I am uncertain who put this chart together originally and some variations of it have been put together as well.
Let us see how its claims pan out based on descriptions which are said to come from Joe Taylor of the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum.
Many such charts, such as this one, have been made through the years. This one is from German Jesuit scholar and polymath, Athanasius Kircher’s (1602-1680 AD) book Mundus Subterraneus wherein the tallest figure in the illustration is said to have been reported by Giovanni Boccacio (1313-1375 AD) as supposedly found in Sicily in 1371 AD and which Boccacio or the 1371 report recons was 300 foot based on unspecified bones. Kircher considered the person to have been 30 feet and the 300 foot claim to be a typo: the person to the right represents an average male, then Goliath, the next one represents a report from Lucerne (see below)and finally he whom Kircher referred to as Gigas Mauritanae.
Well, even the 30 foot claim is based on Kircher’s guess regarding Boccacio’s claim based on a reported find. The 300 is now known to be impossible due to structural integrity issues: a person that tall would shatter their own bones simply attempting to walk—and they would need to walk far and wide in order to find enough food just to have enough energy to move. Consider that the tallest known dinosaur (sauroposeidon from the brachiosaurus family) was circa 60 ft./18.29 m. tall.
I am posting the chart and another version in black and white below so as to denote my conclusions.
FIGURE: A
Fair enough as it refers to modern males averaging circa 6-feet tall + or – a few with the minus being a much safer direction in which to take it.
FIGURE: B You will note that each skeleton is presented in full as someone merely used the image of a skeleton and enlarged it. In this case, the entire skeleton is based on one bone. Thus, the 15 foot height of the skeleton is based on measurements of the femur which was found in Turkey’s Euphrates valley during the late 1950s AD.
It appears that Joe Taylor noted, “Many tombs containing giants were uncovered here” even though one femur appears to be the only known, recorded, studied find. Also, by stating, “This pertains to the picture of the giant human femur and myself above” reference is apparently being made to this image:
The issue is that Taylor is the museum’s curator and artist and he stated the following regarding the femur:
I sculpted a femur 47-1/2 (120 cm) based on a report in a newsletter where it was reported on by the construction engineer who found it and other skeletons the same height. I was commissioned to sculpt the femur so a college professor could show his students how large it was…In every instance, I have told others that it is JUST A SCULPTURE. The real bone was not available…All museums have casts of specimens as well as real bones. Some have sculptures based on reports only, as this one.
Now, since the “femur” is a sculpture based 1) on a report in 2) an uncited newsletter for all we know no such bone was ever found.
Thus, I am depicting it in red as it may not actually exist.
FIGURE: C
This one is said to be Maximinus Thrax aka Gaius Julius Verus Maximinus Augustus (173-238 AD) who is thought to have been 8.5-6. He certainly appears to have been taller than the average Roman of his time who would have been 5.5. Yet, his specific height is not as per his skeleton but as per that which is reported in a text which is considered historically unreliable. Historia Augusta, “Life of Maximinus,” 6:8 states, “he was of such size, so Cordus reports, that men said he was eight foot, six inches (c. 2.5 meters) in height.” Note also that there is no ancient author or work known as “Cordus” and so it seems to be one of many fictional pseudo-sources to which the text refers.
Herodian’s Roman History, 7:1:2 states that “He was in any case a man of such frightening appearance and colossal size…” Reportedly Maximinus had oversized brow, nose and jaw which indicates that he had acromegaly which is an enlargement of body parts due to an excess of growth hormone.
Thus, this one is a maybe and his alleged specific height is not based on bones. I am posting it in yellow as an indication of doubt.
FIGURE: D This one is said to represent Goliath so again, we have no skeleton but we do have a citation which directs us to 1 Samuel 17:4 which reads, “And there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span.” The chart is said to represent him being “9 feet + or – a few inches.” However, that is an unscholarly manner in which to put it as it ignores that Goliath is taller in Greek than he is in Hebrew. This is because Hebrew manuscripts have him at circa 9.8 ft., Greek manuscripts have him at 6.7 ft. which would still be quite a bit taller than the average 5.5 male of his time.
Thus, I am overlapping a 6.7 skeleton in yellow over the 9 one.
