Andy White Anthropology
  • Home
  • Research Interests
    • Complexity Science
    • Prehistoric Social Networks
    • Eastern Woodlands Prehistory
    • Ancient Giants
  • Blog
  • Work in Progress
    • The Kirk Project >
      • Kirk 3D Models list
      • Kirk 3D Models embedded
      • Kirk 2D images >
        • Indiana
        • Kentucky
        • Michigan
        • Ontario
      • Kirk Project Datasets
    • Computational Modeling >
      • FN3D_V3
    • Radiocarbon Compilation
    • Fake Hercules Swords
    • Wild Carolina >
      • Plants >
        • Mosses
        • Ferns
        • Conifers
        • Flowering Plants >
          • Grasses
          • Trees
          • Other Flowering Plants
      • Animals >
        • Birds
        • Mammals
        • Crustaceans
        • Insects
        • Arachnids
        • Millipedes and Centipedes
        • Reptiles and Amphibians
      • Fungi
  • Annotated Publications
    • Journal Articles
    • Technical Reports
    • Doctoral Dissertation
  • Bibliography
  • Data

An Interesting Passage from 1842 about the Evidence for Biblical Giants

1/26/2015

3 Comments

 
PictureOsmond de Beauvoir Priaulx: Inventor of the time machine. That's really the only logical explanation for how he managed to be a Smithsonian Darwinian shill in 1842.
I ran into some interesting passages as I was working on trying to understand the history of thinking on the identity and significance of the “Nephilim.” The book is titled Quaestiones Mosaicae, or the Book of Genesis Compared with the Remains of Ancient Religions, written by Osmond de Beauvoir Priaulx and published in 1842.  The stated goal of de Beauvoir Priaulx is to examine Genesis with “no preconceived theory:”

“In this way I endeavoured to seize the life and spirit of the olden world, and that life and spirit I compared and contrasted with the life and spirit of modern society” (pg. v).

In other words, he was neither trying to derive moral meanings nor attack the scripture, but to examine it in a philosophical/historical framework.

After discussing the translation of the term “Nephilim” (which he accepts as meaning “giants”), he discusses its meaning (pp. 172-175). He points out that no matter how tall Adam was, the Nephilim were still giants in comparison.  He then ponders whether giants may have really existed, and considers the physical evidence. Several passages illustrate his answer to this question:

“The question, then, which we have to settle, is, not whether man was ever twenty feet in height (in which case we might appeal to the mummies and sarcophagi of Egypt, and through them show that man, four thousand years ago, was physically very like man of the present day, and that probably, therefore, the existing races in the same countries have always averaged the same height), but whether, with and among the race of men, there has ever existed another race—now extinct—the race of giants.” (pg. 175)

In support of the existence of giants, de Beauvoir Priaulx cites the common inclusion of giants in the mythologies of several different regions of the world as well as the accounts of ancient writers that discuss the “bones of men of gigantic stature.”  It is his discussion of those skeletal remains that is interesting (emphasis in original):

“On these fossil remains, we will observe,

    1st. That, with the exception of those mentioned by Pausanias, they were the remains, and only the partial remains, of single individuals; and that they do not seem to have been ever examined with any attention , but to have been at once received as the skeletons of men. And,

    2ndly. That as no human fossil remains have been discovered since comparative anatomy has become a science, we must receive with caution all conclusions drawn by former times from some enormous tooth or thigh-bone; and with the more caution, as all such bones have, when submitted to scientific examination, been found to be the bones, not of men, but of some of those great primitive monsters who were the earth’s first inhabitants.”
(pg. 176)

After discussing some historically-known persons of large stature, de Beauvior Priaulx makes the following conclusion:

“But these historical giants are pigmies compared with the giants of mythology, or even with the Og of Moses. They are moreover few, and only prove, that we do not justly rate the maximum of human stature, and not that nature has ever produced a finer and nobler race, to be pressed from the earth by a weaker and more ignoble one. Without, therefore, altogether denying the possibility of a race of giants, we must allow that we have no evidence for, and great probabilities against, such a race having ever existed.” (pg. 177).

"No evidence for" and "great probabilities against."  That was the conclusion of someone writing prior to 1842.  That means he reached this conclusion prior to the publication of On the Origin of Species (1859), and before the establishment of the Smithsonian Institution (1846).  So you’ll have to remove from your list of reasons for his conclusion that he was an evolutionist or a government shill.  What are we left with to explain his conclusions?  He was just not satisfied with the evidence with which he was presented (mythology and misinterpreted animal bones).

That was 173 years ago. Sounds familiar.

That combination didn't make a strong case then, and it doesn't now.


3 Comments
C Hutch
1/26/2015 12:10:28 pm

So, in the past we have had giant animals, plants, birds, insects, oceanic creatures of all kinds, etc, etc, etc, but why is it so hard to consider that perhaps humans were bigger then, or even as recent as a few thousand years ago? Just thinking out loud. Everything was bigger, except "us"?

