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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sarah Winnemucca's "Red-Headed Giants"

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

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

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

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

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

Cannibals? Yes.

Red hair?  Yes.

Giants?  No. 

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

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

The Defacement of Lovelock Cave

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

Here's what Taylor says:

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

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

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

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

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

What a dumb thing to do.

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

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

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

This kind of crap isn't harmless.

My Forbidden Archaeology class will have its first meeting this Friday morning. As usual, I've waited until almost the last minute to attempt to finalize the syllabus. But that attempt has now been made, and I still have a day to spare. Go me. 

As anyone who has ever created a syllabus from scratch knows, there comes a point when the rubber meets the road and you have to cease thinking vaguely and start nailing down the specifics. I've still got a few more nails to drive in (you'll notice some "TBA's" in the day-by-day readings, and I'm still working on a couple of additions to the guest list), but this is more or less what we'll be driving this semester. Yes, I know I'm mixing metaphors. It's been a long day. One of my kids woke me up at 2:30 and then again at 3:30 and I wasn't able to get back to sleep afterwards. 

I got several offers of guest participation that I won't be able to fully capitalize this time around. If you emailed me about the class and I haven't gotten back to you yet, I sincerely apologize. As I've mentioned before, the students will be writing several blog posts. I hope that several of you that I was not able to include as formal "guests" of the class will perhaps be willing to work with one or more students individually. I'll be in touch!

Finally, I'm sure some of you out there will, for whatever reasons, be unhappy with what the students will be reading. And I'm sure some of you will tell me about it. Keep in mind that I did not chose readings to provide "answers." I chose them to illustrate points, show contrasts, spark questions, and provoke arguments. While we will be discussing and dissecting some of the readings quite closely in class, others are there simply for background. I'll learn a lot about what works well and what doesn't as I get to know the students and we work our way through the course.  

Stay tuned!

Many of the readers of this blog are no doubt aware of the debacle that unfolded on Jason Colavito's blog regarding the plans of Scott Wolter and Hutton Pulitzer to investigate a site that they claim contains the remains of giant humans. I recommend reading through Colavito's post and the comments (388 as of this writing, a large number of which are by Pulitzer) for the background and some insight into how the Wolter-Pulitzer show handles criticism. I'm not qualified to speculate on what might be underlying Pulitzer's inconsistencies, insults, incoherence, puffery, threats, and evasiveness, but I'm pretty sure it's not an over-abundance of professionalism and competence. It's a bizarre display, to say the least.

Generally, I'm not of the opinion that Pulitzer is worth paying a whole lot of attention to anymore. Any credibility he might have had was flushed away along with the decisive demonstration that his "100 percent confirmed Roman sword," which he claimed would change the history of the world, was simply a 19th or 20th century piece of tourist junk. He was easily fooled by it and continues to stick with his original claim to this day, despite a mountain of evidence that clearly shows his claim is wrong. His inability to accept (or perhaps even understand) contrary facts is fundamentally incompatible with the most basic tenets of science. I have yet to see any evidence that he even understands what "science" is, let alone that he is capable of practicing it.

Pulitzer's well-established silliness is not what is important to me in this case: it's that his silliness leaves us with a a lack of clarity about what the pair are actually planning on doing. To me the significant issue is what appears to be a plan by the pair to go beyond rhetoric and start messing with the actual archaeological record. Their latest audio discussion of a past episode of America Unearthed, the subject of Colavito's blog post, features them discussing what sounds like an excavation they plan to undertake with the intent of finding and unearthing what they believe to be gigantic human remains but without involving the authorities in the traditional way (listen between about 16:00 and 24:00). Pulitzer and Wolter first discuss an image, sent to them by a third party, of what they have determined to their satisfaction is a very large human bone. They say the following, among other things:

16:30 Pulitzer: "With any researcher or explorer, the only thing that confirms it is when you, yourself, your team, your documentation team can physically take them out of the ground yourself, and can document it themselves. And that's what's been missing is a lot of these have been found by people, but when they feel they're doing the right thing and calling the local authorities and state archaeologist and some of these others get involved, literally everything disappears."

18:15 Wolter: "This is not in your typical situation, where archaeologists have control of the site. There is, this is a site that is completely unknown, it has not been studied in any specific detail. [... ]This opportunity is once in a lifetime, we are going to seize that opportunity."

23:00 Wolter: "Believe me, if that bone turns out to be as big as it was, and the rest of the bones turn out to be as big, if they match this then we'll have something big to report."

The original brouhaha about Colivito's blog post concerned his use of the phrase "announce plans to rob presumed Native American grave" in his headline describing what Wolter and Pulitzer planned to do. Pulitzer accused Colavito of libel for using the term "rob" (which he argued implied a criminal act) and Colavito subsequently changed the language to read "dig up." Objectively, "rob" was a poor choice of word and I think Colavito did the correct thing by making a change. His quick word change amicably resolved the issue and we all rode off on on our rainbow-colored unicorns, satisfied that the world was populated by reasonable people. The end.

Oh no, wait, that didn't happen. My bad.

