Category: Creationism

Young Earth Creationism and the Doctrine of Degeneracy with Kent Hovind

9/13/2015

There were many other possible titles for this post. I will spare you a list and just give you the front runner: "An Hour of My Life I'll Never Have Back."

Kent Hovind is a well-known Young Earth Creationist. In Federal prison for financial crimes since 2006 (see this article from Forbes), one of his first stops after being released this July was The Rundown Live, a Milwaukee-based talk radio program that bills itself as "Covering news and conspiracy that your local news won’t."
Hovind was interviewed by self-proclaimed "researcher of giant human skeletons" Kristan Harris. The interview is here.

A conspiracy-minded giant enthusiast interviewing a Young Earth Creationist? I thought I was in for a treat. Oh well - you can't win 'em all.

Hovind regurgitates all the usual assertions of Young Earth Creationsm: the Earth was created in six days about 6000 years ago; dinosaurs were really giant lizards that were documented historically as "dragons"; the fossil "record" doesn't really tell us anything about the past; no-one has ever seen macro-evolution in action so it couldn't possibly have happened; all radiometric dating methods are nonsense; paleontologists and other evolutionary scientists are all stupid; etc. Hovind's assertions are pretty old hat these days, and many of his favorite arguments have been publicly rejected by other creationists.

Screenshot from the movie "Zombeavers:" a man holds his own foot, which has been removed from his body by a zombie beaver.

Yawn. So much for my Friday night. My wife was out of town and I was on my own during the sliver of time between getting the kids to bed and being asleep myself. When I was in a similar situation a few weeks ago, I spent that precious "me" time watching Zombeavers, a 2014 film about how "A fun weekend turns into madness and horror for a bunch of groupies looking for fun in a beaver infested swamp." It would probably be unfair to directly compare the plausibility of Hovind's tale with what unfolds before our eyes in Zombeavers, so I won't do it. I wouldn't want to be unfair.

Anyway, the one useful thing I heard in the interview was a succinct statement of the "doctrine of degeneracy" that I've seen associated with Young Earth Creationism in several other places. As I have discussed previously, this view asserts that:

God’s original creation was perfect;
As time has passed since creation, that original perfection has naturally degenerated;
The world we see today, and the creatures in it, are less than perfect as a result of a long process of “devolution.”

Giant enthusiasts who are also Young Earth Creationists (such as Joe Taylor of the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum and Chris Lesley of the Greater Ancestors World Museum) link together the existence of large extinct animals (that we can understand via the fossil record), the long human lifespans reported in the Old Testament, and the biblical mentions of “giants” as in Genesis 6:4. In this case, bigger is better: humans and that existed closer to the time of creation were larger in size and closer to perfection than the humans of today. The running down of the clock since creation has resulted in humans and animals that are smaller, simpler, and farther from perfection.

Hovind sums up that view nicely at about 38:50 minutes into the interview:

"You see the Bible says Man was made in God's image. Adam could name all the animals and walk, talk, and get married on the first day. He was fully formed, a fully loaded computer. He spoke every language in the world (well there was only one). But he was probably off the charts IQ compared to us today. So Man started off smart, and we're getting smaller, dumber, and weaker as time goes by, I believe. And I think the evolution theory teaches exactly the opposite: we started off like a chimpanzee and we're getting bigger, better, and smarter. There's absolutely no evidence for that at all."

In order to allow that baloney to stick to the wall, you have to flatten time and reject all evidence and methods that point to our planet being much, much older than 6000 years and you have to equate the giants of the Bible with the "good" side of God's creation rather than corrupt beings set upon preventing humanity from reaching salvation. (The Bible doesn't say anything directly about Adam's stature - you've got to go elsewhere for that). Thus the giants of Young Earth Creationists are categorically different from the sinister homosexual demon-giants of Steve Quayle and the alien-seeded giants of Ancient Astronaut theorists (Hovind categorically dismisses the possibility of extraterrestrial intervention in the human past at about 40:10 in the interview).

In terms of Friday night entertainment value, the win goes to my time spent watching a guy pretend a zombie beaver chewed off his foot. The so-called Nephilim Mounds Conference is going on right now in Ohio -- maybe something interesting will come out of that, but I'm not holding my breath. What giant enthusiasts really need to do (besides take me up on my offer to participate in my class) is to organize a conference where they debate the logic, evidence, and implications of the very, very different views of "giants" that exist. I would pay to see advocates of the various interpretations of giants attempt to triangulate the Young Earth Creationist, Nephilim Whirlpool, and Ancient Alien views of what "giants" actually were and are. They appear to me to be largely mutually exclusive, and I'm not sure how they could be reconciled. I don't think that there will ever be such a Giants Summit, however, because I think there is little appetite among giant enthusiasts to subject their ideas to scrutiny.

I'm probably better off hoping for a Zombeavers 2. I'm pretty sure at least some of the beavers escaped at the end. They were pretty hard to "kill," of course, since they were zombies. Fingers crossed there's a sequel in the works in case I ever have another evening to waste.

Confused About Giants-Based Christianity? Ask an 11th Grader

5/24/2015

Is there such a thing as a brand of Christianity that revolves around the existence of giants? Yes . . . well . . . maybe kind of. The notion that evil giants are central to understanding the world, the human condition, and the future is out there for sure. While giants-based Christianity has some vocal proponents that are apparently making a living by selling it, however, I'm not sure how widespread the idea actually is. How many people believe this stuff? I have no idea. And I'm not sure how one would find out.

I looked at a lot of elephant car photos (mostly from Burning Man) and decided that this one best represents the thrown-together ridiculousness of giants-based Christianity (source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/susanafs98/2313166391/)

If you're not sure how someone could build a "Christian" religion around giants, you're not alone. It is a monstrosity constructed from all kinds of parts that don't initially seem to fit together. What do the stones at Baalbek and Stonehenge have to do with Jesus? How is Noah connected to Hitler? How are the pyramids of Egypt, genetic engineering, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the serpent gods of Mesoamerica related to one another? Giant enthusiasts weld all these elements together, but it is difficult to find a clear, concise treatise that explains how. I have arrived at my understanding of giants-based Christianity -- still far from complete, I'm sure -- in the same haphazard way that the blind men examined the elephant and that Johnny Cash built his '49-'59 automobile: one piece at a time.

If you want a path of less resistance to understanding this stuff, I recommend a paper titled "The Truth About Giants" written by Adam Schwartzbauer, an 11th grader (in 2010). I found it on the website of the Twin Cities Creation Science Association (TCCSA), a Minnesota organization whose mission is to "present evidence for creation and a young earth." Schwartzbauer's paper is a 24-page document (there is also a 10-page version) that lays out many elements of the modern, giants-based Christianity, including:

The assertion that giants and fallen angels were involved in genetic manipulation of plants, animals, and humans (pp. 3-5);

The assertion that giants and fallen angels brought about the Flood by corrupting the Earth (p. 4);
The assertion that giants were created by the devil to corrupt the human bloodline so that Jesus could not be born (p. 7);
The assertion that the Israelites committed genocide in Canaan to wipe out giants (pp. 9, 12);
Fascination with the nuts and bolts and angel-human reproduction (pp. 10-11), including:

            - angels having forcible sex with human women;
            - giant babies being cut out of women during childbirth;
            - speculation about what an angel's DNA would be like;

Specifying that giants had six fingers, six toes, and double rows of teeth (p. 11);

Confused arguments against evolution (p. 6);
A nod to Hitler (p. 12);
Blaming archaeologists for hiding evidence (p. 12);
The assertion that structures built with large rocks must have been built by giants (pp. 12-15);
The assertion that evil giants were homosexual (p. 19);
Supporting the existence of giants based on:
    - texts, including Genesis and a variety of extra-biblical religious sources (e.g., pp. 2-3);
    - tales of pre-1900s "giant skeletons" from the Old World and the New World (pp. 11, 16-19);
    - world mythology (p. 2);
    - accounts of purported giant human footprints in ancient rocks (pp. 19-20);

The alert reader will notice that many elements of this new strain of Christianity contradict mainstream Christian teachings. I'm no theologian, but here are few that jump out at me:

The doctrine of Original Sin (the idea that humanity has inherited the consequences of Adam's rebellion again God in the Garden of Eden), for example, is at least undermined, if not completely contradicted, by the idea that it was fallen angels and their evil offspring that caused wickedness in the world and brought about the Flood. Problems with being human? Blame the giants! A giants-based Christianity places responsibility for the troubles of humans squarely on the shoulders of giants.

The idea that angels could mate with humans and produce fertile offspring is also opposed to most mainstream Christian thinking. The Living Church of God website, for example, states that "To claim that angels had the ability to create flesh (the giants) from spirit is not only illogical—it is blasphemy." Angel DNA? What does angel DNA look like? And doesn't the idea that the mating of two different "kinds" (angels and humans) can produce something novel (giants) contradict a basic argument of Young Earth Creationists that different species can only be divinely created?

The mixture of biblical and extra-biblical sources used for creating this giants-based framework of belief is also different, I think, from what most Christians would accept. You won't hear quotes from the Book of Jasher in Sunday School, but the Church of Giants accepts as legitimate anything that seems to support the relevance of large, evil beings to the history of the world. The Nephilim whirlpool provides equal weight to biblical, New Age, occult, political, cultural, and historical currents. It's an idea in search of positive evidence, not the other way around.

Sure, the writing in Schwartzbauer's paper is a bit choppy, but the document is useful because it summarizes many of the basic elements of a giants-based Christianity that the "experts" dole out for money. As a free publication that is just 24 pages, your investment of time and money is much lower than if you actually read the books by Steve Quayle and L. A. Marzulli (which I have not read and cannot bring myself to purchase). The TCCSA website also includes an endorsement of the book by Joe Taylor, creator of the 47" femur sculpture. So there you go. It's not high prose, but it will save you some time groping the different parts of the elephant and understanding the emerging framework of giants-based Christianity.

