In 1673, a Spanish ship passed around the coast of South America and more precisely at the end
of the Patagonia region. Then the sailors noticed something strange on the beach. An incredibly tall
human figure. But that wasn't all. After looking closely they found that this figure had 2 heads.
The captain immediately changed the ship's course and headed for the shore. After stopping at a safe
distance to be out of sight of the giant, a group of well-armed men, took a net and headed towards
it. After some time they were already behind him and attacked him without him even suspecting.
There was almost no struggle, for the sailors immediately entangled him in
the net and knocked him to the ground. Then they managed to get a closer look at him. In
front of them lay a creature never before seen, 12 feet inches tall with two heads.
The sailors lit a fire to signal the others to approach the ship and load their booty. That's
right, in those days this creature was looked upon as an object that could be sold very dearly.
The ship approached and the captive was taken on deck. The
creature was then tied to one of the masts. During the voyage the sea became rough and
a storm arose. The giant seemed to be saving his strength for just that moment. He freed
himself from the ropes, and a fierce battle ensued. During it, the two-headed man managed
to take the lives of four Spanish soldiers. The blows which they dealt him did not seem
to affect him in any way, and when he struck he broke the bones of his opponents outright.
At some point, however, one of the Spaniards pierced him with a spear right through the
heart. The giant instantly slumped to the deck and remained there lifeless.
Thus begins the story of Kap Dwa, the Two-Headed Giant of Patagonia.
Before we look at his story in detail, it is important to get a few facts on the subject.
Even today there are people of incredibly tall stature. Some of them suffer from the
so-called disease of gigantism. It is a rare condition that leads to extreme body growth,
especially during childhood and adolescent years. It is caused by the excessive secretion
of growth hormone by the pituitary gland, a small organ located at the base of the brain.
The tallest person in history since records have been kept was Robert Wadlow who lived
from 1918 to 1940. He grew steadily during the 22 years he was alive. On the day of his death,
his height was 8ft 11in. Gigantism is associated
with many health challenges besides everything else. Robert, for example,
developed blisters on his feet due to his great weight, which later became infected and he died
as a result of complications from this infection. In addition, we all know of multiple cases of
humans and animals with 2 heads. There is a name for this - dicephalis parapagus - a condition in
which twins share one body but have 2 heads. Two of the most famous cases of "parapagus
didelphalis" are the Italian brothers Giovanni and Giacomo Tocci and the American
sisters Abigail and Brittany Hensel. The Hensels were born on March 7, 1990,
and have separate heads and necks but share one body. What is specific about Abby and Brittany is
that despite sharing a common torso, they have separate hearts, stomachs, spines, and lungs.
Although their daily lives offer a number of challenges, they completed their education in
2012 and received their undergraduate degrees from Bethel University in Minnesota. They each
have their own degrees: Abby graduated as a math teacher and Brittney was an English teacher.
In an interview, the twins shared that they have different tastes and interests,
but always find a way to compromise. Therefore, all of this makes it clear
to us that the existence of Kap Dua is not something so impossible.
Throughout history, countless people have claimed to have met giants. The Greek titans,
the various Norse giants, the Chinese giant Pangu, and the biblical giants Goliath and
Anak are examples of stories of extremely large creatures across cultures. This leads many today
to question whether real giants once existed. The name Kap Dwa means "two heads." It appears
in various travel records from the seventeenth to the nineteenth
centuries. and in relatively recent British documents from the early twentieth century.
According to these writings, he was a giant from Patagonia, South America,
who as we have already said had two heads and was 12 feet tall. He is said to have once probably
lived in the dense jungles of Argentina. Patagonia has long been thought to be
a land inhabited by giants, but you'll find out why that was in just a minute.
It is not clear what happened to Kap Dua's body after his death,
but it is said to have been mummified naturally and his remains have been displayed in various
places and exhibitions. In 1900, Kap Dwa's mummy entered the Edwardian horror circuit
and in the years that followed was passed from showman to showman.