What did happen was that Pulitzer commented many, many more times after the word change, responding to challenges and questions about their plans by creating the crazy quilt of conflicting questions and explanations which you just have to read for yourself to fully appreciate. Nothing squares with anything else -- it's just a big mess that leaves the impression that there really is no plan. In their audio presentation, Wolter and Pulitzer clearly stated they think they're dealing with giant human remains (or else what would be the point of excavating them?), and I think any reasonable person would conclude, based on what they said, that they intend to dig up those remains. In the audio, they told us that professional archaeologists and "local authorities" are the problem, and they are going to "seize the opportunity" of a situation where they can "physically take [the bones] out of the ground" themselves. In his comments, however, Pulitzer appeared to walk that position backward several steps (albeit in a confusing zig-zag), disingenuously asking many others who commented where they possibly could have gotten the idea that he and Wolter were going to dig up human remains themselves. I'll tell you where: from what you said! I fail to see how a reasonable person would draw any other conclusion from the audio.

But maybe all of us somehow got it wrong? Fine -- then tell us what the plan is. I (and others) repeatedly asked Pulitzer to clarify what exactly he was talking about in terms of what he and Wolter intended to do.  Eventually we got this response:

Pulitzer also stated that the local sheriff indeed had been notified and shown the bone (or the images, it's not clear which):

"Andy, for your information. The photos show what could easily be a human bone, but the size of it caused the local sheriff to poo poo it. Was too big. Thus case closed. Path open, thus why we are bringing in our own research and medical team. Cant force the locals to deal with now can you. All bases covered."

I responded:

"Ah . . . So now we have learned something. You and Wolter satisfied yourselves (based on a photo) that it is a human bone, but the local authorities satisfied themselves that it isn't. Therefore you argue that you have a green light to do whatever you want? Is that accurate? Perhaps if this photo is so convincing you should let the world see it. I would be willing to bet you were not looking at a genuine photo of a giant human bone. You did, after all, identify brass on your "Roman sword" as gold."

And that is where the conversation effectively ended. I am left still not knowing exactly what Pulitzer and Wolter intend to do. The cowboy tone of their audio conversation and Pulitzer's unwillingness to provide a simple answer to the "what exactly are you planning on doing" question is troubling to those of us who care about stewardship of archaeological remains. We don't know where this "site" is, and we haven't been shown the images of the object that Wolter and Pulitzer have decided is a human bone. We do know, however, that they think they are dealing with human remains and they apparently suppose they are working within the letter of the law but somehow in a way that will allow them to act  as "warriors for truth" outside of customary or established procedures. Yes, I'm using the word "act" intentionally. I'm concerned that Wolter and Pulitzer's cavalier conspiracy-theory-laden discussion will encourage others to go out and become "warriors for truth" armed, this time, with shovels to accompany the sense of outraged entitlement that Pulitzer attempts to instill in them.

My bet (and my hope) is that these guys give up on this idea, whatever the hell it actually is, and leave the physical archaeological record to professionals. This is not because we want to suppress the truth about anything, but because doing good archaeology in the field requires a skill set that takes years to develop and hone. It requires much more than TreasureForce costumes and empty rants about "forbidden history." As it turns out, technology patents, lawyers, and authorship of copy-paste treasure hunting books are of little utility when trying to read and interpret subtle variations in sediments and deciding how to pick apart overlapping features so you understand what you're looking at. In short: you guys don't know what you're doing. You can talk all you want, but when it comes to archaeological fieldwork you haven't demonstrated that you're qualified to stick a single shovel in the ground. You may have been on TV, you may have a lot of fancy toys, and you may have an A-Team van and an official Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock, but I'd be willing to bet that you couldn't out-perform a single one of my field school students in your knowledge of basic excavation methods.

Rant all you want about your "Roman swords" and your "fight for truth," but please leave the excavating to those of us who understand where show business stops and scientific work begins. And please leave human remains alone. These are the remains of people, not props to be used to try to build an audience for your tragicomic attempt at "rewriting history."

One simple step here would be to show the photo of the alleged "giant human bone" to someone who is qualified to make a credible, indpendent judgement about whether or not it could be human. You're completely wrong if you think it's always a simple task to determine what's human and what's not --  there are numerous examples of highly educated people making mistakes in the past, and well-meaning people in law enforcement and medicine continue to make mistakes today because they are not trained in comparative anatomy. What you need is someone who understands both human and animal anatomy and is familiar with archaeological materials. I suggest you send the image to me. If I can't figure out what I'm looking at, I'll find someone who can. That's a sincere offer. I'll give you an honest opinion, and I won't publish the image without your permission. If I think what I'm looking at is human, I will advise you to revisit the issue with the local law enforcement officials that you claim to have already dealt with. This is the point at which the responsible thing to do is to check the bravado and offer some transparency.

I have more to say about this, but I'm on the road again and my time is limited. I'll just say that my sincere hope is that what sounds like a "let's go dig something up" plan, in whatever form we're now supposed to think it will be operationalized, is piled on the scrap heap with Pulitzer's other unfulfilled promises (remember the "smoking gun" Minoan artifacts of Tennessee? remember the "Indiana mummy"? remember the "white paper" that was promised in spring 2016?).