Related (5/25/2015): Jason Colavito examines the claim in the paper that Nimrod built Baalbek.

The Helenwood Devil Fan Club: And Then There Was One

3/27/2015

Screenshot from March 27 showing the edited version of the story. Hallelujah.

I wrote a post last weekend showing that a 1921 story about a "horned giant" from Tennessee was actually describing a crappy clay statue. I wrote a subsequent post wondering why the two giant enthusiasts who had embraced the Helenwood Devil as authentic did not, after being made aware that it was just a statue, change their stories about it.

I spoke too soon.

I am happy to report that Kristin Harris has now (literally) stricken the references to the Helenwood Devil from his recent story about a horned race of humans, acknowledging that the "It was a statue, not a giant human skeleton." He also changed the headline.

Harris wrote me an email and asked me to print his response, so I will:

"Dear respected Andrew White PHD,

It was brought to my attention that you wrote an article on my piece on Humans with horns. Or skeletons found with horns. http://www.andywhiteanthropology.com/blog/what-do-giant-enthusiasts-do-when-the-truth-turns-out-to-be-inconvenient-nothing-apparently

First, you should know that I received no such email from you at this address written as mentioned in your article. If you could provide me a copy of this message It would be much appreciated. As an investigator, I claim by no means to be perfect. I always encourage everyone to do their own investigation and find facts for themselves. This way imperfections are corrected and together as a society of individuals who strive for truth in history, we together can come to a conclusion.

I would first like to point out you did not mention the other 3 articles including, valid evidence, connecting credible institutions and scientists, with publications that skeletons have been found with horns. I really appreciate your contributions to the subject because I believe you bring a level of professionalism that some do not understand. However actions like these make me question your motives. If you were working together with a coworker to discover the truth, would you do it laced in ridicule? This is not about me, it’s about a search for truth. We must work together in order to come to a logical conclusion.

There are many people involved who have many different reasons for searching for truth or believing in giants. They are not all scientific. But it is important to listen to everyone, question everything and don’t believe it unless you can prove it with your own research. Not everything can be explained by science, at least not yet. I will properly edit the article by striking through the old information and correcting it to properly portray our conversation.

Thank you for the correction, and again that is why you are an asset to the community.

All I ask is you publish my response in full, as transparency is very important in science and we should questions those you work in compartmentalized working environments.

Keep in touch.

Kristan T. Harris"

I admit that I was a little surprised by this email - I think Harris is only the second person who is interested in this sort of thing who was said "whoops" in response to something I've pointed out (the other being Terje Dahl regarding the "replica" of the Denisovan tooth he vouched for on Search for the Lost Giants). I've written about who-in-the-hell-knows-how-many hoaxes, misrepresentations, and misinterpretations having to do with "giants," and there have been precious few moments where someone has said "hey, you know what, that looks like it was bullshit." So I give Harris credit for that.

One clarification: I didn't say that I emailed Harris, but wrote that I had commented on his story:

"I made both of the charter members of the Helenwood Devil Fan Club (Harris and GAWM) aware of my post by commenting on their pages."

The image to the left shows my comment. I assumed that commenting on the story itself was the best way to make readers aware that part of the story was inaccurate.

I also commented on the story on the Greater Ancestors World Museum (GAWM) website, but that site remains unchanged (and my comment has not been "approved," so . . . go science!). I know the operator of that site (Chris Lesley) is aware that he is continuing to promote a clay statue as evidence of something having to do with biblical human origins, as he has commented on the original Helenwood Devil post. But he's apparently in no hurry to distance himself or his "scientific model of origins" that is "boldly superior to all previous and existing models globally" from a clay statue built in an abandoned coal mine and carted around the country to liberate the gullible and the curious from their quarters. Other than some blogger who thought the story about the Helenwood Devil described a petrified pterosaur, the GAWM seems to now be the sole supporter of Cruis Sexton's manufactured monster as something relevant to understanding prehistory.

The Helenwood Devil Fan Club now has a membership of one.

What Do Giant Enthusiasts Do When the Truth Turns Out To Be Inconvenient? Nothing, Apparently.

3/24/2015

A couple of days ago, I wrote a post about the Helenwood Devil (a clay statue manufactured in the 1920s) in reaction to a story by Kristan Harris. Harris' story led with an article about a petrified, horned giant that was "discovered" in Scott County, Tennessee, and exhibited in Helenwood. I think it's pretty clear from the photograph of the "giant" (which I reproduce again for your viewing pleasure) and the associated stories about it that it was a hoax, and probably not the strongest card to play if you want to argue that a "race of humans with horns protruding from their skulls" once roamed the planet. A newspaper account of the Helenwood Devil is also featured on the Greater Ancestors World Museum (GAWM) website.

I made both of the charter members of the Helenwood Devil Fan Club (Harris and GAWM) aware of my post by commenting on their pages. Both have, apparently, chosen to do nothing: the stories still remain exactly like they were two days ago.

What does that mean? Does that mean they stand by the Helenwood Devil as an authentic evidence of the existence of a prehistoric race of horned humans?

I think it does. Putting myself in their places, if I were interested in knowing and presenting accurate information (which I am, and which they claim to be), I would adjust my stance on the Helenwood Devil if I found out that the "giant" I was using as evidence was actually a sculpture.

I presume that Harris would print a retraction of his story if he felt it was no longer accurate. After all, in this video, Harris tells us that newspapers retract stories that they know to be false in order to maintain their credibility. Speaking on the issue of accounts of giants in old newspapers, Harris says:

"Where are the articles calling these things hoaxes? Obviously, as a newspaper, you want to be as credible as possible, and you would retract these things."

Likewise with the GAWM, which makes the claim that it utilizes "a scientific model of origins" that is "boldly superior to all previous and existing models globally." Science is built on falsification: leaving the Helenwood Devil on the GAWM site signals acceptance of a crappy statue that some guy built from clay in an abandoned coal mine as evidence supporting whatever it is the GAWM is boldy exploring.

The Helenwood Devil.

Screenshot of Harris' story from this morning: the Helenwood Devil still gets the nod as authentic and important.

Screenshot of GAMW page from this morning: a vote of confidence in the authenticity of the Helenwood Devil.

The choices that Harris and GAWM have made (to do nothing) signal that they apparently still believe in the Helenwood Devil. It will be interesting to see if the Helenwood Devil Fan Club attracts any more members.

"Giantologists: There's One Born Every Minute" or "The Helenwood Devil: An Obvious Fraud"

3/22/2015

The clay statue of the "giant with horns" built by Cruis Sexton in the 1920s still has cachet among giantologists.

Okay, so I couldn't resist another post related to giants today. This one, like my last one, isn't going to contain any ground-breaking analysis. Rather I'm just going to relay the results of some simple fact-checking.

Kristan Harris posted this silly story today with the headline "Human Skeleton with Horns Discovered by Coal Miners Underneath Knoxville, TN." After an introductory paragraph that asks the pressing question of whether a race of horned humans once roamed the planet, Harris transcribes a 1921 article from the Bismarck Tribune about a petrified 6'4" giant allegedly found in a coal mine in Scott County, Tennessee. The alert observer will immediately note that, contrary to the headline of Harris' story, the horned being was "petrified" rather than a skeleton, and it was found in Helenwood (Scott County), not Knoxville (Knox County). But those are trivial details when we're talking about the Devil walking the Earth. So let's move on.

When I read the Bismark Tribune story, my first thought was "Hey, this is in the 1920s - surely there's a photo of this thing somewhere." It took me a few minutes, but I found one. It is on a National Park Service website for the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area along with the story of how Cruis Sexton built the "Devil of Scott County" out of clay and charged people money to see it. You can find other tellings of the story by Googling "Helenwood Devil" or "Devil of Scott County." This was an obvious hoax that was used to bilk the gullible.

And it's still fooling the gullible today. The story has its own page on the Greater Ancestors World Museum website (without the photo of the clay statue but with the photo that gets passed around as the purported horned skull from Sayre, Pennsylvania, apparently just as an illustration of what a horned skull would look like). Maybe since I have now made the giantology community aware of this photo and the story that goes with it (it took me a couple of minutes with my phone while I was watching two kids - not exactly serious scholarship), the GAWM can make a replica of the "horned giant" to go along with its replica of the imaginary skull with three rows of teeth.

Addendum 1 (3/23/2015): I found this article from the August 11, 1921, edition of The Topeka State Journal. In this article, it appears as though Cruise Sexton was trying to pass off his creation as a prehistoric statue rather than the preserved body of "prehistoric giant:"

"Sexton believes the object may be an image of an old tribe of Indians or cliff dwellers."

So there you go. Even the guy who built knew it wasn't good enough to pass off as actual human remains. But the giantologists of today have promoted it, sight unseen, to a fact of prehistory that they say should upend everything we've been taught. Good luck making that argument.

Addendum 2 (3/25/2015): This website about Scott County history reproduces the following article from the Somerset Journal (September 9, 1921), describing the visit of the Helenwood Devil to a fair in Somerset, Kentucky:

"There was exhibited last week at the Somerset Fair an object that attracted several thousand people into a small tent. They each paid 25 cents admission fee. Some came out and said the whole thing was a fake, while others said they would not have missed it for a dollar. Anyway, it was the biggest drawing card at the fair. The object that is attracting so much attention was found by Crusie Sexton while digging for coal near Helenwood, Tenn. It has the appearance of a petrified form, about five feet, ten inches long, large head with horns, large nose and ears, wings reaching to ankles and teeth showing. The arms are long and slender and are crossed over the body. The hands have extra long fingers and the ankles are enlarged. Mr. Sexton, who made the find, was in the city this week and made an affidavit that he found the object in the ground about five feet below the surface. He dug it up and removed it to Helenwood where it created such excitement that he put it in a box and charged admission. IT is said that the sum of $25,000.00 has been offered for it. It is owned by Mr. J.C. Pemberton of Oneida, Tenn., now. The form is now reposing in a box with iron bands around it, four pad locks on the box, nails driven in the lid and a guard standing watch. A professor from an eastern university says it is some ancient idol of an early race. Anyway, whatever it is, the owners bid fair to get rich."

