One could write a book about this topic, but I'm going to limit myself to a few paragraphs. The kids were up early, I've already had three cups of coffee, and it's still not light enough to go outside and play.

One of Jason Colavito's readers made this comment on his blog post yesterday about L. A. Marzulli:

This issue came up in my Forbidden Archaeology class this week during our discussion of the Nephilim, when one student noted the apparent logical disconnect between (1) the idea that angel-human matings produced the wicked offspring at the root of a long Nephilim bloodline and (2) the idea that those wicked offspring were homosexuals. 

I've watched several Nephilim-centric videos during the last week that I've never seen before, including this 2015 presentation by Joe Taylor, a portion of the round table discussion from that same conference (I'm still working my way through that one), and this 2013 video by Discover Ministries titled "Nephilim Among Us: Human-Animal Hybrids, Eugenics, GMOs & Transhumanism."

I think the content of these videos provides an answer to Ken's question: for Nephilim enthusiasts, it's all about what constitutes a "normal" mating and what constitutes a "wicked" mating. Human males and human females? That's normal. Angels and human females? Wicked. Angels and animals? Wicked. Males and other males? Wicked. The Nephilim are constantly doing things that go against nature and, therefore, against God. I'm guessing that homosexuality is thrown into that "wicked" basket as part of the generalized bundle of "unnatural" matings from which the Nephilim arose and subsequently partake in. That's my theory right now. 

Without going through these videos again to carefully build and support an argument about what they mean, I'll make the following broad observations:

• The Nephilim-centric view of the world now accepts as literal all ancient mythology. No longer are non-biblical traditions unreliable (because they are not biblical). Greek mythology, Norse mythology, Native American legends, Sumerian myths . . . they can and must all be taken literally. Bigfoot probably fits in there somewhere, as well.

• Nephilim enthusiasts like these extra-biblical traditions because they are replete with tales of hybrid human-animal creatures, all of which are associated with the Nephilim. Mermaids? Cyclops? Skinwalkers? Medusa? Those are all Nephilim, the result of unnatural matings between Nephilim and animals. In one of the videos, one of the guys simply says "they mated with everything." 

• The wicked behaviors of the Nephilim, resulting in all those unnatural hybrids running (or swimming, or flying, as the case may be) around in the ancient world, is mirrored today by our own wicked tinkering with the genetics of plants, animals, and humans. The government knows it, big business knows it, the global elites know it, and they're all hiding the wicked realities from the rest of us. The logo on your Starbucks cup? Nephilim.

• Nephilim enthusiasts know that physical evidence of their claims ranges from nonexistent to incredibly weak. Since they still can't provide an example of the physical remains of a single giant human, humanoid, or animal-humanoid hybrid, suppression of that evidence must also be part of a global conspiracy.  The absence of physical evidence is actually presented as evidence of a conspiracy to hide evidence.

• But pay no attention to the lack of giant bones.  Let's broaden the dragnet and cull ancient and modern mythologies to gather up context-free examples that fit a general "hybrid theory" of the Nephilim. Let's take literally the parts of those mythologies that fit the Nephilim worldview, but leave on the cutting floor those that do not. Sure, let's play tennis, but let's take down the net first!​​

I'm guessing that this "hybrid theory" and its attendant capacity to suck all of human mythology into the Nephilim whirlpool is not new. Having only just been exposed to it, its hard to know where and when it started or how long it has been brewing. The ridiculousness of Nephilim fetishists bears watching not because of the absurd claims related to non-existent physical evidence but because of the way it connects with various political, social, and religious agendas.  One doesn't have to look too far back in history to find examples of how definitions of "natural" and "unnatural" matings articulated with policies used to define and oppress human populations in this country.

Here's my second attempt at privileging the quick over the perfect.

In this 2015 presentation (which we discussed this week in my Forbidden Archaeology class), Joe Taylor claims the following (starting about 55:20):

"Enoch says there were men . . . I think he says 1200 feet tall, or ells, or 450 feet, you know. I think there's evidence of a 450-foot-tall man that's been found. There's a tibia that used to be used as a bridge somewhere in the Middle East, somewhere.  Four hundred and fifty feet tall. There's a tiba,a human tibia, supposedly . . . there's no dinosaur on the whole earth with a tibia more than 10 feet long. Maybe there will be, but a 450-foot man has a 100-foot-long tibia. So let's say he's buried in the Flood, well there's a lot of bulk, a lot of fat and stuff around that. Maybe he's covered in a hundred feet of mud, well then in a few hundred years that erodes away. In a few thousand years he's down to his bones. They still have a lot of fat in them. And this one bone is long enough to make a bridge with. Okay, so . . . he had to have been buried in the Flood, so maybe that report is true. Maybe there were men 450 feet tall." 

I had never before heard the claim of a 100-foot-long tibia used as a bridge, so I tried to track down the source.

First, I found this 14th-century account by Bavarian traveler Johann Schiltberger (English translation published in 1879 in The Bondage and Travels of Johann Schiltberger; I copied this text from Jason Colavito's "Fragments of Giants" page):

​"It is to be noted, that in Egypt there was a giant, who was called in the Infidel tongue, Allenklaisser. In this country is the city called Missir, but the Christians call it Kayr [i.e. Cairo], and it is the capital of the king-sultan. In this same city are twelve thousand baking ovens. Now the said giant was so strong, that one day he brought into the city a bundle of wood to heat all the ovens, and one bundle was enough; each baker gave him a loaf, which makes twelve thousand loaves. All these he ate in one day. The shin-bone of this giant is in Arabia, in a valley between two mountains. There is a deep valley between the rocks, where flows a river at such a depth that no person can see it, one only hears its rush. It is in this same valley that the shin-bone of the giant serves as a bridge; and whoever comes there, whether they are riding or on foot, must pass over this shin-bone. It is also on a road where traders pass, coming and going, because the defile is so narrow, that people cannot pass by any other way; and the Infidels say that this bone is one frysen [i.e. parasang—about 3 miles] in length, which is equal to an arrow's flight, or more. There, a toll is taken from traders; with the same, they buy oil to anoint the bone that it may not rot. It is not a long time since a king-sultan had a bridge built near the bone; it is about two hundred years [ago], according to an inscription on the bridge. When a lord comes there with many people, he passes over the bridge, and does not pass over the bone; but whoever wishes to pass over this wonder, may do so, that he may say of it that in this country there is an incredible thing, and which is nevertheless surely true. And if it were not true, or had I not seen it, I would not have spoken or written about it." 