Finally, I'd like to close by saying something positive about Scott Wolter. Despite our recent issues connected to his withdraw from participation in my class and my disappointment that Pulitzer is apparently now speaking for Wolter, I continue to believe that Wolter and Pulitzer are fundamentally different. The contrast comes through clearly in the audio conversation that is the subject of this post (the only one of their America Unearthed reviews that I've listened to so far). Wolter is articulate and has a command of the issues that easily exceeds anything I've ever heard from Pulitzer. Their partnership is none of my business, of course, but  I continue to wonder why Wolter would choose to make his equal someone who so clearly is not. I remain puzzled by the mismatch. 

I welcome any comments by Pulitzer or Wolter that will help clarify what is going on here: I'm genuinely unsure. I'll delete any comments that I deem unconstructive. 

I'm still on the road in North Carolina. If you're interested, you can read about Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3. If not, you've only got a few more words to go until we get to giants.

Yesterday Jason Colavito wrote about the "Giant in My Backyard" website of Mirrell Blum. I had never heard of this one before. Blum claims to have found a letter left by her grandfather describing an encounter with a "huge, hairy beast man" that ended with the creature being shot and buried. Colavito's post discusses the strange interactions that Blum reported with Nephilim enthusiasts Steve Quayle and L. A. Marzulli. A few days ago, Blum claimed that they were actively digging up the beast man:

"We went as far as changing our phone numbers, emails, and cut off all communication about the letter and what might be buried on our property. After a couple of weeks of trying to figure out what we should do, we gathered a small group of family and friends to come up with a solution.

In the end, they were just as curious as we were and we decided pool our knowledge and skills. Myself and some of my friends work construction and other similar jobs, so we know our way around heavy equipment. We knew the general area that we needed to dig, so we rented and borrowed the equipment we needed and got to work."

 The post includes a picture of a pile of dirt and a dump truck (and a chipper-shredder). When you click a link at the bottom of the page ("Click Here To See Over 8 Hours of Video and 1,000+ Pics of The Dig") you're taken to a page asking you to provide complete credit card information for "Online Access To Pics and Video - Only $0.99." If you click the "Sign Up For Online Access" button (without entering any actual information, of course), you get the following screen (sorry - my laptop is damaged so I had to just take a photo with my phone):​

If your alarm bells haven't gone off yet, you haven't been paying attention.

When I did an image search on the "excavation in progress" photo with the dump truck and a pile of dirt, I got a hit on the website of Quality Landscaping Services in Connecticut. That site uses the exact same photo for illustration, which makes sense considering the presence of the chipper-shredded (which is not a piece of equipment I would bring on an excavation).

The photo of a hair sample being analyzed is taken from a May 2016 story about a Medieval-age plait of braided hair found in an English abbey.

So let's see these thousands of photos of the excavation of the beast man. At least we have a firm date and we won't be waiting long. Hartman Krug, fire up the countdown!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"FIND GIANT SKELETON IN CAVE IN PALESTINE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I've often been curious what mainstream Christianity has to say about the Nephilim-centric Christian fringe that espouses a worldview revolving around human-angel interbreeding and the giants that resulted from those supernatural dalliances. Steve Quayle and L. A. Marzulli have made careers from the idea, after all, and promote themselves as prophets (here Quayle says he "has been blessed to receive prophetic visions"). 

I haven't had much time for giants lately, but a link to this podcast sermon from the North Peace MB Church popped up in my email this morning. I listened to it while going through my other emails, prepping more Kirk points for scanning, and getting another set of computer experiments running. In the podcast, titled simply "The Nephilim," Andrew Eby and Don Banman spend about a half hour discussing the familiar passages from Genesis 6 that mention the Nephilim.

If I understood them correctly, the agree with many if not all of the main points of the supernatural-intercourse-wicked-Nephilim-flood narrative that is Quayle and Marzulli's stock in trade.  Pointing to a supernatural world that is part of human existence, they accept that sex with fallen angels played a major role in making humanity wicked (starting about 15:00 in): 

They point out that God has intervened several times to save humanity from corruption, implying, I think, that it will happen again. They discuss the emerging science of genetics and its potential to extend the human life span as something potentially sinister. And that's about as scary as it gets -- no quest to identify and eliminate corrupted bloodlines, no clandestine engineering of giant super soldiers, no giants frozen in underground chambers waiting to be unleashed upon the planet, etc.

This book recommendation is also relevant.

Okay . . . back to work.

I spent a few hours today adding links to the Argumentative Archaeologist website that I maintain. I did a tour through the active skeptical websites that I know of, adding links to Jason Colavito's relevant posts from the last couple of months, some podcasts from Archyfantasies, posts by Michael Heiser on his Paleobabble page, a post by Carl Feagans about cranial deformation, some new stuff on the Ancient Aliens Debunked blog, a bunch of posts about Oak Island on the Oak Island Compendium site (those folks have been writing a lot!), some things from this blog, and a few other odds and ends. I also added a new page for Lemuria.

Please let me know about other sites and posts that I should be aware of. 

Enjoy!