FIGURE: E
This one is also supposed to come from the Bible as it is said to be King Og of Bashan. Again, we have no skeleton but are given the citation of Deuteronomy 3:11 which states that he was the last one who “remained of the remnant of giants.” Well, this is an interesting issue as few Hebrew words are translated into English as “giant(s)” and also the Bible refers to people who are “tall” and also “very tall” but the Bible only offers the specific heights of 4 personages none of which make it to eight feet (except for Hebrew Goliath). In this case the word “giants” is rapha’ (Strong’s #H7497). The text goes on to stated, “behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man.”
Thus, we are told nothing of Og’s height but only the size of his bed which the chart notes have as “approximately 14-feet by 6-feet wide.” From this the notes conclude that “King Og was at least 12-feet tall, yet some claim up to 18.” So in the second case, he overflowed his bed. In any case, the 12 foot guess seems reasonable even though it is a mere guess.
John Peter Lange noted the following in Lange’s Commentary on the Holy Scripture, Volume 1: “Genesis to Ruth” (Delmarva Publications, April 9, 2014 AD)
It is an interesting fact that Alexander the Great, in his march to India, arranged his camp grounds and cavalry cribs in double number and of unusual size, that he might produce in the inhabitants of the land strange ideas of the size of his army.
C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch also comment on this in The Pentateuch (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1970 AD), Vol 3, p. 302:
…in this case Clericus fancies that God ‘intentionally exceeded the necessary size, in order that posterity might be led to draw more magnificent conclusions from the size of his bed, as to the stature of the man who was accustomed to sleep in it.’ He also refers to the analogous case of Alexander the Great, of whom Diod. Sic. (xvii. 95) affirms, that whenever he was obliged to halt on his march to India, he made colossal arrangements of all kinds, causing, among other things, two couches to be prepared in the tents for every foot-soldier, each five cubits long, and two stalls for every horseman, twice as large as the ordinary size, “to represent a camp of heroes, and leave striking memorials behind for the inhabitants of the land, of gigantic men and their supernatural strength.
Thus, I am making this one yellow as the height is a mere guess.
FIGURE: F
The source of this claim appears to be John Patterson MacLean (1848-1939 AD) who was an American Universalist minister, archaeologist and historian. In his 1878 AD book Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man, in page 49 he noted that physician and professor at Basle, Felix Platen examined “large bones” found under an uprooted oak near the cloisters of Reyden, in the Canton of Lucerne, Switzerland in 1577 AD. Reportedly, MacLean calculated the 19 foot height although the specific bones found are not named or described.
This may depict Lucerne/Luzern employing the reported giant within its city arms.
MacLean notes that by 1706 “only two fragments of the skeleton remained, which, on being examined, by Blumenbach, were recognized as belonging to the elephant.” The referenced examiner was physician, naturalist, physiologist and anthropologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840 AD).
In The Scientific Class-Book, Or, a Familiar Introduction of the Principles of Physical Science, Vol. 2, Walter Rogers Johnson (1794-1852 AD), scientist, Associate of the Franklin Institute and the Academy of Natural Sciences, founding member of the Association of American Geologists and the American Association for the Advancement of Science wrote, “In 1577, Felix Plater…described several fossil bones of the elephant, found at Lucerne, as those of a giant at least 19 feet high.”
Thus, we appear to have no remains at all and the final examination of which we know identified the bones as not being human. And so, I am replacing this skeleton with the elephant head I will explain below: the same one I will used for “H.”
FIGURE: G You may find that uncovering actual factual details on these claims is difficult. One reason is that many are from long ago and far, far away. Also, when you attempt to search online you will get about a half million hits to sites that merely cut, paste and post the generic claims. For example, the notes for this one read, “23-foot tall skeleton found in 1456 A.D. beside a river in Valence, France.” And that is just about all anyone seems to know about it.
In fact, the following books are as bad as websites/blogs which contain as much scholarly acumen as is necessary to cut and paste: Michael Perlin’s Fantastic Adventures in Metaphysics, Steve Preston’s Today’s Monsters, J. Douglas Kenyon, ed. Forgotten Origins: Rescuing Order from Chaos, T.M.Sparks’ Monsters In The Bible, Volume 1 and Giants: The Amazing Truth, Eric Dubay’s The Flat-Earth Conspiracy, S.N. Strutt’s Out of the Bottomless Pit, Anthony K. Forwood’s They Would Be Gods and many, many more that I could cite merely repeat the one liner and move on to make various and sundry assertions.
Thus, I will denote it as red since no one seems to really know anything about it.