In The History of the Mongols, from the 9th to the 19th Century (Henry Howarth, 1880) there is this passage describing a meeting between the Mongol ruler Berebe and some envoys from Sultan Bibar of Egypt (1223-1277):

​"They had several audiences with Bereke, who asked them many questions about Egypt, about elephants and giraffes, and one day asked if the report was true that there was a giant's bone thrown across the Nile which served as a bridge. The envoys replied that they had not heard of such a thing.*

*In regard to this report, M. Quartremere tells us it was founded on a very ancient Arabic tradition. In "The History of the Conquest of Egypt," written by Abd al Hakam, we are told that a giant named Auj, having been killed by Moses, his body fell across the Nile and made a bridge. Schlitberger, the Bavarian traveller, tells us that there was a bridge in Arabia made out of a giant's leg bone, which united two rocks separated by a deep chasm. Travellers to Arabia had to cross this bridge. A toll was charged, from the proceeds of which oil was bought with which to oil the bone, and thus prevent it decaying. (Op. cit., 218. Note.)."

This 1880 version of The Bondage and Travels of Johann Schiltberger contains notes (pp. 216-217) that attempt to reconcile the Schlitberger and Mongol versions of the bridge story:

     "We read in Abd-el-Hakam's history of the conquest of Egypt (Makrizi by Quatremere, I, i, 218), that the body of a giant killed by Moses fell across the Nile and served as a bridge. With this legend may be associated Schiltberger's tale, and his credulity need not be wondered at when we consider, that in the 13th century the story was thought worthy of being related; and some there were even bold enough to tell it to the powerful ruler of the Golden Horde, Bereke Khan, who enquired of the ambassadors sent to him in 1263 by the sultan Bibars, whether it was true that the bone of a giant, laid across the Nile, was being used as a bridge! The ambassadors, who had been probably selected from among the most enlightened of the sultan's minsters, replied that they had never seen it, and answer that may have been elicited by the nature of the question, because the strange bridge seen by Schiltberger must have been in Arabia and not in Egypt. It united two rocks separated by a profound ravine in the depths of which coursed a torrent, and as it afforded the only practicable means for crossing the ravine on the high road, travelers were obliged to pass over it.
     "I cannot believe that these topographic details were invented by Schiltberger, and am therefore inclined to think that he alludes to the neighborhood of the fortresses of Kerak and Shaubek, places that acquired considerable importance during the Crusades in consequence of their admirable situations. They are easily identified with "Crach" and "Sebach" mentioned by De Lannoy . . . 
    "Shaubek, the "Mons regalis" of the Crusaders, thirty-six miles from Kerak, was also a strong place. Burckhardt tells us that a ravine, three hundred feet in depth, encircles the citadel . . .
     "According to an Arabian author quoted by Quatremere (l. c. II, i, 245), the road near these two cities was so peculiar that it could have been held by one man against a hundred horsemen.  Another reason for the supposition that the bridge seen by Schlitberger was in one of these passages, lies in the fact that the same writer includes the tomb of Iskender among the holy places of pilgrimage in this ancient country; but he does not determine the individuality of that Iskender.
     On the hypothesis that "Allenklaisser's" limb was near the tomb of Iskender, I should be inclined to look in the same locality for the bridge that was constructed, according to the inscription it bore, two hundred years before Schiltberger saw it. . . . This circumstance, no doubt, induced the "king-sultan" to order the construction of a bridge for keeping up communication between two parts of his kingdom, the new bridge being near the old one that was kept smeared with oil, a condition that had the effect of persuading the guileless Bavarian that it was indeed a gigantic bone."

I haven't had time to look into the geography of area that the last writer identifies as a possible source of Schiltberger's tale of a giant bone used as a bridge. That will have to wait, as lightning time is over for the day.

My Forbidden Archaeology students will be watching this 2015 video of Joe Taylor over the weekend so we can discuss it in class on Monday as part of the section on giants. I chose the video because Taylor, a Young Earth Creationist, is an active advocate of the idea that demonstrating the existence of giants would prove the Bible to be true and the theory of evolution to be false. 

In the preamble to his presentation of his evidence for giants, Taylor provides an "update" on the ongoing activities of the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum. Those activities apparently included a trip to investigate Lovelock Cave (Nevada) firsthand (beginning around 7:00 in the video). Lovelock Cave is one of those sites that holds pull for just about every element of the "fringe:" giantologists, alien enthusiasts, Bigfoot believers, etc. I've written a little about the human remains from the Lovelock Cave area before (here and here).

Taylor's brief discussion of Lovelock irked me for two reasons. First, he uncritically repeats the mistaken notion that there are Paiute legends of "red-headed giants" inhabiting the cave. Second, he describes activities during his "investigation" that probably violate laws protecting archaeological sites on federal land. 

Sarah Winnemucca's "Red-Headed Giants"

Talking about his visit with some Native Americans to discuss the cave, Taylor says the following:

​"This gal here is a descendant of Chief Winnemucca, and Sarah Winnemucca was her great great aunt, I guess. This is Sarah Winnemucca, who wrote a lot about the red-headed giants -- wrote the whole story."

No, she didn't: the often-repeated claim that Sarah Winnemucca wrote about cannibalistic, red-haired giants is false.

​The source of the "red-headed giant" claim is the 1883 book by Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins titled Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims.  The people paraphrasing this book should take the time to actually read it: nowhere does Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins discuss "red-headed giants." The part relevant to Lovelock is the last paragraph of Chapter IV.  I'll reproduce that whole paragraph for our convenience:

