Think of the natural world, and your mind’s eye can immediately picture some truly massive things.
The immense oceans that cover most of Earth; the majestic mountains that form some of our
planet’s most iconic and humbling landscapes; or the sprawling, sub-zero wildernesses of the Arctic
and Antarctica. Think of human beings in amongst all that, or of most living things in general, and
we quickly realise that, really, we’re incredibly small. For all their apparent power and influence,
humans and most animals are physically tiny. Although, according to some ideas,
that might not have always been the case. This is Unveiled, and today we’re exploring
the strange theory that Earth was once a planet of giants.
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First things first, we of course know that Earth certainly has hosted giant lifeforms
in its history. The dinosaurs walked this planet for almost 200 million years, up to an extinction
event (widely held to be an asteroid strike) that wiped them out, some 66 million years ago.
So many of these magnificent creatures were far bigger than any examples of life on Earth today,
but the biggest of the lot is usually held to be the Argentinosaurus, which researchers believe
was up to 130 feet long, and may have weighed more than 100 tonnes. Unsurprisingly, given its name,
it’s thought to have lived in modern-day Argentina, and for a contemporary comparison…
its size was about fifteen times that of the African Elephant, the largest land animal today.
Naturally, we also have giant creatures that do still exist, though off-land in our waters. While
we continually hear of myths and legends such as that of the Loch Ness Monster or the Kraken,
not even those gigantic, fantastical creatures could match what we have confirmed in real
life - the blue whale. This extraordinary animal can measure up to 100 feet long and weigh 200
tonnes. In fact, it’s the largest animal known to have ever lived on Earth… and it’s here with us,
today. So, could any theory implying that ancient Earth played host to other giants really hold its
own? Could any suggestion of human-like giants ever require serious consideration? There’s no
doubt that these are controversial claims, but some have gone ahead and made them anyway.
The general argument usually starts with the age of the dinosaurs. At that time,
when everything it seems was bigger, it’s thought that Earth’s atmosphere was more oxygen rich, too,
which may have led to life taking much larger forms. This basic idea works well to explain
how the dinosaurs grew to the spectacular sizes they did… before inevitably perishing
as a result of the extinction event 66 million years ago. At that point, smaller mammals were
able to survive and rise, as they were able to better adapt to the changing conditions.
In mainstream science there’s no suggestion that giant, human-like creatures existed at this time,
though, nor at any other time before or since. But so often when conspiracy theories of past
giants come up, here is where they begin. It isn’t only the conspiracists that promote
the idea, though. Another major influence is that mention of giants comes up across most
of the major religions of the world, and in the stories and legends of most major civilizations.
In the Old Testament of the Bible, for example, there’s mention of the Nephilim,
the Anakim, and others, all of which are depicted as being a race of giants.
Many of the Biblical giants are then said to have been killed as part of the Great Flood,
and that’s why they no longer exist alongside us today - according to the Bible. And then,
of course, there’s the much-told tale of David and Goliath, another story that originates from the
Bible, with Goliath’s legendary size variously described as anything from his being six feet
nine inches tall… to more than ten feet tall in some retellings. Besides religious texts, though,
there are no official records to show that a man of ten feet or more really did exist.
In Greek mythology, we have regular mention of the one-eyed cyclopes. In amongst the many
medieval legends of King Arthur, there are heroic tales of giant-slaying. With Norse mythology, it’s
said that all aspects of the world were actually made by the gods from the flesh of a spectacular
giant named Ymir. In Chinese myth there’s a similar figure, named Pangu. In Northern Ireland,
the legend of the Giant’s Causeway says that the unusual rock formation along the coast was
physically put there by giants. And, of course, we have countless children’s fairy tales featuring
giants, like the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk. We can perhaps see, then, why humans hold on to
the idea of giants. We’re taught stories all about them as children, and they often feature
in traditional tales of creation and of pre-human times. But, from a truly scientific perspective,
all from the cyclopes to the giant that Jack slays exist much more in fantasy than in fact.
Nevertheless, even science has something to say about giants in the past, even if its
version of them isn’t quite so… incredible. A long extinct type of ape, Gigantopithecus,
is known to have inhabited Earth until it disappeared around 300,000 years ago,
at around the same time that the first modern humans were emerging. Scientists don’t have a lot
to go on with regard to fossil examples, because finding any remains of the Gigantopithecus is a
pretty rare event... with almost all the evidence of them amounting to preserved teeth, only,
found predominantly across China and parts of Southeast Asia. Even so, it’s been estimated that
this creature may have weighed comfortably more than 600 pounds, and that it may have stood up to
twelve feet tall. It was much more like a giant gorilla than a giant human in stature, however,
and it isn’t generally thought to have been part of the human, homo sapiens, line of evolution.
Still, the Gigantopithecus occasionally makes its way into modern folklore, too,
as it has before been linked to the supposed existence of bigfoot. According to mainstream,
conventional science, though, while Gigantopithecus did exist, bigfoot doesn’t.
But, really, this blurring of the boundaries between what’s real and what’s not is an
all-too-common theme across all talk of giants - whether it’s from an academic, archaeological,
pseudoarchaelogical, or theological point of view. And, as a result, history is full
of notorious hoaxes. In the modern world, we’ve seen various supposedly legitimate photographs
published across the internet, that seemingly show the excavation of giant bones or skulls.
But, after scrutiny, these are almost always shown to be simple fakes. Manipulated images,
to carry on our long tradition of giant tales. Perhaps, in the distant past,
people may have unearthed large, fossilised bones and not realised that they had once belonged to
dinosaurs, or to some other ancient creature, and instead assumed that they were evidence of
one-time giant people. But today, science doesn’t generally draw that conclusion.
Finally, though, perhaps the most bizarre theory about past giants isn’t actually about human-like
giants, at all - but about trees. An outlandish idea that first spread across the internet in
2016, we have flat Earth theorists to thank for this one, with the proposal generally being that
Earth once played host to trees that were thirty or more miles high… until some kind of cataclysmic
event killed them all off millions of years ago. As a result, according to the theory,
what we understand to be trees today are really just tiny shrubs, by comparison… because the trees
of the past were supposedly sized more like mountains to our eyes. It’s perhaps a subject
for a future video all of its own but, for now, we’ll just say that it’s a claim that’s entirely
unsupported by scientists, naturalists, geologists… by almost everyone, really.
And it seems just the latest in a long line of conspiracy theories aiming to totally reshape
the history of the world, for reasons unknown. Ultimately, the stories and legends we tell of
giants aren’t likely to disappear anytime soon. But science is also increasingly confident that
evidence of their actual existence isn’t likely to appear anytime soon, either. Over the years,
there have been various theories put forward, suggesting that humans were once much bigger
than we are now. But, really, the only giant anythings that we have physical evidence
for… are the dinosaurs. There’s no doubting that the dinosaurs were here, and for a far longer
period of time than humans have been so far. But, beyond that, talk of giants is one big fantasy.
What do you think? Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments, check out these other
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