearance was surrounded by many mystical events: the guards claimed that at some point they felt ill, were completely disoriented, they were dizzy, and when they came to, there were no more unique remains! In place, only the bones of the left leg of "Eve" remained, and strange traces resembling a "trace of a split hoof", as later theologians-detectives established. Naturally, the talk immediately turned to “devilish machinations”, about the theft of the remains by the devil, the guards recalled that at the moment of disappearance there was a smell of sulfur in the air, in a word, there was the whole set familiar to everyone today from mystical horror films.
The famous French archaeologist Marcel Desplein gave a more rational explanation: Gilliam's hoax went too far and could be revealed with an independent examination, so the hoaxer had no choice but to steal the skeletons himself, arranging everything in a very mystical way. However, Gilliam himself did not say anything about Satan, hinting that the kidnappers could simply imitate a set of devilish signs. In any case, today these findings should be deleted from the arsenal of scientific research.

Where have the daughters gone?

It is noteworthy that Adam and Eve appear in the biblical story either as adults or as already aged people. They completely lack the stage of childhood and adolescence. Thus, they are born already adults, truly repeating the “likeness and image” of their father.
The couple Adam and Eve had to produce enough children, and children of both sexes, so that their descendants could then populate the earth. However, the Bible speaks only of the male line (Abel, Cain, Seth) and at first nowhere mentions the birth of daughters, although there are constant passages about marriages. Perhaps this is the tradition of the family narrative, in which only descendants in the male line are mentioned?
This seems unlikely, for at least two reasons. First of all, the lineage of the ancient Israelites was matrilineal; was determined by the female, not the male line, and therefore the mention of women was extremely important. Secondly, we still talk about the birth of daughters, but only in the 5th chapter; for example, this chapter says that Seth had daughters, and also that Jared, a descendant of Seth, "begotten sons and daughters"(Gen. 5:19). The same is said about the father of Jared - Maleleel, as well as about his son Enoch. Adam himself also "begotten sons and daughters"(Gen. 5:4). Thus, the birth of daughters is absent only in the early stages of the genesis of the kind of Adam, described in the 4th chapter, but it is precisely this early stage that could not allow continuation of humanity.
So where did the “daughters” disappear from the narrative? Naturally, they had to exist - it is difficult to assume that only boys were born from the biblical forefathers. It seems that the reason here is different: the daughters are not mentioned because they are not important for the presentation of the plot about the transfer of the family. And here's why: members of Adam's clan took girls from another tribe as their wives. The one who lived in parallel with the Adamites.

(note by A. Koltypin)Read my collections of materials about love interests and marriages of different types of sentient beings in the section "Descendants of mixed marriages"

In fact, in the Bible there are two parallel presentations of the plot about Adam. The first is set forth in the 3rd-4th chapters of Genesis, the second - in the 5th chapter. This chapter, as it were, begins again to describe the very moment of the creation of man, but does not contain any mention of either Cain or Abel and, at first glance, is a kind of “brief summary” of the two previous chapters, but without many key details. The fifth chapter is, in fact, a description of only the kind of Seth, and perhaps is later. Chapter 4 contains a description of the race of Cain and partly of Seth, in particular, the race of Cain is built as follows: Adam - Cain - Enoch - Mechiael - Methuselah - Lamech. The clan of Seth continued only to the second tribe: Adam - Seth - Enos. The fifth chapter gives the race of Seth almost completely: Adam - Seth - Enos - Cainan - Maleleel - Jared - Enoch - Methuselah - Lamech - Noah.
It is easy to see that the link Enoch - Methuselah - Lamech is present in both lines (i.e., both Cain and Seth) with only a slight variation. In chapter 4, where the line of Cain is described, Mechiael stands between Enoch and Methuselah, in the second case in chapter 5, where the lineage of Seth is already discussed, they are directly connected. All this allows us to assume that we are talking about the same people. However, these plots were included in Holy Scripture at different times, when the real relationship was already unclear.
There are mentions of the birth of daughters only in the 5th chapter of Genesis and are completely absent in the 4th, for example. In chapter 4, it is said that Seth had a son, Enos (Gen. 4:26), and in chapter 5, it is already expanded that he “begotten sons and daughters” (Gen. 5, 7).