"Among the traditions of our people is one of a small tribe of barbarians who used to live along the Humboldt River. It was many hundred years ago. They used to waylay my people and kill and eat them. They would dig large holes in our trails at night, and if any of our people travelled at night, which they did, for they were afraid of these barbarous people, they would oftentimes fall into these holes. That tribe would even eat their own dead – yes, they would even come and dig up our dead after they were buried, and would carry them off and eat them. Now and then they would come and make war on my people. They would fight, and as fast as they killed one another on either side, the women would carry off those who were killed. My people say they were very brave. When they were fighting they would jump up in the air after the arrows that went over their heads, and shoot the same arrows back again. My people took some of them into their families, but they could not make them like themselves. So at last they made war on them. This war lasted a long time. Their number was about twenty-six hundred (2600). The war lasted some three years. My people killed them in great numbers, and what few were left went into the thick bush. My people set the bush on fire. This was right above Humboldt Lake. Then they went to work and made tuly or bulrush boats, and went into Humboldt Lake. They could not live there very long without fire. They were nearly starving. My people were watching them all round the lake, and would kill them as fast as they would come on land. At last one night they all landed on the east side of the lake, and went into a cave near the mountains. It was a most horrible place, for my people watched at the mouth of the cave, and would kill them as they came out to get water. My people would ask them if they would be like us, and not eat people like coyotes or beasts. They talked the same language, but they would not give up. At last my people were tired, and they went to work and gathered wood, and began to fill up the mouth of the cave. Then the poor fools began to pull the wood inside till the cave was full. At last my people set it on fire; at the same time they cried out to them, "Will you give up and be like men, and not eat people like beasts? Say quick – we will put out the fire." No answer came from them. My people said they thought the cave must be very deep or far into the mountain. They had never seen the cave nor known it was there until then. They called out to them as loud as they could, "Will you give up? Say so, or you will all die." But no answer came. Then they all left the place. In ten days some went back to see if the fire had gone out. They went back to my third or fifth great-grandfather and told him they must all be dead, there was such a horrible smell. This tribe was called people-eaters, and after my people had killed them all, the people round us called us Say-do-carah. It means conqueror; it also means "enemy." I do not know how we came by the name of Piutes. It is not an Indian word. I think it is misinterpreted. Sometimes we are called Pine-nut eaters, for we are the only tribe that lives in the country where Pine-nuts grow. My people say that the tribe we exterminated had reddish hair. I have some of their hair, which has been handed down from father to son. I have a dress which has been in our family a great many years, trimmed with this reddish hair. I am going to wear it some time when I lecture. It is called the mourning dress, and no one has such a dress but my family."

Cannibals? Yes.

Red hair?  Yes.

Giants?  No. 

In fact, the word "giant" is only used once in the entire document, when the author tells us that tales about giants are "make-believe stories:" 

The inconvenient fact that Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins never discussed red-haired giants in Lovelock Cave has not stopped numerous "researchers" from proclaiming that she did. Taylor apparently made a field trip to Lovelock to search for evidence of these imagined "giants" for himself, which brings me to the second (and more troubling) part of Taylor's discussion.

The Defacement of Lovelock Cave

Joe Taylor apparently took it upon himself to deface the site during his visit.

Here's what Taylor says:

"Inside the cave -- this is inside the walls of the cave -- and the whole ceiling has been blackened. I took a little scraping of that stuff to have it analyzed.  We also . . . it looked like there's a big hand print on the wall. They were thinking it was an impression, and I said well I think it's just a . . . it's like someone put their hand in paint and smacked the wall. The hand print was a whole 12-14 inches long, you know, five fingers. So I molded that thing, on the wall, which is dang near impossible to do.  And about twenty of these BLM guys started coming up and we go "we're cooked." So they came in, looked around, and we just chatted with them a while and they went in the cave and came back out and "how do you do" and went on."

Taylor scraped deposits off the ceiling and he used some kind of molding material on what was apparently rock art. Those are not things a person is allowed to do without a permit on a publicly-owned, federally-protected archaeological site. Here are some relevant sections of 43CFR7, which covers the protection of archaeological resources on federal land:

Section 7.4 "(a) . . . no person may excavate, remove, damage, or otherwise alter or deface, or attempt to excavate, remove, damage, or otherwise alter or deface any archaeological resource located on public lands or Indian lands unless such activity is pursuant to a permit issued under Sec. 7.8 or exempted by Sec. 7.5(b) of this part."

Section 7.5 "(a) Any person proposing to excavate and/or remove archaeological resources from public lands or Indian lands, and to carry out activities associated with such excavation and/or removal, shall apply to the Federal land manager for a permit for the proposed work, and shall not begin the proposed work until a permit has been issued." 

I'm not a lawyer, but I think what Taylor claims he did probably violates 43CFR7. Taylor's comment about his worries when officials from the Bureau of Land Management approached suggests that he knew, or was at least concerned, that what he was doing was illegal. Both of Taylor's activities (the scraping and the molding) permanently altered the cave, which is an important and well-known archaeological site (if you want to learn more about the actual archaeology of the site, the Wikipedia entry is a good place to start).  And for what purpose? To chase imaginary giants he supposes were discussed in a book that he apparently has not even bothered to read closely.

What a dumb thing to do.

Here is a webpage by someone named Ron Morehead who was apparently on this trip with Taylor. He wonders what happened to the "giant hand print" after they attempted to make a mold of it -- apparently it's no longer visible.

Imagine if every person with some kind of unsupported theory about the past took it upon himself to scrape archaeologicaldeposits from ceilings to satisfy their own unfocused curiosity, or to throw chemicals on rock art (apparently just to show it was only rock art and not an impression?).  What if every bozo with a ridiculous idea about the "Mound Builders" grabbed a shovel and went out to investigate on his own? 

Archaeological resources are irreplaceable. Do you think Joe Taylor's vigilante "investigation" of Lovelock Cave helps us learn more about it? There's obviously a cost to the permanent alteration that happens when people move things, or scrape the ceiling, or put chemicals on the wall, but what's the benefit? Archaeological sites like Lovelock Cave belong to everyone -- they are a public resource. Your privilege to "investigate" imaginary giants ends when you start having a real physical impact on things that don't belong to you.

This kind of crap isn't harmless.

Regular readers of this blog may remember last year's story of the Helenwood Devil, an anthropomorphic clay statue made in the 1920's apparently for the purpose of liberating money from the gullible and/or curious. I was made aware of the Helenwood Devil (aka "The Devil of Scott County") in a piece about a "race of horned humans" posted by Kristan Harris. The account also appeared on the Greater Ancestors World Museum (GAWM) website, where it was interpreted as good evidence for angel-human hybridization.

To Harris' credit, he edited his story after I wrote about the artificial origin of the "devil" statue. The tale remains on the GAWM website to this day, however, serving as evidence not of the Nephilim but of what happens when you are so in love with an idea that you can't even bear to shine the dimmest critical light on your heap of "evidence."  Just look at the thing: 

You've really got to hold your nose to let that thing pass the sniff test.