In 1914, the mummy eventually ended up on Birnbeck Pier in Weston. This is evidenced
in the 1931 book, Diary of a Crustacean, by John Fothergill, an English hotelier
and entrepreneur who visited the pier and became fascinated by Cap-Dois. In the book he shares:
When we were at Weston-super-Mare we found on the old pier a 12-foot-high,
two-headed mummy of a Patagonian. I told Philip Goss, the author of Who's Who,
about it and he told me it must be a fake. But I really wanted this mummy, and so I set up
a committee consisting of Guy Brown, a physicist, the radiologist from Westonsuper-Mare Hospital,
and a local doctor, who kindly examined the mummy thoroughly and found "no
perceptual evidence" that it was fake. Commander Gould, in his fascinating
book "Oddities," has happily debunked the "myth" of the Patagonian giant,
but seems to have been unaware of this one." After being on display for 45 years in North
Somerset, England, the mummy was purchased by a man named "Lord" Thomas Howard in
1959. It changed hands several more times before ending up in Baltimore, Maryland,
where it is still in the collection of oddities known as "Bob's Side Show" at The Antique Man Ltd,
owned by Robert Gerber and his wife. While many believe that the mummified
remains of Kap Dwa are a hoax, the truth of this legend actually remains a mystery to this day.
Going even further back in time, early European explorers described a race of
giant humans living in Patagonia. They supposedly reached heights twice the normal human height,
with some reports indicating heights of 13 to 15 feet or even more. Stories
of these people continued to influence European perceptions of the region for nearly 300 years.
The first mention of these giants comes from the voyage of Ferdinand Magellan and his crew,
who claimed to have seen the Patagonian giants while exploring the coastline of South America
on their way to the Maluku Islands on their circumnavigation of the world in the 1520s.
Antonio Pigafetta, one of the few survivors of the expedition and the
chronicler of Magellan's voyage, recorded in his diary their encounter with the natives,
who were twice the height of an ordinary man: "One day we suddenly saw a naked man of gigantic
stature on the harbor shore, dancing, singing, and sprinkling dust on his head.
The captain-general, that is, Magellan, sent one of our men to the giant and made
him also perform the same acts as a sign of his coming in peace. Having done so,
the man led the giant towards the islet where the Captain-General was waiting for him.
When the giant was in the presence of the captain-general, he made a sign pointing
upward with one finger with great admiration, believing that we had come from heaven. He
was so tall that we could only reach his waist, and he was well proportioned..."
Pigafetta also notes that Magellan called these people "Patagao" (that is,
"Patagon," or Patagoni), but does not explain in detail the reasons for this. Subsequently,
the suggestion emerged that the name was derived from the word "pata" (foot), and
"Patagonia" was interpreted as "Land of Big Feet". However, the etymology remains questionable as
the meaning of the suffix -gon is unclear. Today it is accepted that this most likely
refers to a literary character in an early 16th century Spanish novel.
However, the name "Patagonia" remains, as does the notion that the natives were giants. And
although early cartographers sometimes ascribed to this region the label regio gigantum "region
of the giants," today the Patagonian racial type of the Mongoloid race is of short average stature.
However, this was not the case in 1579, when Francis Drake's ship's chaplain,
Francis Fletcher, wrote of his encounter with extremely tall Patagonians,
with heights of over seven and a half feet. 11 years later, Anthony Knievett claimed to
have seen dead bodies 12 feet long in Patagonia. In the same year, William Adams, an Englishman
aboard a Dutch ship passing through Tierra del Fuego, reported an encounter between his ship's
crew and unnaturally tall hostile natives. A scuffle ensued, but fortunately, the Dutch
ship and its crew managed to withdraw unharmed. Dutch sailors Sebald de Veert in 1598, Olivier
van Noort in 1599, and Joris van Spielbergen in 1615 also claimed that giants lived in Patagonia.
In 1615, Willem Chautin and Jacob Le Maire reported a
tomb with giant bones in Puerto Deseado. In 1766, on HMS Dolphin's return to Britain,
a rumor spread that the crew under Commodore John Byron had seen a tribe of
9-foot natives in Patagonia during their circumnavigation of the world. However,
when the redacted version of the voyage account appeared in 1773, the Patagonians were
recorded as being 6 feet 6 inches tall, which, especially by 18th-century standards, portrayed
them as extremely tall but by no means giants. Later writers came to regard the Patagonian giants
as a hoax, or at least exaggerated and misreported in early European accounts of the region.
Is it possible, after all, that there were real giants in Patagonia and that
Kap Dwa is evidence of this? How did so many people get
their notes and perceptions wrong? And the more important question is what happened
to these giants? Time and again, human cruelty and unscrupulousness have wiped out entire species.
Or perhaps it is something else...? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.