FIGURE: H This one is said to be based on a skeleton found near the castle of French Château de Chaumont castle in 1613 AD and the note states, “This was claimed to be a nearly complete find.”
The above referenced Walter Rogers Johnson wrote:
Some immense bones having been discovered in 1613, near the castle of Chaumont, in France, a surgeon of Beaurepaire, named Mazurier, procured them, and made a public and no doubt a profitable exhibition of them, as the remains of a gigantic king of the ancient Gauls, pretending that they had been inclosed in a sepulchre 30 feet in length, bearing the inscription “Teutoboshus Rex.” The bones, however, were those of an elephant.
John Patterson MacLean noted the following of a certain find which correlates with Johnson’s statements:
The first authentic history of the discovery of the remains of the mastodon dates back to the year 1613. Near the castle of Chaumont, in Dauphine (France), some bones were found in a sand-pit, which were purchased by a surgeon named Mazuya [which Johnson spells Mazurier]…Riolan, an anatomist, after having examined the bones of the pretended king, pronounced them to be those of an elephant…In the year 1832 the skeleton was removed from the Bordeaux to the Museum of Natural History in Paris, where De Blainville recognized it as belonging to the mastodon.
Some things to note in general and specifics. One is that some seems to have read about such finds and not about the subsequent research and identification. Or, they are well aware of the whole story but since it is not sexy to claim that a dead elephant was found—especially when you are seeking to puff up your website, book, “ministry,” which is based on proving the existence of human giants: with or without an alien and/or Nephilim twist—then they may only repeat those part of the tall tale which seem to fit their aggrandizement bill.
But was the mastodon 25.5 feet tall? This brings us to that there is a good reason for elephant (and their ancient cousins) as human giants—mistaken but good. As noted in my review of Adrienne Mayor’s book “The First Fossil Hunters” tusks have always been prized, thus found tusks would have been carried off especially if they were oversized and thus for valuable, this would leave behind a skeleton that would look human enough and which when laid out on the flat ground could be postured to appear as a giant human. In fact, in the case of elephants and relatives, the trunk hole in the skull may have been interpreted as an eye socket and thus we have stories about giant cyclops.
This is Mayor’s illustration of this via toy human and elephant skeletons:
Thus, I have replaced the human skeleton with the illustration of the “restored” mastodon from MacLean’s book: I will not pretend to know how tall it was so the size in the chart is not meant to be taken as in any way accurate compared to the “A” human.
FIGURE: I The note notes that this one represents, “two separate 36-foot human remains uncovered by Carthaginians somewhere between 200-600 B.C.” and that this is “Almost beyond comprehension or believability.” So the questions are: where are the skeletons? How do we know they are that tall (both of them the same)? How do we know who found them (Carthaginians)? How do we know when they found them—the date range ranges almost half a century: 200-600 BC. I would imagine that this claim comes from some or another ancient text but this is not even loosely cited.
Thus, I am making it red since all we seem to have is am almost beyond comprehension or believability claim.
So, in the end how did the chart fare? A: Pass: modern human male. B: Fail: Turkey’s Euphrates valley femur—based on an uncited “newsletter.” C: Half point: Maximinus Thrax—likely but specific are based on unreliable text. D: Half point: Goliath—not specific enough and inconclusive. E: Half point: King Og—reasonable but based on a guess. F: Fail: Canton of Lucerne, Switzerland—is an elephant. G: Fail: Valence, France—vague reference. H: Fail: French Château de Chaumont—is a mastodon.
I: Fail: Carthaginian find—vague reference.
Thus, out of 9 claims we get 1-pass, 3-half points, 5-fails.
Now, if you are aware of any specific information that will help to support any of the vague claims I reviewed, please let me know via my contact page.
Also, I wrote to two museums in France to ask them about “F” and “H”: one was Musée De Paléontologie et de l’évolution and the other was Musée de Valence, art et archéologie from which I got a reply which stated, “We could find no information about that type of discovery in our library, nor keep any skeleton of this size in the museum’s collection. I am sorry we are unable to answer your question. However, several town in France are called ‘Valence’ and the text you found might be referring to another location.”
Thus, I guess I will consider this one down and however many more to go. This was the museum at 4 Place des Ormeaux – 26000 Valence. I will reach out to which ever other museums I can find in whichever other Valences I can find and will update this article if need be.
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