Reply
Bob Jase
1/27/2015 11:55:40 pm

Its not hard to consider the possibility of bigger humans, its just that there is hard physical evidence of the other types of animals you mention and none for human giants.

Reply
Greg Little
1/28/2015 06:12:02 am

I'm not at all sure that with evolution, humans would necessarily get bigger or smaller. More efficient, yes. More adaptive, yes. More social, yes, assuming it somehow serves some evolutionary purpose. Bigger brains or more cortex, yes. Bob (above) is succinctly correct in asserting that there is simply a lack of evidence. In recorded and known-history times, we know that humans have generally gotten a bit taller and larger. It's usually attributed to better diet and so on.




Leave a Reply.


    All views expressed in my blog posts are my own. The views of those that comment are their own. That's how it works.

    I reserve the right to take down comments that I deem to be defamatory or harassing. 

    Andy White

    Follow me on Twitter: @Andrew_A_White

    Email me: andy.white.zpm@gmail.com

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner


    Picture

    Sick of the woo?  Want to help keep honest and open dialogue about pseudo-archaeology on the internet? Please consider contributing to Woo War Two.
    Picture

    Follow updates on posts related to giants on the Modern Mythology of Giants page on Facebook.

    Archives

    January 2023
    January 2022
    November 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    March 2021
    June 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014

    Categories

    All
    3D Models
    AAA
    Adena
    Afrocentrism
    Agent Based Modeling
    Agent-based Modeling
    Aircraft
    Alabama
    Aliens
    Ancient Artifact Preservation Society
    Androgynous Fish Gods
    ANTH 227
    ANTH 291
    ANTH 322
    Anthropology History
    Anunnaki
    Appalachia
    Archaeology
    Ardipithecus
    Art
    Atlantis
    Australia
    Australopithecines
    Aviation History
    Bigfoot
    Birds
    Boas
    Book Of Mormon
    Broad River Archaeological Field School
    Bronze Age
    Caribou
    Carolina Bays
    Ceramics
    China
    Clovis
    Complexity
    Copper Culture
    Cotton Mather
    COVID-19
    Creationism
    Croatia
    Crow
    Demography
    Denisovans
    Diffusionism
    DINAA
    Dinosaurs
    Dirt Dance Floor
    Double Rows Of Teeth
    Dragonflies
    Early Archaic
    Early Woodland
    Earthworks
    Eastern Woodlands
    Eastern Woodlands Household Archaeology Data Project
    Education
    Egypt
    Europe
    Evolution
    Ewhadp
    Fake Hercules Swords
    Fetal Head Molding
    Field School
    Film
    Florida
    Forbidden Archaeology
    Forbidden History
    Four Field Anthropology
    Four-field Anthropology
    France
    Genetics
    Genus Homo
    Geology
    Geometry
    Geophysics
    Georgia
    Giants
    Giants Of Olden Times
    Gigantism
    Gigantopithecus
    Graham Hancock
    Grand Valley State
    Great Lakes
    Hollow Earth
    Homo Erectus
    Hunter Gatherers
    Hunter-gatherers
    Illinois
    India
    Indiana
    Indonesia
    Iowa
    Iraq
    Israel
    Jim Vieira
    Jobs
    Kensington Rune Stone
    Kentucky
    Kirk Project
    Late Archaic
    Lemuria
    Lithic Raw Materials
    Lithics
    Lizard Man
    Lomekwi
    Lost Continents
    Mack
    Mammoths
    Mastodons
    Maya
    Megafauna
    Megaliths
    Mesolithic
    Michigan
    Middle Archaic
    Middle Pleistocene
    Middle Woodland
    Midwest
    Minnesota
    Mississippi
    Mississippian
    Missouri
    Modeling
    Morphometric
    Mound Builder Myth
    Mu
    Music
    Nazis
    Neandertals
    Near East
    Nephilim
    Nevada
    New Mexico
    Newspapers
    New York
    North Carolina
    Oahspe
    Oak Island
    Obstetrics
    Ohio
    Ohio Valley
    Oldowan
    Olmec
    Open Data
    Paleoindian
    Paleolithic
    Pilumgate
    Pleistocene
    Pliocene
    Pre Clovis
    Pre-Clovis
    Prehistoric Families
    Pseudo Science
    Pseudo-science
    Radiocarbon
    Reality Check
    Rome
    Russia
    SAA
    Sardinia
    SCIAA
    Science
    Scientific Racism
    Sculpture
    SEAC
    Search For The Lost Giants
    Sexual Dimorphism
    Sitchin
    Social Complexity
    Social Networks
    Solutrean Hypothesis
    South Africa
    South America
    South Carolina
    Southeast
    Stone Holes
    Subsistence
    Swordgate
    Teaching
    Technology
    Teeth
    Television
    Tennessee
    Texas
    Topper
    Travel
    Travel Diaries
    Vaccines
    Washington
    Whatzit
    White Supremacists
    Wisconsin
    Woo War Two
    World War I
    World War II
    Writing
    Younger Dryas

    RSS Feed

    Picture
Proudly powered by Weebly