Thus, in the first chapters of the book of Genesis, we find a description of certain parallel groups of people who lived close to each other, but were not relatives. Obviously, these were close individuals, since they could have a common offspring. It is the theme of common offspring between "sons of God and daughters of men" in fact, and becomes the cause of the flood .

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Giant people. Do you think this is a myth or reality? In the article, we will analyze the findings and compare the facts, which will help to solve this mystery or get very close to the result.

The existence of giants is evidenced by finds of bones of unusual sizes around the world, as well as myths and legends, living mainly among the American Indians. Scientists, however, have never paid due attention to the collection and analysis of this evidence. Probably because they considered the existence of giants impossible.

The book of Genesis (chapter 6, verse 4) says:“At that time there were giants on earth, especially since the time when the sons of God began to enter into the daughters of men, and they began to give birth to them. These are strong, glorious people from ancient times.”

giants in history

Goliath

The most famous among the giants described in the Bible is the warrior Goliath of Gath. The book of Samuel says that Goliath was defeated by the shepherd of sheep, David, who later became the king of Israel. Goliath, according to the biblical description, had a height of more than six cubits, that is, three meters.

His military equipment weighed about 420 kg, and the weight of the metal spear reached 50 kg. There are many stories among the people about giants who were afraid of rulers and leaders. Greek mythology tells of Enceladus, a giant who fought Zeus and was struck by lightning and covered by Mount Etna.

In the fourteenth century in Trapani (Sicily) was discovered the skeleton of the alleged Polyphemus, the one-eyed king of the Cyclopes, 9 meters long.

The Delaware Indians say that in the old days east of the Mississippi there lived a giant people called the Alligewys who would not let them pass through their lands. declared war on them and, in the end, forced them to leave the area.

The Sioux Indians had a similar legend. In Minnesota, where they lived, a race of giants appeared, which, according to legend, they destroyed. The bones of the giants are probably still in this land.

Giant's footprint

On Mount Sri Pada in Sri Lanka there is a deep imprint of a giant male foot: it is 168 cm long and 75 cm wide! Legend says that this is the footprint of our ancestor - Adam.

The famous Chinese navigator Zheng He speaks about this find in the 16th century:

“There is a mountain on the island. It is so high that its peak reaches the clouds and on it one can see the only imprint of a man's foot. The depression in the rock reaches up to two chi, and the length of the foot is more than 8 chi. It is said here that this trace was left by the holy A-Tang, the forefather of mankind.”

Giants of different countries

In 1577, huge human bones were found in Lucerne. The authorities quickly convened scientists who, working under the guidance of the famous anatomist Dr. Felix Plater from Basel, determined that these were the remains of a man 5.8 meters tall!

36 years later, France discovered its own giant. His remains were found in a grotto near Chaumont Castle. This man was 7.6 meters tall! The Gothic inscription "Tentobochtus Rex" was found in the cave, as well as coins and medals, which make it possible to believe that the skeleton of the Cimbri king was discovered.

Europeans who began to study South America, also talked about people of great stature. The southern part of Argentina and Chile was named Patagonia by Magellan from the Spanish "pata" - hoof, because footprints resembling large hooves were found there.

In 1520 Magellan's expedition encountered in Port San Julian with a giant, whose appearance was recorded in the magazine: "This man was so tall that we only got him to the waist, and his voice sounded like a bull's roar." Magellan's men probably even managed to capture two giants who, chained on deck, did not survive the journey. But because their bodies stank terribly, they were thrown overboard.

British explorer Francis Drake claimed that in 1578 he South America got into a fight with giants, whose height was 2.8 meters. Drake lost two men in this battle.

More and more researchers met their giants and the number of papers on the subject grew.

In 1592, Anthony Quinet summed up that the growth of famous giants is, on average, 3-3.5 meters.

Giant Man - Myth or Reality?

When, however, Charles Darwin arrived in the 19th century in Patagonia, did not find a trace of the giants. Earlier information was discarded, as it was considered greatly exaggerated. But stories of giants continued to come from other regions.

The Incas claimed, What people are giants descend from the clouds at regular intervals to live with their women.

It is often difficult to tell the difference between a very tall person and a giant. For a pygmy, a person with a height of 180 cm is probably a giant. However, anyone who is over two meters tall should be classified as a giant.