Antediluvian Air Pressure: An 1831 Letter Explaining Mastodons and Giants

3/6/2015

When I was doing some background reading for my post on mastodons and Mormons, I came across a letter by Felix Pascalis published in The Evening Post (August 19, 1831). Pascalis (1762-1833), a physician born and trained in France, moved to the United States in the 1790s. He is most well-known for his work on yellow fever.

The letter, entitled “The Antideluvian Bones at the American Museum,” is an example of a scientifically-trained individual trying to accommodate the accumulating fossil evidence from North America within a biblical framework. After describing some of the fossil creatures (which he assures the reader are real and related to modern animals), he considers how such large creatures might have existed:

    “We confess that the existence of those gigantic and antideluvian bones encounter in our minds no objection nor difficulty, but that of explaining by what law of nature a land animal could have existed and grown to the size of sixty feet in length and twenty five feet in heighth.
    Those animals which are under our observation, and man himself, are subject to a law that generally, and with few exceptions, detain within certain limits their size and growth; and that is unquestionably the atmospheric pressure externally, and that which underbalances it in the organs of respiration.
    This is the power which regulates circulation, and without it the transport of the matter necessary to compose and extend the body and limbs to a certain proportion. Hence we know that cetaceous animals of an extraordinary size can exist in abundance under the double pressure of the ocean and the atmosphere.
     If the size, therefore, of the human race, and of that brute creation, originates from the pressure of about 2220 lbs. weight upon each square foot surface, the size of the Mastodon, or of any other mammoth animal, must have required an atmosphere three times heavier than it is at present. By what cause this change has taken place in the elementary orbit which surrounds our planet, it is beyond our power and philosophy to explain, unless we say that at the antideluvian period, and when the human race were giants, the waters above had not yet been separated and completely thrown down on the surface of the earth. But this theory would not comport with the prosperous condition of the human race before the deluge, when they were promised the long life of 120 years, and to be blessed with all the fruits of the earth, when for their corruptions at last they deserved to be exterminated by the flood.—(Gen. 4, 5, 6.
    We would rather admit, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, the presence of a planet which has since been split by a comet into four parts, viz: Pallas, Juno, Vesta and Ceres, which have been scattered about, and so much diminished the weight of the atmosphere, that no longer giants or mastedons or mammoths are to be seen. FELIX PASCALIS.”

I would be very surprised if Pascalis was the first to propose that the pre-Flood earth had a higher atmospheric pressure. The idea is certainly still alive today: differences in the atmosphere of the pre-Flood earth (higher oxygen content, higher barometric pressure, etc.) are commonly hypothesized by Young Earth Creationists to explain the larger size of pre-Flood plants, animals, and humans, as well as the longer lifespans of pre-Flood humans discussed in Genesis.

Pascalis’ letter is interesting because it was an attempt to construct a systemic, natural explanation for both why both pre-Flood animals (of which fossil evidence was accumulating) and humans could have been be bigger (i.e., giants). I don’t understand how the asteroids (interpreted as fragments of a planet) would have diminished earth’s atmosphere or how that fits in with the Flood – I’m sure there’s more to that story. The four asteroids Pascalis mentions were first discovered in the early 1800s. The presence of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter was not identified until later.

Pascalis' letter is a change from just a few decades earlier. Prior to the 1800s, the kind of direct evidence that Pascalis considered (fossil bones) was routinely interpreted as the remains of giant humans (see this post about Cotton Mather). In the absence of a concept of extinction, such an interpretation was logical: what else could the bones be but those of giants, since no other unknown creatures are mentioned in the Bible? Ironically, once mastodon bones were recognized for what they were, the actual physical remains that seemed to be proof of the existence of giant humans were no longer directly relevant. But wait, yes they were -- as shown by Pascalis’ letter, the impressive size of the mastodon bones could be used to build an argument for why pre-Flood humans (for which there then was no direct evidence) could, like the mastodon, also be large.

The Elephants of Ether: Mormons and the Mastodon Problem

2/27/2015

One of the interesting things about doing “research by blog” is that you can get almost instant, unanticipated contributions of information from anyone who reads what you’ve posted. As a result of this post exploring two examples of the idea that “Mound Builders” and mastodons co-existed, I became aware of the interest that Mormons have taken in mastodons. As soon as I wrote the post, Jason Colavito and Brad Lepper each made me aware of the 1839 story Behemoth: A Legend of the Mound Builders by Cornelius Matthews. Behemoth told the tale of the quest of a pre-Native American race (the "Mound-Builders") to slay a giant mastodon. From there I was led to mentions of elephants in the Book of Mormon (BOM) through this site.

The BOM mentions elephants in the following passages from Ether (9:16-19), referring to the experience of the Jaredites entering the New World around 2500 BC:

“And the Lord began again to take the curse from off the land, and the house of Emer did prosper exceedingly under the reign of Emer; and in the space of sixty and two years they had become exceedingly strong, insomuch that they became exceedingly rich—Having all manner of fruit, and of grain, and of silks, and of fine linen, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious things; And also all manner of cattle, of oxen, and cows, and of sheep, and of swine, and of goats, and also many other kinds of animals which were useful for the food of man. And they also had horses, and asses, and there were elephants and cureloms and cumoms; all of which were useful unto man, and more especially the elephants and cureloms and cumoms.”

The clear statement about the existence of elephants in the New World at 2500 BC is one of many details in the BOM that critics have questioned and Mormons have defended. As data and scholarly opinions have changed, the Mormon argument has also changed. In the mid 1800s, the idea that mastodons had co-existed with the “Mound Builders” in eastern North America was not uncommon. Currently, however, you would be hard-pressed to find a single non-Mormon scholar who thinks that mastodons survived until anywhere near 2500 BC (a more reasonable estimate would be about 9500 BC). As an archaeologist who works in the Eastern Woodlands, I can tell you that I am not aware of any serious, recent scholarly work that tries to understand the role of mastodons in middle or late Holocene (i.e., post-8000 BC) Native American cultures. Why? Because there is no good evidence that they existed that late into prehistory.

That change in scientific opinion about the timing of mastodon extinction was the result of accumulated paleontological and archaeological knowledge and the development of radiometric dating techniques that allow chronology to be understood in absolute terms (i.e., in terms of real calendar dates). The current Mormon argument for elephants at 2500 BC hinges on just a handful of anomalously late mastodon radiocarbon dates that were obtained in the early decades of radiocarbon dating, before the effects of sample contamination were understood and before procedures were developed to mitigate those effects. By continuing to rely on those dates, Mormon apologists and scholars are clinging to 60-year-old "facts" that they must know are probably in error.

I will discuss the radiocarbon dates further below. But first let’s put the story of mastodons, Mormons, and “Mound Builders” in America in some historical context. Why? Because it’s interesting!

Illustration of the Peale mastodon.

The first and perhaps the most famous early encounter between science, religion, and mastodons in America was Cotton Mather’s (early 1700s) interpretation of mastodon bones unearthed in New York as the remains of an Antediluvian giant. African slaves in South Carolina, familiar with the anatomy of elephants, correctly identified mammoth teeth unearthed in 1725 as those of an elephant rather than a human giant (see this post by Adrienne Mayor). As more and more fossils were discovered, naturalists refined their understanding of mastodons, mammoths, and their relationships to living elephants. The American mastodon (Mammut americanum) was formally named and described as a taxon in the 1790s. The Peale mastodon, a relatively complete skeleton from New York, was excavated, illustrated, and displayed in 1801. As encapsulated in this article, the large mastodons, with all their implications of power and size, became a part of the emerging identity of the young United States.

The idea that species could go extinct was still relatively new in the late 1700s. (The absence of the idea of extinction was an important component of why the bones of extinct animals had so often been interpreted as the remains of ancient giants - what else could they be?). The idea of extinction was apparently not one that Thomas Jefferson subscribed to. Consequently, he was convinced that mammoths and mastodons should still be alive in the western part of the continent. In Notes of the State of Virginia (1785:55), Jefferson wrote:

“The bones of the mammoth, which have been found in America, are as large as those found in the old world. It may be asked, why I insert the mammoth, as if it still existed? I ask in return why I should omit it, as if it did not exist? Such is the economy of Nature, that no instance can be produced of her having permitted any one race of her animals to become extinct; of her having formed any link in her great work so weak as to be broken. To add to this, the traditionary testimony of the Indians, that this animal still exists in the Northern and Western parts of America, would be adding the light of a taper to that of the meridian sun. Those parts still remain in their aboriginal state, unexplored and undisturbed by us, or by others for us. He may as well exist there now, as he did formerly, where we find his bones.”

Notice also Jefferson's plea for recognition of the vigor and size of the North American fauna, of which the mammoth and mastodon were a part. He fully expected that living examples could be found and add to the argument for the grandeur of a young nation. As President of the United States, Jefferson instructed Lewis and Clark to look for mastodons and mammoths during their Corps of Discovery Expedition (1804-1806). After they found none, he ordered excavations at the productive fossil site of Big Bone Lick in Kentucky in 1807 (see A Discourse on the Character and Services of Thomas Jefferson by Samuel Latham Mitchill, 1826, pages 29-30), retrieving mastodon fossils to send to Europe.