With Harris' rejection of the Devil, membership in the Fan Club was down to one. It is with regret but not surprise, however, that I report to you that membership is up: the account of the Helenwood Devil is, once again, put forth as "evidence" for whatever it is that Fritz Zimmerman is talking about in his 2015 book The Encyclopedia of Ancient Giants in North America.  The book, which appears to be yet another uncritical cut-and-paste compilation of media accounts marketed as "research," includes the Helenwood Devil in the chapter titled "Giant Humans With Horns" (pg. 295). Either Zimmerman didn't do the basic research necessary to discover that the Helenwood Devil was actually a clay statue, or he doesn't care.  I'm not sure which is worse, and I'm not sure it matters.  Uncritically presenting the Helenwood Devil account as "evidence" for anything is, in my opinion, a self-evident demonstration of an extreme disinterest in  the process or outcomes of research. That's as nicely as I can put it.

Here's another post about how the inability or unwillingness to use whatever tools are available to discriminate between credible and non-credible evidence is symptomatic of pseudo-science in general.

On a related note, L. A. Marzulli vouches for Zimmerman's abilities in the forward (sic) to the Encyclopedia, stating that Zimmerman is a "champion of the truth" and a "class A researcher."  So there you go.

I finally found the sermon that I mentioned in yesterday's blog post about the "giant" 5'10" Neanderthals of the Near East. It is a 1976 sermon by Harold E. Shull titled "Giants in the Earth," archived here in Ministry. Ministry describes itself as an international journal for pastors, the content of which is mostly produced and read by Seventh-day Adventist pastors and ministers.  

This post is mostly to bookmark the sermon so I don't lose track of it again.

Shull's sermon is a mash-up of references from the Bible and quotes from Ellen G. White, the main founding visionary of the Seventh-day Adventist church. Shull hits the main points of White's vision of the antediluvian world and its population of gigantic, long-lived, and incredibly smart people, asking what this would have meant for the state of human society and technology before the Flood:

"Could illustrious scholars of our time be placed in contrast with men of the same age who lived before the Flood, they would appear as greatly inferior in mental as in physical strength. As the years of man have decreased, and his physical strength has diminished, so his mental capacities have lessened. There are men who now apply themselves to study during a period of from twenty to fifty years, and the world is filled with admiration of their attainments. But how limited are these acquirements in comparison with those of men whose mental and physical powers were developing for centuries." —Patriarchs and Prophets, pp. 82, 83. What about the level of technology before the Flood? "There perished in the Flood greater inventions of art and human skill than the world knows of to day"--The SDA Bible Commentary, Ellen G. White Comments, on Gen. 6:4, p. 1089. The servant of God adds, "More was lost in the Flood, in many ways, than men today know.""

Despite a complete lack of evidence, the idea that humans today are "degenerated" from our "bigger, better, and smarter" forbears is promoted today among Seventh-day Adventists such as Dr. Ben Carson and Young Earth Creationists like Joe Taylor and Kent Hovind. It shows up in 1950's creationism and early 20th century Baptist ideas about Flood geology and the antediluvian world. It has its roots prior to Ellen G. White's writings of the late 1800's. This 1976 sermon is another data point linking the transfer of these ideas through time. The "bigger, better, smarter" version of Christian thinking on giants stands in stark contrast to the evil currents of the Nephilim whirlpool.

If there is one thing I have conclusively demonstrated to myself over the course of my life, it is my ability to lose track of things even in the presence of an immense set of tools to do exactly the opposite. Go me. This is one of the main reasons why I often write about things as I come across them: saving something for later often means it goes to the bottom of some stack somewhere, never to re-surface.

I ran across the topic of this post while I was searching (unsuccessfully, so far) for a 1960's sermon about giants by a Seventh-Day Adventist preacher. I came across that sermon months ago but never wrote about, and I haven't yet been able to relocate it despite being sure I saved it more than once. I can't recall the name of the preacher, the publication, or the sermon. I'll keep searching for that sermon. In the meantime, I give you this account about of a "giant skeleton" from the Holy Land, described in a paragraph from the January 7, 1933, edition of The Gospel Messenger: 

"The mounds and caves of the Near East continue to yield archaeological items of interest. Thus there was recently reported the finding of the skeleton of a giant in a cave at Athlit, Palestine. The find is said to resemble that of Paleanthropus Palestinus found a year ago at Mt. Carmel. These prehistoric men differed from all others in their long limbs, jutting chins, and awninglike ridges over their eyes. Maybe it was the descendants of some of these that the spies saw when they went up to look over the promised land."

The Gospel Messenger (1883-1965) was the official paper of the Church of the Brethren, a Christian denomination that traces its roots to early 1700's Germany.

Several things in the paragraph from The Gospel Messenger caught my attention. First was the use of "Paleanthropus Palestinus," a taxonomic construct that I don't remember seeing before.  Second was, of course, the phrase "skeleton of a giant." Third was the connection made between fossil evidence and biblical stories.

Spoiler alert: the "giant skeletons" recovered from the cave were none other than the Neandertals of Skhul Cave, one of the most well-known Paleolithic sites in the Near East. The remains were described in a detail in a 1937 report. The "giants" of Skhul Cave were not giants in all, ranging in estimated stature from about 5'7" to a staggering 5'10."  In addition to the formal report ( available online for anyone to see), numerous accounts of the discoveries in the popular media discuss the remains without describing them as those of "giants" That hasn't stopped today's giant "researchers" from uncritically embracing a 1932 article in The Milwaukee Journal that added the word "giant" to the text and headline.

The early 1930's was a time of rapid discovery in the Near East.  In 1932, work in the caves of Palestine revealed the first relatively complete remains of Neanderthals outside of Europe (the "Galilee skull," more commonly known to paleoanthropologists today as Zuttiyeh and classified as Homo heidelbergensis was discovered in 1925; the burial of an infant Neanderthal had been reported from Skhul cave in 1931). These discoveries were widely reported in newspapers and magazines: I found nine separate stories about the discoveries printed in The New York Times between May of 1932 and January of 1933. An Associated Press story also made the rounds in the summer of 1932, and an illustrated feature appeared in Every Week Magazine (a Sunday supplement) appeared in the fall. 