That's exactly what it was Irishman Patrick Cotter. He was born in 1760 and died in 1806. He was known for his height and made a living performing in circuses and fairs. His height was 2 meters 56 centimeters.

At the same time, he lived in the USA Paul Bunyan - Lumberjack about which there are many legends. According to them, he kept moose as pets, and when he was once attacked by a buffalo, he easily twisted his neck. Contemporaries claimed that Banyan's height was 2.8 meters.

There is also a very interesting document in the English archives, namely the History and Antiquities of Allerdale. This work is a collection of folk songs, legends and stories about the Cumberland and tells, in particular, about the discovery in the Middle Ages of remains of enormous size:

“The giant was buried at a depth of 4 meters in what is now agricultural land, and the grave was marked with a vertically set stone. The skeleton was 4.5 meters long and was fully armed. The dead man's sword and ax lay beside him. The sword was over 2 meters long and 45 centimeters wide.”

IN Northern Ireland there are 40,000 closely spaced and driven into the ground conical pillars with convex and concave ends, which are considered natural formations. Old legends say, however, that these are the remains of a colossal bridge that connected Ireland and Scotland.

In the spring of 1969, excavations were carried out in Italy and 50 brick-lined coffins were discovered nine kilometers south of Rome. There were no names or other inscriptions on them. All of them contained the skeletons of men from 200 to 230 cm tall. Very tall, especially for Italy.

Archaeologist Dr. Luigi Cabalucci said that people died at the age of 25-40. Their teeth were in remarkably good condition. Unfortunately, the date of the burial and the circumstances under which it took place have not been established.

Where do giants come from

So, the number of finds increased, and in different countries. But the most intriguing question is “where do people are giants' remains unanswered.

French writer Denis Sora has formulated a fascinating version. Thinking about what might happen if some other celestial body began to approach the Earth, he came to the conclusion that the effect of such an event would be a sharp increase in the gravity of our planet.

The tides would be stronger, which means land flooding. Another, less well-known consequence of this state of affairs would be the gigantism of plants, animals, and humans. The latter would reach a height of 5 meters. According to this theory, the size of living organisms increases along with the growth of radiation, in this case cosmic.

“The increase in radiation, including cosmic radiation, probably has two effects: it causes mutations and damages or transforms tissues. Some illustration of the theory and the effects of radiation on growth can be seen in the events of 1902 in Martinique, where Mount Pele erupted, killing 20,000 people in St. Pierre.

Immediately before the start of the eruption, a purple cloud formed over the crater of the volcano, consisting of dense gas and water vapor. It grew to an unprecedented size and spread throughout the island, whose inhabitants were not yet aware of the threat.

Suddenly, a 1,300-foot-high column of fire erupted from the volcano. A cloud that burned at a temperature above 1000 degrees also took up from the fire. All the inhabitants of St. Pierre died, with the exception of one who was sitting in a prison cell protected by thick walls.

The ruined city was never rebuilt, but the island's biological life revived faster than expected. The plants returned and, but they were all much larger now. Dogs, cats, turtles, lizards and insects were larger than ever before, and each successive generation was taller than the last."

The French authorities placed a scientific station at the foot of the mountain and soon discovered that the mutations in animals and plants were the result of radiation from minerals thrown out during a volcanic eruption.

This radiation also affected people: the head of the research center, Dr. Jules Gravue, grew by 12.5 cm, and his assistant, Dr. Powen, by 10 cm. It was found that the irradiated plants grew three times faster and reached the level of development in six months, which, under normal circumstances, would take two years.

The lizard, called the copa, which had previously reached 20 cm in length, turned into a small dragon 50 cm long, and its bite, previously harmless, became more dangerous than the poison of a cobra.

The strange phenomenon of anomalous growth disappeared when these plants and animals were brought from Martinique. On the island itself, the apogee of radiation was reached within 6 months after the explosion, and then its intensity slowly began to return to normal levels.

Is it possible that something similar (maybe on a larger scale) happened once in the past? Increased doses of radiation could contribute to the formation of abnormally large organisms. This theory finds some support in the fact that huge animals existed on Earth long after the extinction of the dinosaurs.

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This is confirmed by the finds of archaeologists - ancient written evidence, structures of amazingly huge sizes that have survived to our time, cyclopean ruins all over the world and colossal boulders. These buildings and processed stones of incredible size are simply incompatible with the physical capabilities of a person of our time.