More than just a scientific curiosity, mastodons and mammoths were participants in American culture in the early 1800s. The earliest use of the term “mastodon” that I located in a newspaper dates to 1810. Several mastodons were unearthed in New York in the 1810s and 1820s, and those finds were reported in newspapers. The data below show a rapid increase in the appearance of "mastodon" in books (many of them scientific/technical) in the 1820s. Newspapers from this time period also contain numerous advertisements for living elephants exhibited by traveling circuses. My point is that knowledge of both living elephants and their extinct relatives was being widely disseminated when the BOM was published in 1830. Extinct elephants were becoming part of an emerging American identity.

Google Ngram results for "mastodon."

Illustration of the Wisconsin "Elephant Mound" from MacLean's "Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man" (1880).

As the possibility that the animals could still be alive somewhere on the continent evaporated with continued Euroamerican exploration of the American west and more widespread acceptance of the idea of extinction, the debate in the mid-1800s shifted to whether humans and extinct elephants had ever co-existed. Were mastodons and mammoths Antediluvian beasts that had perished in the Flood, or did prehistoric peoples in North America interact with them? As described by John Patterson MacLean in his book Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man (1880, pages 74-82), evidence that humans and mastodons had overlapped in time included mastodon bones associated with projectile points, mastodon bones that had been burned, mastodon bones associated with pottery, engravings of elephants on Mayan stonework, the presence of mastodon remains stratigraphically above sediments containing basketry, the “Elephant Mound” in Wisconsin, and Native American oral traditions that described elephant-like creatures.

In the same year as MacLean’s book, Frederick Larkin’s Ancient Man in America was published, describing his theory that the “Mound Builders” had domesticated the mastodon as a beast of burden and for warfare. Larkin also used the elephant-shaped effigy mound in Wisconsin as evidence. A few years later (1885), Charles Putnam published his volume on the elephant pipes of Iowa, widely thought to be fraudulent.

Mormons embraced the array of evidence in the late 1800s that seemed to support the contemporaneity of humans and mastodons in the New World. The 1908 Book of Mormon Talks, written by Hyrum O. Smith, addresses the 1857 critique of Mormonism offered by John Hyde’s Mormonism: Its Leaders and Designs:

“Papa.--We certainly can not blamed for considering this as conclusive evidence in favor of the Book of Mormon account, and rejecting the dogmatic statement of Mr. Hyde that “the elephant is not a native of America and never was its inhabitant.” We have not only found that the elephant was here, but that other large animals of the elephant or mastodon species were here, and that they were here at the same time that man was. These larger animals that are called “cureloms and cumoms” in the Book of Mormon were evidently of the mastodon or elephant type for which there were not names in English, hence their names were transferred to the book just as the Jaredites called them. There is one more point which we wish to establish before we leave this subject. You will notice that the last part of the quotation which Harry has read from Ether says, “And there were elephants, and cureloms, and cumoms; all of which were useful unto man, and more especially the elephants, and cureloms and cumoms.” This certainly signifies that they used these large animals for beasts of burden, and strange to say, we have something to sustain this statement also. Ethel, you may read from page 75 of the Archaeological Committee’s report the opinion of Mr. Frederick Larkin, M.D.:” (pages 141-142)

In the book, Ethel goes on to read Larkin’s self-proclaimed “visionary” statement about the domestication of the mastodon by the “Mound Builders.” Papa gladly accepts Larkin’s conclusion, but chides him for claiming something as “new” which of course had been revealed in an inspired way decades earlier in the BOM.

In the early 1900s, then, the defense of the elephants of Ether was based on a constellation of data points (Central American engravings, apparent associations of mastodons with human tools, fraudulent pipes, an amorphous earthen mound that looks like an elephant if you squint) that suggested the contemporaneity between elephants and the complex societies of the Americas. Larkin’s statement about the domestication of the mastodon was welcomed because the language of the BOM “certainly signifies that they used these large animals for beasts of burden.”

Investigations at the Folsom site in the 1920s cemented the case for all interested parties that humans and extinct Pleistocene animals had co-existed in North America. Excavations at Blackwater Draw in the early 1930s conclusively demonstrated an association between mammoth bones and distinctive Clovis projectile points. The debate about the co-existence of humans and extinct proboscideans was over.

The advent of radiocarbon dating in the early 1950s changed the game of understanding time in prehistoric North America, allowing the ages of organic remains to be estimated in absolute terms (i.e., in calendar years). Almost immediately, the archaeological chronology of North America lengthened significantly as archaeologists were able, for the first time, to understand how much time was really represented by the remains they could observe. Paleontology benefited also, as many fossil remains could be directly dated.

Radiocarbon dates initially seemed to provide support for the idea that mastodons had survived late into prehistory, consistent with the statement in the Book of Ether. As Mormon publications and websites are fond of pointing out, radiocarbon age estimates from mastodons include several mid-Holocene dates that suggest mastodons and the Jaredites could have overlapped. A 2012 paper by John Sorenson in Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture (volume 1, page 99) reads:

“Mastodon remains have been dated by radiocarbon to around 5000 BC in Florida, around the Great Lakes to 4000 BC, in the Mississippi Valley to near 3300 BC, perhaps to near 100 BC near St. Petersburg, Florida (“low terminal [C-14] dates for the mastodon indicate . . . lingering survival in isolated areas”), and at sites in Alaska and Utah dating around 5000 BC. In the Book of Mormon, mention of elephants occurs in a single verse, in the Jaredite account (“There were elephants,” Ether 9:19), dated in the third millennium BC, after which the record is silent (indicating spot extinction?).”

The website "Step by Step Through the Book of Mormon" repeats some of those dates, as does this website.

As someone who works on Paleoindian period archaeology in eastern North America, I was surprised to see the suggestion that radiocarbon dates indicated the survival of the mastodon into the mid-Holocene. The youngest radiocarbon dates for mastodon of which I was aware are around 10,000-9500 BC (see Woodman and Athfeld 2009). And I've never heard of a single mastodon bone being recovered from a context that suggested any interaction with Archaic peoples.

Fortunately, Sorenson’s paper provides some references so we can have a look at these purportedly late dates. Here are the radiocarbon dates I could find that apparently form the basis of the Mormon claim of a late survival of mastodons in eastern North America:

I was unable to find the 1975 Wenner-Grenn report that Sorensen references for the claim of mastodons in the Great Lakes at 4000 BC (related to the work of Warren Wittry), but I wonder if that date isn’t related to M-347 above (a 4000 BC mastodon date from Lapeer County, Michigan, reported by Crane and Griffin in 1959).

I was also unable to find a specific date associated with the mastodon from Devil’s Den, Florida, and couldn't find a copy of Martin and Webb (1974) online. Kurten and Anderson (1980:365) reference “unpublished C-14 data” from Martin and Webb (1974) and give an age range of 8000-7000 BP (i.e., about 5000 BC, uncalibrated).

For the other dates, a few things are worth noting. The M-138 date (the “Richmond Mastodon” from Noble County, Indiana) is from charcoal, not the mastodon itself. The association between the charcoal and the mastodon is highly suspect, as the excavation that produced both the mastodon and the charcoal was actually performed in the 1930s (see Williams 1957:365, 368). The excavators thought that the charcoal and some corner-notched projectile points were associated with the mastodon, but it seems more likely they they are actually from a later Late Archaic component that was not directly associated with the mastodon remains. Williams (1957: 368) states that there was a second radiocarbon date from the site that was about twice as old.

The M-67 and M-347 dates, obtained in the 1950s from tusk material, could easily have been contaminated by more recent organic matter (see below). They are most likely far too young.

The L-211 date, like the M-138 date, was apparently obtained from charcoal recovered from an excavation decades earlier. Further, the deposits were unconsolidated and may have contained a jumble of redeposited material (in other words, the charcoal may have had nothing to do with the mastodon bones) (Hester 1960:65).

The alert reader will notice that four out of the five dates in the table above are in the very early years of radiocabon dating (the 1950s), and the fifth is from the 1970s. Why does that matter? Because, as in all science, there have been developments in the methods, practice, and theory of radiocarbon dating since it was first operationalized in 1947. Radiocarbon dating is incredibly important tool for understanding the past, and considerable effort has gone into improving it. One aspect of improving the reliability and accuracy of radiocarbon dating was dealing with problems of sample contamination. Early on, it was realized that radiocarbon dates on bone were often far too young because the samples were often contaminated with more recent carbon.
Here is a summary of the history of advancements in radiocarbon dating bone. Here is another.

The evolution of thought in the scholarly literature about the extinction of mastodons is connected to developments in radiocarbon dating and the refinement of techniques for removing contamination. The 1957 paper by Williams referenced above, often cited by Mormons, argues for the presence of mastodons in eastern North America after 8000 BC, with extinction around 5000 BC. Because of a lack of archaeological associations between mastodon remains and the Archaic peoples with whom they would have been contemporary, however, Williams discussed the possibility of a problem with dating techniques. In other words, the late dates appeared somewhat anomalous even in 1957 because there was no good direct evidence of interactions between mastodons and the Archaic peoples that would have shared the continent with them between 8000 and 5000 BC. All of the radiocarbon dates on bone that Williams utilized would have been subject to contamination by younger carbon, resulting in age estimates that skewed too young.

A 1968 paper by A. Dreimanis summarized 28 available radiocarbon dates for mastodons, throwing out many of the early dates and suggesting that extinction was underway by 10,000 years ago. Dreimanis did not throw out the dates arbitrarily, but because of issues of contamination that were becoming better understood and unclear relationships between what was dated (e.g., plant material) and the target of the date (the mastodon). The paper by Hester (1960) also discusses some of the same problematic dates. By the 1960s, it was recognized that contamination by recent humic acids may make dates on bone collagen too young. Bone samples were especially susceptible to contamination by more recent organic materials, complete removal of which was difficult for the sample sizes that were required.

The advent of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating in the 1980s allowed smaller samples to be used to produce age estimates, permitting improved pretreatment procedures to remove contaminants from bone prior to dating (see this 1992 paper). This improved both the accuracy and precision of radiocarbon dates on bone, which are now typically performed only on collagen (protein) extracted from the bone, rather than the mineral component (hydroxyapatite). Here is an explanation on the Beta Analytic website.

