What creationists (like Carl Baugh and Kent Hovind) “see” below is “photographic evidence” that human giants over ten feet tall existed.
The source of the “photograph” turns out to be an engraving from a book that contains an unsubstantiated story
One finds endless pages of bunk on “human giants” (over ten feet all) on the web, a hodgepodge of photoshopped images (people neglect to even google the words, “photoshop human giant,” or check Snopes and other urban myth tracking sites to see the evidence that such images were photoshopped.
Even a video showing you how). One can also find ancient reports that simply talk about the bones of human giants being found but lack any bones to back up the talk (we don't know if the bones were human, since in the 1700 and 1800s plenty of such misinterpretations existed due to discovering large mammal and dinosaur bones that people supposed might be human). The “solid” evidence for human giants over ten feet tall consists of carved giant human-looking statues. One such statue can be seen leaning up against a train in Great Britain:
Source: “The Living Moon Forum”
Both raked in money for their owners who put them on display. See the full story below.
A Colossal Hoax: The Giant from Cardiff that Fooled America
The “discovery” of the “petrified Cardiff Giant” in the 1860s directly preceded the “discoveries” of both the “petrified Irish Giant” and even a “petrified Revolutionary War soldier” in the 1890s.
The “discoverer” of the “petrified Irish Giant,” Mr. Dyer, said it had been dug up in County Antrim, Ireland, in the 1890s. We'll see below why that claim itself is part of the hoax. Dyer, after showing the “giant” in Dublin, came to England with his find and exhibited it in Liverpool and Manchester at sixpence a head, which was exactly what happened in America in the 1860s with the “Cardiff Giant,” the parallel hoax. P.T. Barnum made loads of money displaying the Cardiff Giant, which probably gave Dyer the idea to carve a giant in a similar posture, though with a modest covering for its naughty bits, because after all, Ireland was a Catholic country, though Dyer made his carving two feet taller than the Cardiff giant. (The “petrified Revolutionary War Soldier” apparently was also carved in a somewhat similar position, but was not gigantic, though it didn't need to be, it's draw was its southern heritage.) Note that the county in Ireland where Dyer allegedly “discovered” the “Irish Giant” also was home to the mythologically named “Giant's Causeway,” i.e., County Antrim in Ireland.. But the “Giant's Causeway,” has as little to do with actual giants as does the carving that Dyer put on display to make a buck. But by making such a claim Dyer set up a mythological connection in the minds of Great Britain's ticket-buying public.
A different mythological connection existed in the U.S., reaching back to claims by prominent Puritan settlers in New England that fossilized mammoth bones belonged to “human giants.” Such connections helped feed the Cardiff Giant hoax. See the article, “When Giants Roamed the Earth: In the Golden Age of Hoaxes, Petrified Men Came to Life” by Mark Rose, Archaeology, Volume 58 Number 6, Nov./Dec. 2005
Google: “Cardiff Giant” to see how the posture of the first carved hoax was recreated in the “Irish” Giant, plus a couple feet added in height. The hoax grew, literally. And google some pics of the Giant's Causeway sites below to learn more about the myth that “giants” created it:
Northern Ireland - County Antrim/Giant's Causeway, County Antrim Ireland Tourist Information… The lunar landscape of the Giant's Causeway
Another “petrified man” claim from the 1890s was that of a “petrified Revolutionary War soldier” on display in South Carolina. It was an easy way to make a buck back then, simply by charging a small amount to allow people to take a peek at your “discovery”
Another image I often see is based on unsubstantiated tales of Patagonian Giants. The Patagonian giant frenzy died down substantially when some more sober and analytical accounts were published. For instance in 1773 John Hawkesworth published on behalf of the Admiralty a compendium of noted English southern-hemisphere explorersʼ journals, including that of James Cook and John Byron. In this publication, drawn from their official logs, it became clear that the people Byron's expedition had encountered were no taller than 6-foot-6-inch (1.98 m), tall perhaps but by no means giants. See these pieces:
Speaking of research on human giants, see this piece on Men Over Ten Feet Tall that I wrote years ago.
Years after the above piece was composed someone sent me the exact origin of the so-called “photo” of an 11’ 6” skeleton. The image was originally an artist's engraving from The Tongue of Time, a book published in 1838 (before the invention of permanent non-fading photos, so books at that time did not even contain photographs). This link for the original artist's engraving.
A creationist took a blurry photograph of the above engraving and other creationists claimed that the blurry photo of the engraving constituted photographic evidence! But one can see, all the images in the book are engravings created just to accompany the stories.. The story has remained unsubstantiated to this day, and also mentions tales of “Cyclops” in ancient Sicily. But archaeologists have noted that the ancient Greeks probably confused mammoth leg bones and their skulls for the remains of “human giants.” The huge skull of the mammoth has as a large “socket” in the middle which would have been for the mammoth's trunk, but the Greeks probably pictured that “socket” as the eyehole of a human giant, not knowing about ancient mammoths once roaming Europe. Check out this photo.
And see this book:
The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Ancient Greek and Roman Times by Adrienne Mayor
For additional research on the so-called evidence for humans over ten feet tall see:
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and, The Mt. Blanco Creationist Museum “Giant Femur” Myth
Dinosaur and Human Tracks—key articles, including some on alleged “Giant Human Tracks” (A website featuring articles by the person whose rigorous research made both ICR and AIG drop their claims that they had proof that humans lived alongside dinosaurs)
The Bible and Science: Are Dinosaurs Mentioned in the Bible? Includes mention of “so-called evidence of human giants”.
PaleoFairy Tales Exposed! There is no such thing as a world where dinosaurs and humans coexist in a 6,000 year old universe.
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