Science does not give us a clear and intelligible explanation of how such huge structures could be built. Probably the easiest way to explain this phenomenon is that in ancient times there were giant creatures that erected statues in accordance with their height. Otherwise, how could such giant sculptures and architectural structures appear? Where did the grandiose Karnak, the famous Stonehenge and the so-called "hanging" stones in Solisbury come from? And who created the seids and cyclopean ruins on the Kola Peninsula, the huge statues of pharaohs, the mysterious Sphinx, the incredible Egyptian and South American pyramids? There are many, many such examples.

For example, at the very base of the Baalbek terrace, which is located in Lebanon, there are 3 blocks, each weighing 800 tons. These blocks are fitted to each other with incredible precision, down to tiny fractions of a millimeter, and this is simply an impossible task even for modern building technologies. And in order to move just one such bloc just a little, it would be necessary to attract forty thousand people for a simultaneous effort.

Back in the 19th century, it was mentioned that archaeologists and ordinary residents found huge human remains. And these days we are often told about finds in different parts of the world. the globe skeletons of people of abnormal growth.

So, in 1821, in the state of Tennessee, in the USA, the ruins of an ancient stone wall were found, under which there were two human skeletons; their height reached 2.15 meters. And in Wisconsin, in 1879, during the construction of a granary, workers found enormous skull bones and vertebrae.

In 1877, in the state of Nevada, near the town of Evreki, in a hilly and desert area, gold miners accidentally saw the bones of a man’s lower leg and foot, darkened from old age, ingrown into the rock. The remains were taken to the city, where paleontologists measured the length of the bones from foot to knee. It turned out to be about 97 centimeters, which suggests that a person with limbs of this size was 3 meters tall! And the age of the quartzite where the bone was found is about 185 million years.
Similar finds have also been made on other continents, in various parts of the world. In Egypt, in 1890, archaeologists found a stone sarcophagus. It contained a clay coffin with a two-meter mummy of a woman with a small child.

In Australia in 1930, near Basarst, on the development of jasper, prospectors quite often found fossilized prints of giant human feet. Anthropologists have named a race of giant humans whose remains were found in Australia the Meganthropus. The growth of people of this race ranged from 2.1 to 3.65 meters.

In Central Africa, in 1936, German anthropologist and paleontologist Larson Kohl discovered the skeletons of gigantic humans near Lake Elisey. A dozen men were buried in a common grave. The growth of these men reached 3.75 meters.

During the study in 1985 of the same area, an anthropological expedition conducted excavations at a depth of about 3 meters from the surface of the earth. Researchers from Australia have discovered a fossilized molar among a variety of remains. Its height was 6.7, and its width was 4.2 centimeters. The owner of a tooth of this size had a height of at least 7.5 meters and a weight of 370 kilograms. The age of the fossils was 9 million years.

Eyewitnesses still live in some regions of Armenia, who claim that quite often ancient human remains were discovered by the ordinary population, which were several times larger than the usual size of a person.

A very interesting find was made by archaeologists in Georgia, in the mountains of the Borjomi Gorge. Huge human bones were found here, their age was 25 thousand years. In all respects, it can be argued that the growth of these giant people could reach 2.5-3 meters.

In the mountains of Eastern Georgia, in 2000, two travelers found a cave in which they found skeletons up to four meters in size. Near one of the skeletons was an unusual huge stiletto made of an unknown metal.

There is also evidence that during the Second World War in Poland, during the burial of the executed, a petrified skull was found, whose height was 55 centimeters, which is almost three times the size of the skull of a modern person. The giant who owned the found skull had very proportional features and was at least 3.5 meters tall.

In early 2007, almost the entire world was shocked by what British paleontologists had found in the Gobi Desert. The skeleton of a man was found here, whose height was approximately 15 m (!). The rock in which scientists found fossilized remains is 45 million years old.

Of all the above facts, it seems that the footprints of giant people are by no means fiction, because there is evidence of their existence in almost all parts of the world. Naturally, if we consider each find or message separately, then they will seem like fiction, a riddle or a miracle. However, if all the facts and information are put together, a completely different picture opens up. Perhaps it is worth studying all this information, making scientific conclusions and generalizations?