In the present (the early 21st century) all scientists that I’m aware of support the idea that mastodon extinction was associated with the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. The young (e.g., 8000-1000 BC) dates obtained from mastodons in the first decades of radiocarbon dating have not been duplicated (with the possible exception of very recent date from another Michigan mastodon) since procedures for removing contaminants were refined. Now a “young” date on a mastodon is one that post-dates 10,500 RCYBP (as above). There are good reasons why scientists don’t use those anomalous dates from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s: they are not discarded simply because they don’t fit our expectations, but because there are logical, well-understood reasons to strongly suspect they don’t reflect the actual age of the bones. And those dates exist in a vacuum of other compelling evidence to suggest that populations of mastodons really survived that long into the Holocene.

So while radiocarbon dating and science have continued to move forward and refine our understanding of the demise of the mastodons, the Mormons seem to prefer to stop time during the early days of radiocarbon dating, when anomalously young dates on bone were not uncommon. Based on what we know now, those anomalously young dates are probably attributable to either contamination, context/association problems, or both. They are embraced by Mormons not because they are good science, but because they remain the "best fit" to the Jaredite time period. No-one else takes those dates seriously, and it isn't because they're trying to undermine the BOM. It's because there isn't any reason to take them seriously: they are probably mistakes.

As the scientific evidence against a 2500 BC population of mastodons in eastern North America mounted, the Mormon interpretation of the elephants of Ether also changed. Gone now is any argument that humans had domesticated mastodons, as so confidently asserted by Hyrum O. Smith in 1908. Again from the website "Step by Step Through the Book of Mormon:"

“Moroni then lists the animals that were "useful unto man," including horses, asses, and the elephants, cureloms, and cumoms. But it is very interesting that there is a difference in the way they are listed. They "had horses and asses," implying possession of domesticated animals, but "there were elephants, cureloms, and cumoms" (Ether 9:19). This hints that these last mentioned animals existed in the land and were useful to them, but were not domesticated.”

Many Mormon websites also cite as support for the late survival of mastodons evidence of the co-existence of humans and mastodons. Co-existence and late (i.e., 2500 BC) co-existence are not the same thing. The fact that humans and mastodons co-existed has zero bearing on the argument of when they coexisted. There is abundant evidence that humans and mastodons did interact in North America during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition and that fact is not in dispute. What is in dispute in the late survival of those creatures claimed by Mormons. Of that there is no good evidence. Once radiocarbon data allowed prehistoric time in eastern North America to be unfurled, it became clear that there was a large time gap between the heyday of the mastodons the purported arrival of the Jaredites. That time gap grew as radiocarbon dating procedures improved to deal with the systematic error produced by contamination problems.

Continuing to uncritically employ a handful of young radiocarbon dates from the early decades of radiocarbon dating as support for the claim of elephants at 2500 BC is intellectually dishonest. Last time I checked, AMS dates were about $600 each (I also seem to recall that the price has recently dropped). If Mormons want to continue to use radiocarbon dating to evaluate the historical accuracy of the Book of Ether, I suggest that they have those “late surviving” mastodons re-dated. If they agree to pay for it, I would be happy to help attempt to locate the remains wherever they are curated and try to secure permission to have samples dated. It would be a nice way to resolve the ambiguity. We can publish the results. If there really were mastodons tromping around in the woodlands of Archaic eastern North America, I would like to know about it and so would a lot of other people. It's a win-win.
___________

References for unlinked literature:

Crane, H. R. 1956. University of Michigan Radiocarbon Dates I. Science 124(3224): 664-672.

Crane, H. R., and J. B. Griffin. 1959. University of Michigan Radiocarbon Dates IV. American Journal of Science Radiocarbon Supplement 1: 173-198.

Hester, Jim J. 1960. Late Pleistocene Extinction and Radiocarbon Dating. American Antiquity 26(1):58-77.

Kurten, B., and E. Anderson. 1980. Pleistocene Mammals of North America. New York: Columbia University Press.

Martin, R. A., and S. D. Webb. 1974. Late Pleistocene Mammals from the Devil's Den Fauna, Levy County. In Webb, S.D. (editor): Pleistocene Mammals of Florida, pp. 114-145. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida.

Williams, Stephen. 1957. The Island 35 Mastodon: Its Bearing on the Age of Archaic Cultures in the East. American Antiquity 22:359-372.

Cotton Mather: America's First Nephilim Enthusiast

2/26/2015

The case of Cotton Mather (1663-1728) misinterpreting mastodon bones unearthed in Claverack, New York, as the remains of an ancient giant is commonly supplied as an illustration of how even learned individuals could make that mistake in the days when the Bible provided the primary framework by which to understand the natural world (here is one example, here is another).

Mather was not the only one to make this mistake, of course: there are many examples that pre- and post-date him. What is interesting about the Mather case is that his prodigious writings on the subject provide context as to why the idea of finding giants was so attractive. In my opinion, the appeal of giants to Mather in 1705 was much the same as it is for many Nephilim enthusiasts today.

Mather was a Puritan minister who wrote extensively about science and religion and was vigorously involved in both. Working on another post, I was interested to learn that a large, previously unpublished work written by Mather during the period 1693-1728 had become available in 2010. The book, entitled Biblia Americana, has been printed in 6 volumes with over 4,500 pages. It is the earliest comprehensive Bible commentary written in North America, containing the thoughts of Mather on a huge variety of topics related to the intersection of science and religion. The first volume alone (Biblia Americana: Genesis) costs $200, which is well out of my price range. Luckily, however, I found some sections related to Mather’s thoughts on giants reproduced and discussed in a couple of publications made available by one of the editors (Reiner Smolinksi) as pdfs.

I’m going to reproduce several passages that I think are good illustrations of Mather’s thinking about giants. These are from the annotated version of Biblia Americana that I found here. I’ll keep the emphases (italics and capitalization) as it is provided.

The first quote (pages 582-583 in the publication, section 185r) is a question and answer about whether there is physical evidence of giants that proves the Old Testament to be true, therefore refuting atheism:

“Q. Concerning the Dayes before the Flood, the glorious Historian ha’s told us; There were GIANTS on the Earth, in those Dayes. Could any undoubted Ruines and Remains of those GIANTS, be found under the Earth, among the other subterraneous Curiosities, in our Dayes, it would be an Illustrious Confirmation of the Mosaic History, and an Admirable Obturation on the Mouth of Atheism?

A. Then let the Inquisitive Part of Mankind, know that the Bones of those who were certainly some of the Antediluvian GIANTS, have been found under the Earth, in these later Ages. Below the Strata of Earth, which the Flood left on the Surface of it, in the other Haemisphere, such enormous Bones have been found, as all skill in Anatomy must pronounce to belong unto Humane Bodies, & could belong to none but Giants, in Comparison of whom, Og, and Goliath, and all the Sons of Anak, must hardly be so much as Pygmies. But that AMERICA too, as tis but agreeable, may throw something, to the Treasures of the BIBLIA AMERICANA, I will surprise you, with telling you, That the Men who were able to have Turned the World upside down, came hither also; [How! No Man alive can tell!] And the Bones, probably of the Antediluvian GIANTS, have here been met withal.”

Mather's answer to his own question is a resounding "yes!" This is a clear statement of Mather's belief that the remains of pre-Flood giants could be found in North America, supporting the idea that biblical narrative was accurate. As discussed in the footnotes to the section of the text quoted above, the interpretation of mastodon bones as the bones of pre-Flood giants neatly resolved the problem of how to account for fossil remains that didn’t appear to be those of any other creature mentioned in the Old Testament.

Mather spends several paragraphs discussing what the giants actually were, remarking on what the term “Nephilim” might mean (pages 584-585 in the publication, section 185r):

“I will not go to trouble you, with the Opinions of the Ancients, who suppose the Original of those Giants, to be, The Sons of God coming in unto the Daughters of Men; and that the Sons of God, were Angels, or Divels; to which the Name of, Nephilim, which may signify, Fallen Ones, agrees well enough: . . .
An Extremity of Incredulity, ha’s led some to think, That the Antediluvian Giants were but Metaphorical Ones; That they were Giants for Quality only, and not for Quantity.”

In Mather's discussion, we can see two of the core elements that characterize the worldview of Nephilim enthusiasts today:

Hard evidence of giants proves the Bible is true, therefore showing alternatives (whether atheism or Darwinian evolution) to be false;

The term “giant” in the Bible was not used metaphorically, but rather to denote an actual human-like creature of large size (and possibly of supernatural origin?);
Biblical giants should be found in the New World as well as the Old Word.

And there is another important point of similarity between Mather's interest in finding biblical giants and the approach taken by today’s Nephilim enthusiasts. We all know how the story of Mather's giant bones ends: the bones were later shown to be those of a mastodon. His enthusiastic acceptance of the “proof” that giants existed was conditioned by his pre-supposition that they of course must exist (because they were mentioned in the Bible). Looking for evidence to support a foregone conclusion, Mather accepted as proof something that was nothing of the sort.

Modern Nephilim enthusiasts routinely commit this same error, presenting as “proof” anything that fits with the Nephilim worldview.

Not much has really changed in 300 years. It would be funny, except that it’s not.

Mastodons, "Mound Builders," and the Willful Flattening of Time

2/14/2015

Giants, “Mound Builders,” and mastodons have been entangled with one another in several strange ways since at least the mid-1800s. In a previous post, I wrote about one well-documented instance of a mastodon skeleton being misinterpreted and misrepresented as that of a giant human. Another example is discussion of the often-repeated quote from Abraham Lincoln about "that extinct species of giant," which often centers on whether the reference to "giant" was intended to refer to the bones of dead mastodons and mammoths or to the bones of dead human giants.