The New York Times articles I located trace the discoveries from three skeletons announced in May of 1932, to the announcement of the discovery of four more in June, to the shipment of eight skeletons to London in January of 1933. In on June 26 of 1932, the New York Times ran a piece by Dorothy Garrod that provided a physical description of the remains Garrod, a professor at Cambridge who was involved in the Skhul fieldwork, described the remains as having "powerfully developed" supraorbital ridges (the ridges of bone over the eyes), high cranial vaults, prognathic faces, and "well-marked" chins.  Garrod contrasts these features with those of European Neanderthals, explaining why Sir Arthur Keith proposed that the new taxon of Paleanthropus Palestinus (sic). Garrod says only one thing relevant to the stature of these individuals:

"The limb bones are massive but are markedly longer than those of the dwarfish Neanderthaler."

Theodore McCown, the excavator of the skeletons, was directly quoted in a New York Times piece from August 6, 1932:

"Although they were a tall people, they probably stopped and walked with a shambling gait."

The word "giant" does not appear in the New York Times coverage until a January 11 story (attributed simply to "Wireless") that describes the Skhul remains as "skeletons of eight prehistoric giants" that were shipped "embedded in huge blocks of stone." That story post-dates both the (January 7, 1933) account in The Gospel Messenger that I quoted above and a similar story from The Milwaukee Journal (December 16, 1932) that is reproduced on the websites of several giant enthusiasts (e.g., here, here, and here).  Here is a transcript of the Milwaukee Journal article:

"FIND GIANT SKELETON IN CAVE IN PALESTINE

Another Mousterian skeleton, resembling those of the so-called Mount Carmel men discovered last year, has been found in the caves at Athlit, Palestine. The remains of the Mt. Carmel men were first found by Theodore McCown, a young American archaeologist. The men were a race of giants who were contemporary with the Neanderthal men of Europe. They differed from all other prehistoric men in their long limbs, jutting chins, and in the enormous ridges over their eyes."

The Milwaukee Journal story, the earliest I have seen so far to refer to the Skhul skeletons as "giants," is credited to "Special Cable."  The Milwaukee Journal story is not the ultimate source of the nonsense claim that the Skhul skeletons were giants -- that honor goes to a story that was apparently written for Christian consumption as a supplemented version of another story that I have yet to locate. The earliest version I have found so far is dated January 5, so there must be an earlier one out there that pre-dates the Milwaukee Journal story. Here is a quote from a story titled "There Were Giants" printed in the January 5, 1933, edition of The Harrisburg Telegraph:

" . . . After the manner of many modern demonstrations of the accuracy of Biblical accounts formerly questioned by doubting Thomases among the "higher critics," it is now reported that there really "were giants in those days."
   News has been received that another Mousterian skeleton, resembling those of the so-called "Mt. Carmel men" discovered last year, has been found in the caves of Athlit, Palestine.
   These men were a race of giants contemporary with the Neadnerthal [sic] men of Europe, but differing in that they had exceptionally long limbs and enormous, awning-like ridges over their eyes.
    Here in America we occasionally hear of the finding of the bones of a giant, but except for the admittedly large stature of our own Susquehannock Indians, there is no evidence that giants inhabited this continent."

Based on the use of the distinctive phrase "awning-like ridges," I'm guessing the account in The Gospel Messenger was drawn from a story similar to the one in the Harrisburg Telegraph. "Awning-like" is also used in the later story in the New York Times story with "giants" in the headline. My guess is that sometime in early-to-mid December, someone, somewhere wrote a story about one of the final skeletons uncovered at Skhul and decided to spice it up a little bit by taking these "taller than Neanderthal" people and turning them into giants. Whether or not that original story was packaged intentionally to interest Christians seeking confirmation of the Bible I don't know, but it seems to have been used that way at the time and continues to be used that way today.  Then as now, in the absence of giants you just make hem up.

​So, getting back to reality, you can read the full report of the Skhul remains online if you want to wade through all the nitty gritty and/or don't want to take my word for it that the Milwaukee Journal didn't somehow know something about the remains from Skhul that the original excavators (and The New York Times) did not. If you don't want to read it all yourself, here are some highlights relevant to the size of the skeletons:

"The Skhul men, like the male Cromagnons, were tall; their stature ranged from 5 ft. 6.7 in. (1,700 mm.) to 5 ft. 10.3 in. (1,787 mm)." (pp. 16-17)

"The length of the foot in these fossil people is in no way remarkable." (pg. 20)

"There the longest of the Palestinian tibiae, that of Skhul IV, is set side by side with three others . . . The maximum length in Skhul IV is 430 mm. for the right bone and 434 mm. for the left. If we apply the formula of Pearson (1898) . . . we obtain a mean tibial stature of 1,813 mm. (71.3 in.); using Manouvrier's tables . . . the result is still more, namely 1,875 mm. (73.8 in.)." (pg. 41).

​"It is at once apparent that we are dealing with a tall race of men, with a body conformation very different from the Neanderthaliens of Europe -- short and stout men. . . . The statures of the four men run from 1,709 mm. (5 ft. 7.2 in.) to 1,787 mm. (5 ft. 10 in.)." (pg. 58)

That the "giant skeletons" from Palestine were nothing of the sort is plain to see with a little bit of investigation. They weren't giants, and information about them was not suppressed. I will bet that none of the websites using this case as an example, however, will change: the uncritical embrace of any old piece of paper with the word "giant" printed on it is a staple among today's cut-and-paste giant enthusiasts. ​Systematic scrutiny and culling of nonsense "giant" accounts would leave little if any ammunition available for the "how can all of these accounts be wrong?" baloney cannon. Dumb. What else can you really say about a world where manufactured clay statues are accepted as evidence.

Here's a recently recycled story that has nothing to do with "Roman swords:" a re-report that the root system of a tree in Sweden has been radiocarbon dated to about 9550 years ago. I'm not sure if the age is in calendar years or radiocarbon years, but it's a pretty old tree regardless.

Apparently the tree (a spruce named "Old Tjikko" after the finder's dog) is just one of several spruces in Sweden with root systems older than 8000 years. You can add Old Tjikko and those other spruces to the ever-growing file of direct, easily-understandable evidence that the earth is more than 6000 years old, as maintained by Young Earth Creationism.

Image source.

The large teeth of a creature that would become known as Gigantopithecus were first encountered by science in 1935 after several were purchased from a Hong Kong drugstore.  Those teeth -- without any other parts of the skeleton -- were interpreted by physical anthropologists working in Asia as the remains of a huge creature.  While there were differing opinions as to whether the teeth had belonged to gigantic apes or gigantic humans, Ralph von Koenigswald, Franz Weidenreich, and W. C. Pei all agreed that Gigantopithecus was enormous.  