In this post, I’m going to discuss two more instances – one historical and one current – where mastodons and “Mound Builders” are mingled.

The historical one (the ideas of Frederick Larkin) illustrates some of the imaginative thinking that flourished in the 19th century in a relative vacuum of temporal control over archaeological and paleontological information. The current one (the ideas of Joe Taylor) illustrates the willful disregard of almost everything we’ve learned about time in the past century. Both relate to the question of who built the mounds, enclosures, and other earthen monuments of eastern North America.

That question was answered long ago: it was indigenous Native Americans. This was established to the satisfaction of most scholars with the publication of the Bureau of American Ethnology’s (BAE) Annual Report of 1894. While our understanding about how, when, and why these earthworks were constructed has been significantly refined over the last century, no direct evidence has surfaced which suggests that the main conclusion of the BAE report was incorrect. The earthworks of eastern North America were built by and for Native American societies.

The notion that Native Americans could not have built the large and/or complex earthen structures dotting the landscape has a long history in this country that continues to this day. The 19th century question of the identity of the “Mound Builders” had a distinct racial component, with many Euroamerican observers unwilling to accept the idea that earthworks were built by the ancestors of the indigenous peoples that they had recently exterminated or forcibly removed from the region.

I suspect that, once I have my database assembled and cleaned up, I will be able to demonstrate a connection between the frequency of reporting of “giant” skeletons from the earthworks of eastern North America and the historical trajectory of the “Mound Builder” controversy. Many (though not all) of those 19th and early 20th century newspaper accounts of large skeletons employ the language of race and make explicit statements about the identity of the skeletons that can be understood in the context of the debate about the existence of a pre-Native American people/race/civilization that built the earthworks.

The current resurgent interest in giants is clearly connected to a revitalization of the myth of the “Mound Builder.” The articulation between current “research” on giants and the “Mound Builder” myth is made obvious through the "Stone Builders, Mound Builders and the Giants of North America" website of Jim and Bill Vieira and the content of their program Search for the Lost Giants. Here is a blog post by archaeologist Stephen Mrozowski explaining his view of what that program is about.

More about that later. Let’s get to the mastodon connections.

The American mastodon (Mammut americanum) was a cousin of the elephant that lived in North America for several million years during the Pliocene and Pleistocene. Mastodons became extinct as modern environments emerged after the last Ice Age: the youngest mastodon I am aware of dates to about 10,700 BC. Environmental change and human predation probably contributed to the demise of the species, though the relative importance of these factors is a subject of a debate.

What did mastodons have to do with "Mound Builders?" In reality, nothing.

An illustration from Frederick Larkin's "Ancient Man in America" (1880).

Frederick Larkin’s Domesticated Mastodons

Our first case comes from the 19th century.

Frederick Larkin, a consort of T. Apoleon Cheney in the exploration of various earthworks in New York (including the Conewango Mound), thought that the “Mound Builders” of eastern North America had used domesticated mastodons in their construction activities. He did not believe in giants. Like many giant enthusiasts (and ancient alien theorists), however, he didn’t think the earthworks could have been built by normal humans. In his sole publication, Ancient Man in America (1880), Larkin wrote:

“My theory that the pre-historic races used, to some extent, the great American elephant, or mastodon, I believe is new and no doubt will be considered visionary by many readers and more especially by prominent archaeologists. Finding the form of an elephant engraved upon a copper relic some six inches long and four wide, in a mound on the Red House Creek, in the year 1854 and represented in harness with a sort of breast-collar with tugs reaching past the hips, first led me to adopt that theory. That the great beast was contemporary with the mound builders is conceded by all, and also that his bones and those of his master are crumbling together in the ground.” (preface)

“From the shores of Lake Superior we can trace this people to Wisconsin, where we find some singular earthworks: six effigies of animals, six parallelograms, one circle, and one effigy of the human figure. These tumuli extend for the distance of half a mile along the trail. What the animals represent in effigy is difficult to determine. Many at the present time suppose that the mastodon is one, and that he was a favorite animal and perhaps used as a beast of burden. That the mastodon was contemporary with the mound-builders is now an undisputed fact. It is a wonder, and has been since the great mounds have been discovered, how such immense works could have been built by human hands. To me it is not difficult to believe that those people tamed that monster of the forest and made him a willing slave to their superior intellectual power. If such was the case, we can imagine that tremendous teams have been driven to and fro in the vicinity of their great works, tearing up trees by the roots, or marching with armies into the field of battle amidst showers of poisoned arrows.” (page 3)

Later in the volume, Larkin further explained the rationale for his conclusion:

“I have heretofore suggested that the ancient Mound Builders were contemporary with the mastodon and that in all probability they tamed and used that powerful beast to haul heavy burdens. As I stand almost alone, in relation to that theory, I will give my evidence for such a belief. It is a fact admitted by all familiar with pre-historic discoveries that the bones of the mastodon and those of the Mound Builders are found in the same localities, and in about the same state of preservation; also in and around their great works, stones are frequently discovered with animals engraved upon them which are supposed to represent that animal. The copper relic, formerly referred to, found on the Allegany River with the form of an elephant engraved upon it, represented in harness, first attracted my attention to that subject. If the ancient people in North America tamed that great beast it is very likely that the inhabitants of South America done the same thing.” (pg 141)

“When we consider the magnificent works built by these ancient people it looks impossible that they could have been built by no other than human labor. The great mound at Cahokia, Illinois, is estimated to cover twenty millions of cubic feet of earth, which was all brought from a distance. Now, it would take one thousand men nearly twenty years to perform the labor which was bestowed upon building of that one tumulus, and when we consider that that is but one of about sixty other structures by which it is surrounded, one thousand men could not have performed the great labor in the days and years allotted to human life.” (pg. 143)

Given what was known about the paleontology, geology, and human prehistory of eastern North America in 1880, we should cut Larkin some slack. The idea that global cooling cycles (i.e., Ice Ages) had occurred and affected the environment was relatively new, and estimates for the age of the Earth varied from the short (i.e., ~6000 year) time frames supplied through biblical calculations to ages in the tens to hundreds of millions of years calculated based on the Earth’s temperature (Thomson) and the size of the sun (von Helmholtz). Radiometric dating techniques allowing the ages of geological deposits, Pleistocene fauna, and archaeological deposits to be estimated in absolute terms were still decades away. In other words, assuming that humans and mastodons were contemporary in eastern North America was not such a crazy thought – it was in fact correct. But we now know that mastodons went extinct thousands of years before the earliest known North American mounds were built (about 3500 BC or so).

A cast of the Burning Tree mastodon on display at the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum. Joe Taylor says the mastodon was skinned by giant humans associated with "Mound Builders."

Joe Taylor’s Amazing Fifteen Foot Mound-Building Mastodon Skinners

Speaking in 2012, Joe Taylor (promoter of the 47” femur) deserves much less slack than Larkin for his ridiculous statement about the relationships between mastodons and “Mound Builders.” In this interview (about 24:00 minutes in), Taylor says the following:

“I’ve got the Burning Tree mastodon here that was skinned. I’ve got the skeleton – a cast of it – and I lived with that thing for five months so I know it pretty well. That thing was skinned. If you figure an elephant hide weighs around 2000 pounds, you have to do some tall explaining to say why would the Indians as we know them have skinned that thing. But if you know that Ohio, at Newark, where this mastodon came from, was called the Mound City . . . and if you know that in some of those mounds in Ohio there were men ten feet tall found, and others nine feet tall, now you begin to see that well, maybe if there were tribes of these men that were ten, twelve feet tall, and like the Pawnee said they were fifteen feet tall, well a half dozen or so of those guys could look at this mastodon who’s been injured and standing over there in a pool, well they’d just wait till he died and skin him. A man twelve to fifteen feet tall could actually utilize an elephant hide for armor or clothes or whatever. So I think the Burning Tree mastodon indicates that there giant men living in Ohio.”

So there you have it: according to Joe Taylor, giant Mound Builders skinned the Burning Tree mastodon. The alert listener will notice that the giants in Taylor’s story grew from ten feet to fifteen feet tall in less than two minutes. We’re lucky it was a short segment of the interview: if it had gone on for ten more minutes they would have broken the 60 foot threshold and someone would have to make a new version of that chart that’s all over the internet comparing the different skeleton sizes.

Taylor is correct that there is evidence of butchery on the Burning Tree mastodon. Everything else he says, however, is wrong. The authors of the analysis (Fisher et al. 1994:51) make the following conclusion:

“. . . the Burning Tree mastodon died elsewhere and was disarticulated and to some extent defleshed before being transported to and submerged in the pond. The patterning of marks on the bones indicates a deliberate strategy of carcass reduction involving symmetrical treatment of paired anatomical regions. The occurrence of bones in three discrete concentrations composed of anatomically unrelated units indicates intentional emplacement. The excellent preservation of bone, the presence of articulated skeletal units, and the presence of a section of the mastodon’s intestine containing viable enteric bacteria indicate that the carcass units were submerged in the pond shortly after the death of the mastodon. This constellation of factors is most parsimoniously explained by Paleoindian butchery and subaqueous caching of the mastodon’s carcass.”

The mastodon didn’t die in the pond – disarticulated parts of it were dragged there after death. And it wasn’t just skinned – it was butchered. The Burning Tree mastodon is securely dated to around 11,400 BC, many thousands of years too early to have anything to do with the Woodland period cultures that constructed the earthworks in the same vicinity. Elephants were butchered by Paleoindians (and possibly earlier peoples) in eastern North America, and were also butchered in other parts of the world during the Pleistocene. The idea that only giant humans could butcher an elephant is silly. Here is a video showing a bunch of modern people using knives to butcher an elephant carcass. None of the persons appears to be a giant. They do use a tractor at one point to turn the carcass over, but I’m sure that there are ways to process the entire carcass that don’t require an internal combustion engine.

I’m not sure how Taylor justifies completely ignoring the dating of the Burning Tree mastodon – maybe it’s because he believes the earth is only 6000 years old and therefore all information from radiocarbon dating is meaningless? The Mt. Blanco website states that the presence of living bacteria in the stomach contents of the mastodon means it couldn't be as old as the radiocarbon dates indicate. I'm not a bacteria specialist, but apparently being in a state of dormancy for a few thousand (or million) years is not a big deal for bacteria.

For whatever reason, Taylor seems to be willfully embracing the fundamental lack of temporal information that handicapped Larkin. In Larkin’s case, the lack of temporal control was due to an actual lack of information, causing him to equate proximity in space with equivalence in time. In Taylor’s case, however, there is no excuse. You have to squeeze your eyes shut really hard these days to make the same mistake Larkin did.

Taylor’s interpretation of the Burning Tree mastodon is illuminating for just that reason. There is a determined blindness at the core of the entire revitalization of the “Mound Builder” myth. In order to presume that there was such a thing as a single “Mound Builder” race or culture, you have to disregard a century of scientific archaeology and consciously flatten time in a way that hasn’t been remotely defensible since the dawn of radiocarbon dating in the 1950s. It is reasonable to ask why so many giantologists seem so willing to put those blinders on and so resolved to resuscitate an inherently racist idea that was discredited over a hundred years ago.

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Fisher, Daniel C., Bradley T. Lepper, and Paul E. Hooge. 1994. "Evidence for Butchery of the Burning Tree Mastodon." In The First Discovery of America, edited by William S. Dancey, pp. 43-57. The Ohio Archaeological Council, Columbus, Ohio.
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Creation, Corruption, and Salvation: Are Giants People Too?

2/6/2015

A woodcut by Gustave Dore showing an angel delivering God's instructions to Joshua prior to the siege of Jericho. Nephilim enthusiasts will tell you that the Israelites slaughtered every man, woman, and child in the city as part of their ongoing (and ultimately unsuccessful) campaign to wipe out the Nephilim bloodline, save humanity, and thwart Satan's plot.

In a previous post, I discussed one connection between creationism (the idea that the natural world is the result of a divine act) and the belief in giants. What I termed a “Biblical theory of prehistory” (BTOP) specifies that human, animal, and plant life were created perfect but have been degenerating though time. As the clock “winds down” on creation and mutations accumulate, plants, animals, and humans have gotten smaller and less perfect. Bigger is better, and humans were both bigger and better in the past.

That “bigger is better” view of giants is rather uncomplicated and, I think, a minority view among those who take an active interest in the topic. It enjoys little direct support from the Bible itself, which makes no statements about the height of Adam or Noah or any other key pre- or post-Flood humans. (Attributing a large stature to Adam – “more than twice as tall as men” living today – was one of Seventh Day Adventist Ellen White’s controversial additions to the Bible). But the idea is out there. This forum has an informal discussion of the origin and popularity of the idea that Adam was 15’ tall and that humans have degenerated since creation (note the similarity to the size of the giant human suggested by Joe Taylor’s 47” femur sculpture based on an anonymous letter from Turkey, or Egypt, or Syria, or somewhere over there).

What's more popular than this Sunday School version of giants?

One word: Nephilim.

A Google search on "Nephilim" returns over 3.7 million results. I have not had the opportunity to read all of these pages, but I've seen enough to take a stab at a summary of what's going on.

The Nephilim are first mentioned in Genesis 6:4. The term was translated as "giants" in the King James Version of the Bible:

“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”

Later translations left the term "Nephilim" in place. The New International Version reads:

“The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.”

There are some additional mentions of the Nephilim and/or giants in the Old Testament, particularly in the stories about the conquest of the Promised Land by the Israelites (in Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua).

The few ambiguous mentions of Nephilim in the Old Testament have provided ample room for speculation about what they were, where they came from, and what happened to them. In more pedestrian interpretations, the Nephilim were badly behaved humans who were doing ungodly things. Nothing supernatural was involved. An article on the website Answers In Genesis (a fairly mainstream Young Earth Creationist site) considers some possibilities for the Nephilim and states that “Answers in Genesis officially doesn’t take a particular stand on this issue as a ministry.” Further, this site also clearly states that the Nephilim don't really matter in terms of biblical teachings. The Nephilim were wiped out and have no bearing on our world today.

That’s boring. And boring, for Nephilim enthusiasts, is just not acceptable. Boring doesn't sell books and DVDs.

In the interpretation most favored by proponents of giants, the Old Testament Nephilim were inhuman hybrids produced by matings between humans and fallen angels (or demons, or extraterrestrials). Well, hey, that's not boring. And you can sell books about it. Here is a description from the website Rapture Forums:

    "Many folks today try to dismiss the Nephilim completely by attributing this assault on humanity as the result of the co-mingling of the sons of Seth with the daughters of Cain. Try and support that idea using Scripture. An acrobat would be hard pressed to perform such a stretch.
    There were Nephilim (giants) in the land in those days and also after that. The procreation of human beings can create little monsters, but they aren't monstrous. The Nephilim hybrid – the offspring created from the union of fallen angels and human women – brought about the most evil the world had ever experienced. To this very day we've not been subjected to such evil – but it is coming."

It is the corrupt nature of the mating – the union of a supernatural entity and a human, so the story goes -- that was responsible for the inhuman size of the Nephilim. These giant creatures did not have a soul and were part of Satan’s plan, not God’s. And multiple attempts to annihilate them failed. They're either already here or on their way.

This is not mainstream Christan teaching. Here is how a website that is concerned with “revealing heresies and false teachings affecting the Church today” summarizes the Nephilim-centric view of the Old Testament:

"Demons/ angels (sons of God) had illicit relationships with women (the daughters of men) and these perverted relations produced genetically mutated beings known as nephilim (giants). God then imprisoned some of the angels who did this and in order to purify the bloodline of man God brought on the Flood. Through genetic engineering these Nephilim will be resurrected, one of which will be the Antichrist. To these people, the Nephilim are also tied up with so-called extra-terrestrial forms of life."

There are some variations out there among those 3.7 million web pages about the Nephilim, but that’s the general idea. Some Nephilim enthusiasts think that the Nephilim are being created by new matings with aliens, demons, or angels. Others think they (or their genes) were never really wiped out and have been with us all along.

It is that continued or future presence makes them still relevant. Contrary to the position taken by Answers in Genesis that the origin and identity of the Nephilim is immaterial to Christian teachings, many creationists believe strongly that the Nephilim/giant issue is actually very important to what the Bible means in terms of understanding God’s plan in the past, present, and future. I learned this quickly during my brief tenure as Visiting Assistant Professor of Giantology on the Facebook page “REAL GIANTS.” The Nephilim issue is now a significant part of the belief system of many creationists (at least the ones who want to talk about giants). I was kicked off the site before I could really get a handle on the spectrum of beliefs on the issue or get a sense of how many people believe this stuff. Maybe I'll design an online survey.

If you’re knowledgeable or interested in the Bible and this all sounds bizarre to you, you’re not alone. Mainstream Christian websites point out that much of the “theory” about the Nephilim is based on non-biblical sources, including Apocrypha (especially the Book of Enoch), occult teachings, New Age spirituality, modern conspiracy theories, stuff about aliens, etc (one example here). In other words, many thoughtful Christians will tell you that this emphasis on the Nephilim is not really Christian at all: it's dependent upon all kinds of other information to interpret the few ambiguous mentions of Nephilim in the Bible. The resulting conclusions, therefore, really have very little to do with the Bible.

The mixture of information from biblical and extra-biblical “sources” has created a tangle of ideas, sentiments, and "evidence" that can only be described as bizarre. It is a whirlpool that is fueled by paranoia and uncertainty, but, somewhat ironically, its devotees show no signs that they are afflicted by any doubt about their conclusions or convictions. Nor are they troubled by the implications of their beliefs or worried that there is a lack of hard evidence to back up any of their claims. If you’re looking for people who embrace the concept of healthy skepticism as a path to producing a credible interpretation, you’re going to need to keep looking. The fetish for the supernatural in this crowd overwhelms any inclination toward critical thinking that might be present. If the "I wonder if this could be wrong" question is a hermit crab, the desire for validation of a pre-existing notion is an incoming tsunami.

That's because Nephilim enthusiasts attribute a much more important role to these creatures than mainstream Christians. The Nephilim-centric view of the world sees the Flood as an attempt to rid the world of these abominable giants, for example, whose population had grown dramatically and threatened the human bloodline. In other words, God did not bring on the Flood because humanity had degenerated, but because Satan had fouled His creation by creating the Nephilim. That's definitely not the lesson I was taught in Sunday School.

Nephilim enthusiasts also dispute the idea that the Flood successfully exterminated the giants, because the post-Flood Israelites encounter "giants" inhabiting the Promised Land of Canaan. This presents a bit of a problem: where did the giants come from if they were not aboard Noah's Ark? Old Earth Creationists can explain this by postulating that the Flood was only regional rather than global; other interpretations, such as this one, speculate that Noah’s sons must have married women that were carrying “the Nephilim gene."   This blog post claims that lineages of giants can be traced from pre-Flood to post-Flood times. At any rate, Nephilim enthusiasts assert that giants were common in the post-Flood world at least until the time of David, and that there is plenty of scripture to back that up.

In the Nephilim-centric view of the world, the nature of the interactions between the Israelites and the giants in Canaan again highlights their importance: the Nephilim were not a sideshow in either the pre- or post-Flood world. In Deuteronomy (20:16-17), God ordered the Israelites to “utterly destroy” the peoples living in the Promised Land: every man, woman, child, and animal was to be killed. This command was carried out as Joshua and his armies swept through Canaan, burning, slaughtering, and making every attempt to commit genocide (Joshua 6-10). The bloody siege of Jericho was described in detail (Joshua 6:21):

"And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword."