Those large teeth still fuel discussions of what the anatomy of Gigantopithecus was like. Estimates of very large body size (1000 lbs . . . 1200 lbs . . . ) attract a quantity of attention from Bigfoot enthusiasts, Creationists, and other "fringe" theorists that far exceeds that paid to other fossil apes. But where do those estimates come from? As I discussed briefly in this post, all of our information about Gigantopithecus is based on isolated teeth and a handful of mandibles.  That's something to go on, but not a lot. The complicated nature of the relationships between body size and tooth size, problematic when the first teeth of Gigantopithecus were discovered in the 1930's, remains an analytical issue today.  

How do we go from tooth size to body size?  Very carefully. Stanley Garn and Arthur Lewis discussed the matter in a 1958 paper in American Anthropologist titled "Tooth-Size, Body-Size and 'Giant' Fossil Man:"  

    "On the basis of morphology and size together, Von Koenigswald decided that the Hong Kong and Sangiran teeth and jaw fragments came from “giant apes.” However, Weidenreich later concluded that both the 1935-1939 Hong Kong [Gigantopithecus] teeth and the 1939-1941 Sangiran [Meganthropus] tooth-jaw fossils were the remains of true men, though extraordinarily large men, from the early Sino-Malaysian fauna (Weidenreich 1945:123-24). Finally, in his recent article, W. C. Pei reverted to the idea of a giant anthropoid and estimated that the “giant” ape of Luntsai stood “some twelve feet” high (Pei 1957:836).
    What is the evidence that these three sets of finds, separated from each other by space and time, all came from gigantic beings? How convincing is the evidence that big teeth necessarily indicate extraordinary stature? Lacking the postcranial skeletons, direct proof of body size does not exist. What remains is such indirect proof as can be gleaned from tooth-size relationships in man and apes. “This” admitted Franz Weidenreich . . . “is a very ticklish question. . . "

The question is "ticklish" because of the fact that tooth size, in addition to being related to body size, is also related to things like diet.  Similar-sized animals that eat different things emphasize different teeth. Animals that have to grind a lot of tough plant food tend to have cheek teeth (molars and premolars) with large grinding surfaces.  Animals whose diet consists of softer foods (like fruits) or involves lots of cutting and tearing (as in carnivores) typically don't have large chewing teeth relative to their body size because they don't need them (they're not selected for).

At the time Weidenreich wrote his 1945 monograph "Giant Early Man from Java and South China," the known fossil remains of Gigantopithecus consisted of just three teeth. Weidenreich's detailed comparative analysis of those teeth convinced him that Gigantopithecus was a hominid and a human ancestor. His discussion of the possible size of Gigantopithecus, while following from that conclusion, was cautious (pg. 111):

'In Gigantopithecus the length of the lower molar row is only twice that of modern man, not eight times, as in the lemur example. When the dimensions for the femur are calculated on the basis of the lemur ratio for the femur and the hominid ratio for the length of the molar row, the Gigantopithecus femur proves to be little longer than the femur of modern man and only slightly thicker. The same holds true for Meganthropus. Therefore, we can dismiss the body dimensions of the giant hominids, Gigantopithecus and Meganthropus, with the very general statement that they must have had large, heavy, and massive skulls, large strong trunks, but only slightly longer and stronger leg bones. No more precise statement can be made." 

Weidenreich died in 1948 and never got to see the Gigantopithecus mandibles that were discovered in the late 1950's. Consideration of those mandibles (and the growing number of isolated teeth available for study), led Elwyn Simons and Peter Ettel to argue in a 1970 article in Scientific American that Gigantopithecus was a large, herbivorous ape weighing as much as 600 lbs (272 kg) and standing about 9' (2.7 m) tall when upright. Simons and Ettel reconstructed Gigantopithecus with a posture and body plan like a gorilla. The body size estimate of Simons and Ettel was somewhat informal, based on a general appraisal of the size of jaw and assuming ​a proportional relationship between jaw size and body size.  

The 1980's saw the publication of studies that considered the allometry of tooth/body size relationships across primate taxa. A 1982 paper by Philip Gingerich et al. ("Allometric Scaling in the Dentition of Primates and Prediction of Body Weight From Tooth Size in Fossils") considered how tooth area scales to body weight among extant primates and used that information to estimate the weight of fossil primates. I have reproduced the figure from their paper that shows the logarithmic relationship and the regression formula based on that relationship.

While there is a general, positive relationship between tooth area and body weight among extant primates (which is a good thing for those of us interested in fossils), Gingerich et al.'s (1982) analysis makes it clear that there's a lot more going on than a simple, direct relationship.  What part of the relationship is based on geometry (bigger teeth as a result of bigger bodies) and what part is based on dietary adaptations (tooth size related to diet)? Good question.  Gingerich et al. (1982:99) concluded that

"Much remains to be learned about allometric scaling of tooth size and body weight in the dentition of primates and other mammals.  Our results demonstrate that there is a coherent pattern of differences in scaling at different tooth positions across the whole range of generalized primates.  We have not investigated how this general pattern might change if primates were subdivided into smaller taxonomic groups or into dietary guilds." 

As far as I can tell, that remains at least somewhat true today (I have yet to make a concerted effort to get into the current literature on tooth/body size scaling . . . hopefully I can get around to it soon).  Although we clearly know more about tooth/body size relationships than we used to, the estimation of primate body size from isolated teeth remains problematic.  While there are general relationships, they're not necessarily proportional. A big tooth doesn't necessarily mean a proportionally giant creature.

The large tooth from Denisova Cave is good example of how "big" is still equated with "giant" in the absence of other evidence.  According to this 2010 paper, the Denisovan tooth (probably a second molar) is the largest human tooth ever discovered. Because of its size (and because there aren't any other Denisovan fossils that can tell us something directly about body size), it has been interpreted by the fringe as evidence of giants (I wrote a little about it here). The tooth reportedly measures 13.1 mm by 14.7 mm, giving an area estimate of 192.5 square mm. Notably, it is smaller than the corresponding teeth of some austalopithecines (who were smaller in body size than humans but had a very tough diet, and, hence, big chewing teeth).  If I plug that area into the Gingerich et al. (1982) regression shown above (yes, I know it was based on areas of first molars, not second molars, but bear with me for the sake of general comparisons)  I get a body mass estimate of about 200 lbs (91 kg).  

Two hundred pounds: is that a giant? It's surely above average for humans today, but it's really a stretch to call a 200-lb individual a "giant."  Even allowing for that 200 lbs to be an underestimate (because it's based on a second molar rather than a first molar), how do we know that the the large tooth size isn't somehow related to the evolutionary history and/or diet of Denisovan populations? There are just a few teeth to go on - that's it. Just like with Gigantopithecus, I think we've really got to be aware that we're effectively blindfolded on the issue of body size until we've got some decent postcrania to look at.

As a final note, I think it's fascinating that Weidenreich saw the East and South Asian fossil record as supporting the idea that body size decrease through time was a major trend in human evolution. That is, of course, opposite of what the African record from the last 4 million years or so has now demonstrated. Weidenreich was wrong, but he was no lightweight and no dummy.  He based his ideas on the direct evidence that he had: fossils.  We'll never know what he what he would have thought of the decidedly un-human Gigantopithecus mandibles that were discovered just a few years after his death, but I would bet a large sum of money that he would not have stuck with the "giant phase of Man" idea that he outlined in his 1945 monograph.  Accepting that new evidence can falsify a hypotheses is part of doing science. 

Weidenreich's published ideas about also give the lie to the fringe/Creationist notion that 20th century academics have conspired and are continuing to conspire to suppress the "truth" about giants in the past. Or maybe someone just forgot to send Weidenreich his conspiracy brochure. I guess that's possible, since I have yet to receive mine, either.

Next up:  The history of body size estimates of Gigantopithecus.

References
​
Garn, Stanley M., and Arthur B. Lewis. 1958. Tooth-Size, Body-Size and “Giant” Fossil Man.  American Anthropologist 60(5):874-880.  

Gingerich, Philip D., B. Holly Smith, and Karen Rosenberg.  1982.  Allometric Scaling in the Dentition of Primates and Prediction of Body Weight From Tooth Size in Fossils.  American Journal of Physical Anthropology 58:81-100.
​
Simons, Elwyn L., and Peter C. Ettel. 1970. Gigantopithecus. Scientific American (January 1, 1970).

Weidenreich, Franz. 1945. Giant Early Man from Java and South China. Anthropological papers of the AMNH, Volume 40, Part 1.

I'm neck-deep in end-of-semester grading, and probably won't have time today to finish the blog post I've been working on.  Without the benefit of the PlagiarismCat, I'm forced to go through the tedious process of researching and writing my own content, which just takes a while sometimes. It doesn't seem fair, but I guess that's life.

In lieu of a blog post today, I offer you the song "Antediluvian Man" by the Reno-based trio Red Mercury (here is a studio version).  Add this one to Rasputina's "Holocaust of Giants" and the musical starts to write itself.   

As I was driving back to Columbia from Augusta last weekend, I heard part of a program on NPR discussing "disruptive leadership." One of the guests (Seth Godin) had some really interesting things to say about how the rise of the internet has broadened the segment of the population for which it is possible to develop a voice and a following. Godin argues that most people still don't "get" that there is nothing preventing them from becoming leaders (about 6:00 in):

"The fact that everyone has a platform, right this minute, means that the only reason you're not using it is because you don't want to, not because you're not allowed to."

I think he's right about that (and a lot of other things, also -- you should listen to the interview).

I've been developing my online presence since the Spring of 2014. There were a number of reasons why I committed to doing it.  At the top of the list is that I thought it would help me on the job market.  My career path has been somewhat non-traditional, with a long period of time between getting my Master's degree and going back to school for my Ph.D. While that "gap" was filled with archaeology (and starting a family), it put me into Michigan's doctoral program at a different point in my life than most of the other students. I had an incentive to finish quickly, so I designed my dissertation work around data from existing collections and computer modeling rather than as a more traditional, site-based project (that wouldn't have answered any questions I was really interested in and wouldn't have given me any excavation skills I didn't already have).  

Anyway, I felt that the professional path I had chosen was putting me at a disadvantage.  I was having success getting short list interviews, but the easy choice for many departments seemed to be a person who had a narrowly focused research agenda that involved continuing work at a single site. That's not me. I thought building a website would help even the playing field a little, allowing me to present my ideas in a way that would help people (especially people on search committee) understand them and see how the various components of my research agenda fit together. I've always tried to be who am, and I thought I would be better off working to present a more accurate picture of myself rather than trying to pretend I was someone else.

In reality, I don't think that my online activities actually helped me get a job in a direct way. I don't know that they played any role landing my Visiting Professor position at Grand Valley State, and I doubt they had much to do with getting my current position at South Carolina.  

But that doesn't mean they weren't worthwhile.  I think putting my website together and writing a blog, probably did help me in a number of indirect ways. Writing content for my various "Research Interest" sections was a good exercise in boiling down and making connections between the various things I'm interested in (my work is complicated and difficult to explain in the kinds of simple sound bytes you need to sell yourself during an interview).  So that was good. I put less effort into that part of my website (much of it remains "under construction to this day) as I discovered that I like blogging. That's where the real fun has been for me.

I think blogging has been beneficial in several ways: (1) it has helped me become a better writer (and a better communicator overall); (2) it has forced me to learn to think carefully about what I'm going to say before I say it, knowing that it can be read by anyone (including the people whose work I'm discussing); (3) it has let me make connections (both positive and negative ones) with a variety of people whose interests overlap with mine; and (4) it has given me an outlet to share my ideas about whatever I find interesting, whether related to archaeology or not (I've written about dragonflies, aircraft, and one of my large metal dinosaur sculptures, among other things).

Over the course of the last year, I've watched traffic on my website grow considerably. The only longitudinal data I have access to are those provided by the Weebly app on my phone (for some reason, I can't see stats for my traffic retrospectively in my regular browser).  I'm not sure how exactly Weebly calculates "unique visitors" and "page views," but I think the stats probably overestimate the real number of visitors to me site.

A screenshot of page views by day shows some pretty steady growth starting in December of 2014. The post that really started growing my readership was the first thing I wrote about "double rows of teeth" at the end of November 2014. I had been collecting data about accounts of giants for some time, and I thought I had the "double rows of teeth" mystery cracked. The ridiculousness of Search for the Lost Giants prompted me to use my blog (rather than an article) to try to communicate my results. That was a good move: I got a lot more positive feedback (a lot more quickly) than I ever would have using traditional print media.