The genocide committed by Joshua and his armies is a common subject of discourse among Bible believers and scholars, as it seems difficult to reconcile with the characteristics of a compassionate God. Christian apologists typically frame the discussion in terms the morality of committing murder and our inability to understand God’s plan (here is one example). Nephilim apologists, however, see no ambiguity and claim that God’s orders to massacre the residents of Canaan were special precisely because of the Nephilim heritage of the people of Canaan. That heritage posed a threat to humanity. The residents of Canaan were not fully human and had to be exterminated. Why? Because the products of the abominable inter-matings between humans and fallen angels were, in fact, key to Satan’s plan to corrupt the human bloodline and prevent the eventual birth of the Messiah (Jesus). In this view, the Nephilim are critical to understanding Satan’s determination to undermine God’s plan.

The brutal struggle for the Promised Land is important to Nephilim enthusiasts for two reasons: 1) it illustrates God’s determination to exterminate the Nephilim; and 2) it specifies that not all the Nephilim were killed (Joshua 11:22). This sets up the rationale for a worldwide search for evidence of Nephilim outside of the Near East (especially in the Americas) and foregrounds the question of what should be done if living descendants of the Nephilim are located. The Nephilim are not just something to understand historically, but something relevant to today’s war between good and evil.

Here’s one statement of the issue:

“First you have to deal with the idea of monstrous giants, giants who may still exist today hidden somewhere, because Israel did not kill all of them off as ordered, and giants were reported by the explorers of the Americas, as well as the Native Americans. These are historical records, not fictional books. It opens the door to the idea that there are angelic hybrids that may not be so human still around.”

Here’s another:

“We have no idea of what a being that is half angelic and half human may have been (or still may be) capable. . . . We know that Israel did not kill off all the giants. Some of them took refuge in other cities, and no doubt migrated. In fact there seems to be records that show that they moved north and also into the Americas. These Mayan and other ruins can be easily explained if you think of tremendous giants with incredible strength and advanced technology as having built them. . . . .
. . . As we now know that they were indeed hybrids or nephilim, it becomes clear why God mandated that they must all be killed. He could not allow this contaminated bloodline to enter into Israel's bloodline, as the Messiah needed to come from pure human blood. They were an evil people and their genetics were corrupting mankind again.. . . "

Steve Qualye, self-identified “leading authority on giants,” offers this conclusion in his book Aliens and Fallen Angels: Offspring of the Gods, the Sexual Corruption of the Human Race (emphasis added):

". . . this would seem to indicate that the Nephilim, as well as their fallen-angel fathers, can father children, thus continuing the line of the Nephilim without need for genetic input from an angelic being. This is further proof of the need for these monsters to be killed in order to prevent them from continuing to multiply."

(Disclosure: I didn’t buy Quayle’s book and I don’t intend to. I found this quote on a website. I am assuming it’s accurate.)

While giant stature was the main way to identify the Nephilim in the Old Testament, most contemporary Nephilim hunters do not expect that the bloodline is still revealed by large size (as their numbers increased through time and there was more interbreeding with humans, the rationale goes, their bloodline was diluted and their size decreased). Thus while the Nephilim of the past may be identified through the remains of “giants” (giant-sized skeletons, artifacts, architecture), today’s Nephilim may be hiding in plain sight. They may appear human but are carrying “the Nephilim gene,” the stamp of corruption that is part of Satan’s strategy to fight God.

Identifying those individuals and populations associated with the Nephilim is a priority of Nephilim enthusiasts.

But how can this corrupted bloodline be recognized in the absence of obvious physical markers like large stature? Here is where it really starts to become troubling. Want to find Nephilim? According to Nephilim hunters, you might want to look at the Rh-negative blood type, peculiar eye color, autism, strange body language . . . Here is a post discussing Nephilim genetics (and promoting a book you can buy). This forum contains a post from someone who claimed to see a Nephilim with a morphing face at the grocery store. And of course, the litany of "6 fingers and toes, very large male genitalia, awkward rows of teeth or two rows of teeth" comes up. Some people claim to have identified Nephilim DNA in elongated skulls from Peru. It goes on.

My sense is that this debate about the Nephilim is percolating mostly at the fringes of Christian creationist communities, fueling at least some of the current wave of interest in giants. While these ideas may seem silly and inconsequential, they are a symptom of something that is decidedly not inconsequential. Submerged just under the surface of this interest in giants is a resurgence of the idea of that people can be classified as “more” or “less” human based on their physical characteristics and a bizarre interpretation of the creation stories in Genesis propped up by information gathered from a range of extra-biblical sources.

Does this trouble you? It should. Here’s why:

The idea that the peoples of the Earth can be separated into “more” or “less” human groups has precedent: it was a central principle underlying some of the greatest brutalities perpetrated in the 19th and 20th centuries by self-identified Christians. A central tenet of polygenism – the idea that “races” are the result of separate creations – was that only one of the races is the product of God’s special creation. Conveniently for white people, the chosen race was determined to be . . . wait for it . . . white people. The rest of the people on the earth, all the non-white people, were supposed to be somewhat less than human. This was a European idea that picked up steam in the 1500s as Europeans encountered and interacted with non-white populations in different parts of the world. It provided s a tidy justification for colonialism. In America, the polygenism and Scientific Racism of Samuel Morton was used as a justification for slavery. In Europe, Ernst Haeckel’s ideas about polygenism, eugenics, and racial superiority contributed to the rise of Nazism.

While polygenism is no longer a part of mainstream Christian theology (or evolutionary thinking), it has not disappeared. The doctrinal statement of beliefs of the Kingdom Identity Ministries, a white supremacist Christian church, for example, specifies that white people are the “chosen” race, standing “far superior to all other peoples . . .” The Christian Identity movement, of which the Kingdom Identity Ministries is a part, is associated with the “serpent seed” doctrine that specifies that some peoples of the earth are descended from a mating between Satan (a fallen angel) and Eve. Those (non-white) people are not fully human, and mixing between the races is forbidden.

The Nephilim, of course, are also not fully human. If you Google "can Nephilim be saved" you will find evidence of a debate about whether descendents of the Nephilim can receive salvation. Are they people? Do they have souls? Here is a "no salvation" answer. Here is a pdf explaining that "Nephilim CANNOT be saved nor do they have any desire to be saved because they are not human; they do not have a human soul." Here is a website devoted to assuring people who think they are "modern Nephilim hybrids" that they can be saved. Here is another blog exploring the question. And another.

To be clear, I’m not saying that all Nephilim enthusiasts are racists. I am saying, however, that seeking some kind of biblical justification for classifying people based on their physical characteristics is a dangerous path to go down. Especially when mixed with the idea that those physical characteristics mark a "race" that is somehow polluting or less human than the "good" people that God created. We've seen that movie before. The Nephilim story is modern polygenism in the making with an updated cast of characters.

I’m curious as to how Nephilim enthusiasts define "race." I'm also curious as to what answer you’ll get if you ask the “so what” question to someone who is actively seeking out living persons with Nephilim heritage. More good questions for my survey.

For the record, here again is Steve Quayle’s answer to that last question:

"This is further proof of the need for these monsters to be killed in order to prevent them from continuing to multiply."

That is disturbing.

I became interested in understanding the modern fascination with giants because I didn't see an obvious explanation for the resurgence. The Nephilim whirpool, with its strange mix of biblical, New Age, occult, political, cultural, and historical currents, is significant to the phenomenon. I am not a theologian or a social psychologist, so I can't offer a well-informed or nuanced idea about the ultimate source of the kinetic energy powering that whirlpool. But it is clear that many Christian fundamentalists and conspiracy theorists are interested in the Nephilim because they feel they’re key to God’s plan and what it means to do God’s bidding on this planet. And they're not shy about drawing on sources and ideas from well outside of the biblical realm. If you scratch the surface of those ideas, they can get pretty ugly pretty quick. That’s something to be explored, not ignored.

The answer to the question posed by the title of this post is clear: Nephilim enthusiasts generally do not regard giants or their descendants as people. Giants, the products of corruption, are agents in Satan’s plan to thwart God. These beings (rather than human wickedness) were the reason for the Flood. When they persisted after the Flood, God commanded that they be wiped out. That failed also, and Nephilim heritage lived on. What are these Nephilim theorists going to do if they find a Nephilim today? God has tried to wipe them out twice, so what should our course of action be? How many steps away are these Nephilim enthusiasts from seeing themselves as God’s agents of wrath in this life?

Those are legitimate questions to ask given all the statements about killing these "monsters."   Are people like Steve Quayle being serious? Do they really think that the quality of their "research" justifies those kinds of statements? What will they say if one of their followers takes that rhetoric to heart and does something stupid? I'm not the first to ask these questions.

But those are hypotheticals. One thing that we know is that the Nephilim whirlpool sells books. I would like to read those books someday, but I'm not giving those guys a dime. Maybe they'll send me review copies. I won't hold my breath.

I am bothered by this aspect of the resurgent interest in giants. It seems to be based on creating and promoting a doctrine that weaves together the past, present, and future with threads creating oppositions between "us" and "them." The Nephilim narrative resonates with 19th century views of "race" (that different groups of people are the result of separate creations), and I suspect that that legacy (or ignorance of it) is one of the reasons that giantologists so often use the term "race" when describing what they are looking for. I attribute part of the current popularity of the Nephilim concept to its simplistic understanding of the world as the product of a struggle between good and evil. While that idea may initially seem quaint, that quaintness evaporates when one examines the menacing notions that accompany it. So far, that menace has remained rhetorical (as far as I know).

In the Nephilim-centric view of the world, giants are most certainly not people. And the discussion about them is not an academic one, but one centered on crafting a plan of action. That is something worth paying attention to.

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