Believe it or not, I was initially somewhat timid about naming names and directly engaging online with ideas and people. As I wrote more about giants and saw the results, however, I realized that I had something worthwhile to contribute and that I could not only participate in a conversation but affect it.  I've written a lot about giants over the last year, and I've been surprised by how few "giantologists" have been willing to engage with me. There are a few, to be sure, and I've enjoyed having conversations with them (even when we disagree).  Some of the people whose work I've called out, however, have ignored everything I've written while continuing to claim that "mainstream academics" (like me, I suppose) are too scared to deal with the phenomena they do (see my recent review of the chapter on "double rows of teeth" in Jim Vieira's new book). That's baloney. I continue to think that engaging with the "fringe" is useful, and I'm going to keep on doing it here and in other arenas.

I realized after a few months of writing about giants (during whatever time I could find while in the trenches of teaching a 4/4) that I was probably putting together the pieces for a book. "Research via blogging" is kind of a nice way to go, because what you write at any given time can be long and involved or short and simple. It really is possible to use blog posts as building blocks which can be assembled later into something larger and more complex. I find it much easier to keep track of my thoughts when I can just refer back to a titled blog post through a link rather than search through some long Word file or try to find some note that I scrawled on a scrap of paper somewhere. So there will be a book on giants that emerges some day from all this. I don't know when or what format it will be in (online or traditional), but it's coming.

​While writing about giants (which I find to be an intrinsically interesting topic for many reasons) has increased my readership, many of my more popular posts have been about other things. I can usually tell within a few minutes when I've written something that has legs, as I start getting rapid notifications from Facebook and Twitter. That happened with the first post I wrote about the Solutrean Hypothesis ("Shots Fired in the Battle Over the Cinmar Biface") and this post I wrote after the announcement of yet another new species of australopithecine ("What's a Species?). The species post was later quoted in an NPR science blog, which was cool.  The post on the Solutrean Hypothesis (the first of several I have written) got a lot of positive reaction.  It also got me some angry comments and emails from some archaeologists, including a researcher at the Smithsonian. I continue to think the Solutrean Hypothesis is interesting both because of the evidence that is used to support it and for several reasons that go beyond the archaeological data. I'll continue to write about it when I've got something to say. 

​During my first semester at South Carolina I've had less time to write than I would like, but I've still made an effort to feed the blog when I have the opportunity.  Some of my most popular posts this fall include one that I wrote about the excavation of a mammoth in Michigan ("Questions About the Michigan Mammoth") and one about the announcement from the Rising Star Expedition ("The First Rising Star Results: Totally @#!$&*% Badass"). I've been wanting to write more about the fallout from Rising Star, but I haven't found the time. The battle over "was this good science" (see, for example, this article, this post by John Hawks, and this piece) has been fascinating to watch. I think it's an incredibly important, multi-faceted discussion and at some point I'll probably have something to add and will (for better or worse) chime in again.

It's interesting to me that there is not a strong correspondence between the effort I put into writing something and how popular it seems to be.  I think other academics can relate to this, as it's definitely true in print media as well. When I decide to spend effort writing something, I don't tend to worry too much about how many people will read it. That's probably for the best, as it allows me to continue to write about whatever I want. I will admit that it's a bit of a bummer to feel like I've been ignored, though, when I think I've said something that should be broadly interesting. I wrote this post about Ben Carson's thoughts on evolution way before all the hubbub over his misinterpretation of the pyramids. In a fair world, it would have gone viral.  But it didn't: the pyramid post did. Why it surprises anyone that a Young Earth Creationist would say something silly about the human past is beyond me . . . you're all late to the party!

I have written quite a bit about how religion articulates with various "fringe" ideas about the past. Directly challenging religious notions, like directly challenging individuals, was something I was originally hesitant to do. I'm not anti-religion. As I learned more about why people believe in giants, however, it became apparent to me that understanding the religious component was important. If it's important, you kind of have to talk about it. I decided that, for me, the rules of engagement are satisfied when religion makes a claim about the past that falls within the purview of archaeology and anthropology.  So I've written a lot about creationism (and there's plenty more to come) and a little bit on the ideas and claims of Mormons regarding the prehistory of the New World. There's a bunch of really interesting stuff to be learned about how science has changed the world over the last few centuries and how religious traditions and ideas about the past are related to the place of "fringe" ideas in our world today. I'm not near as shy about discussing it as I used to be.

I recently launched The Argumentative Archaeologist, a separate site that organizes information about all kinds of "fringe" claims. The name came from J. Hutton Pulitzer, who apparently thinks that calling an archaeologist "argumentative" is a pretty good insult. It's not: it's a compliment.  I hope to keep The Argumentative Archaeologist growing over the next year as I prepare for and teach a class on "Forbidden Archaeology." 

As my readership has grown, I've gotten my share of both positive feedback and negative pushback.  I have to admit that I like both (I've worked too hard on too many academic papers that have gotten too little reaction not to appreciate when people take the time to react to what I say). My wife can tell you about how my face lights up when I know that I'm about to strike a match.  It's nice when people agree with you, but it's also pretty nice when they don't and you get to have a discussion about why.  

In the NPR interview that I mentioned at the beginning of this post, Seth Godin notes that disruptive leadership can vary in its usefulness. The modern history of archaeology provides us with a great example of "useful" vs. "less useful" disruptive leadership in the Tale of Two Angry Archaeologists that is the lesson of Walter Taylor (1913-1997) and Lewis Binford (1931-2011).  While each leveled a similar set of pointed (and valid) criticisms at the archaeological status quo, one (Binford) was much more effective at bringing about change.  The difference (as I wrote in this essay) is that Binford's "disruptive leadership" provided a way forward while Taylor's critique was just a critique. 

My online experience with the both professionals and the fringe has reinforced the Taylor-Binford lesson to me many times over: disruption and criticism are much more effective if you provide an alternative.  If you say the answer is wrong, then what's a better answer and why is it better? Providing that alternative takes significantly more effort, of course, than simply launching a criticism.  I don't always get it right (and sometimes, honestly, it is really hard to want to try). But I think that my willingness to try has contributed significantly to the growth of my audience.

If you're an anthropologist (or any kind of scientist, really) and you've been thinking about developing your own website and becoming an active public voice, I encourage you to do it. You should definitely do it. And you should listen to the interview with Godin: much of what he said resonated with my experience, and his analysis may help you decide to take the plunge.  If you remain quiet, it's by your own choice and not by necessity.

For readers in search of further inspiration, I can only refer you to the song "The Hero" by Queen. Go!