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Lovelock Cave and the Illusion of "A Jawbone That Slips Over That of a Large Man"

5/8/2015

19 Comments

 
The human skeletal remains from Lovelock Cave, Nevada, are like the pretty girl that all the fringe theorists want to take to the prom. Giant enthusiasts, ancient alien theorists, and Bigfoot researchers all covet them.  As you might guess if you've been paying attention, there is no empirical support for the idea that the human remains and the archaeological deposits from Lovelock Cave are related to anything other than Native American inhabitants of the region.  And as you also might guess, that doesn't stop fringe theorists from making the same inaccurate statements about Lovelock Cave over and over again. 

I won't recount the history of investigations in Lovelock Cave here (you can read a basic outline on Wikipedia). If you Google "Lovelock Cave" you'll get a mixture of results, some focusing on the actual archaeology of the cave and many talking about the Si-Te-Cah legend and the "red-haired giants."  Apparently the "Paiute legend" of cannibalistic, red-haired giants originated with a story by a Paiute woman named Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins in her 1883 book Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims (see this 2013 post by Brian Dunning).  The part relevant to Lovelock is the last paragraph of Chapter IV. If you read it you'll notice there's no mention of giants:  the often-repeated statement that Paiute legends include giants in Lovelock cave seems to be a later addition.  I guess it makes it easier to find giants if you just make them up.  I haven't spent a lot of time checking into the various legends that are cited as evidence for the worldwide occurrence of giants, but I won't be surprised if a lot of them evaporate when you start to look closely.  So far, the giantologists are 0-2 in my book (Lovelock Cave and Steve Quayle's Celtic giants). 
So the legend part of the giant story from Lovelock Cave is baloney, but what about the physical remains?  For this we have, first, David Hatcher Childress, ancient alien theorist and originator of the Smithsonian conspiracy theory, to help us.  In this clip from Ancient Aliens, Childress visits the Humboldt Museum in Winnemuca, Nevada, to examine the Lovelock skulls and proclaim them to be those of giants:

"Inside this cabinet here are three skulls from the Lovelock Caves. When you first see these skulls, they pretty much seem to be normal looking skulls. However, it's when we really start to compare the jawbones with this modern dental impression of a normal adult male that we see that these jawbones are unusually large.  And these are really the skulls of giant people. Who were perhaps seven, even eight feet tall.  One of the odd things with these skulls is that they're not actually put on display here at the museum and they're kept hidden in this cabinet.  Now we don't know if that's really just out of respect for Native Americans or whether there's really something unusual about these giant skulls that they don't want them displayed."

The silliness of the comparison between
the "modern dental impression" (which includes only the teeth and a small portion of the gum line) and the Lovelock mandible should be evident to anyone who is breathing.  It has been pointed out before.  The total size of the cast is smaller because it doesn't include all the bone of the mandible.  In what we are shown, the comparable parts of the cast the and the mandible (the teeth and the tooth row) do not really appear to be that different in size.  Ancient Aliens only shows us the "normal" plaster cast sitting in front of the Lovelock mandible, however, and doesn't actually give us a view that allows a direct comparison.
Picture
Fortunately for us, Childress isn't the only one who has made the plaster cast comparison. There are at least two other pictures floating around on the internet that purport to show a mandible from Lovelock compared to the teeth of a "normal-sized" human (not surprisingly, most of the sites reproducing these photos conclude that the Lovelock mandible is "giant").  The top photo in my illustration is usually attributed to someone named Stan Nielsen and accompanied by his description titled "The Cave of the Red Haired Giants."  Nielsen is/was apparently a treasure hunter. The text of his description (e.g., here, here, and here) concludes that "The plaster model was much smaller than the jaw from the skull. In fact, the teeth of the jaw from the skull were almost twice the size of those of my plaster model."  I do not know the origin of the bottom photo. The similarities in lighting and background make me suspect that it was taken at the same time as the top photo. [Update:  In the comments section Gary pointed out to me that these are actually the same photo. The one on the bottom has just been edited by blacking out the interior of the cast, presumably to make it appear smaller?  Anyway . . . there you go.  Thanks Gary.]

Both the photos are arranged in the same way, with the plaster cast "inside" the Lovelock mandible, creating the illusion that the mandible is much larger than the plaster cast.  Superimposing an outline of the tooth row of the plaster casts onto the mandible shows that, while the teeth and tooth row of the mandible are a little larger, it is not "giant" in comparison to the casts (Terje Dahl points out the same thing on his site, but concludes that that must mean the "real" giant skeletons have been replaced with normal-sized ones).

The illusion of a dramatic size difference is created by the parabolic shape of the human mandible: parabolic objects of similar size can be nested inside one another.  Nineteenth and early twentieth century newspaper accounts of "giants" often describe the mandible of the skeleton as being so massive that "it will slip over the jaw of a large man." The uselessness of this comparison was noted by Gerard Fowke in his Archaeological History of Ohio (1902:142-143):

"It is a very common newspaper statement that a Mound Builder has been dug up somewhere 'whose jawbone will slip over that of a large man.' Sometimes the man elevates the marvelous into the miraculous by having a growth of 'remarkably heavy whiskers.'
    It is not necessary to procure a Mound Builder in order to perform this feat; the phenomenon is equally apparent with any other full grown human jaw.  It may be observed, also, in curved or open-angle objects generally, having approximately the same form and thickness; as spoons, saucers, miter-joints, gutter-spouts, or slices of melon rinds.  The significance is a great in one case as in the others.  The experimenter has failed to perceive a considerable interval between the end, or angle, of the jaw which he held in his hand and the one with which it was being compared.  He should invert the former and apply it to the lower part of the latter, when he would find much less difference than he expected."


Gerard Fowke worked for The Smithsonian, so I'm sure some of you out there will take his basic understanding and explanation of geometry to be part of a vast conspiracy to suppress information about giants.  If you're skeptical, I suggest you get some slices of melon rind and try it yourself. Paper cups will also work if you don't have melon rinds or human mandibles sitting around.

The mandibles and skulls of Lovelock Cave are not those of giants, and the "legend" of giants attributed to the Paiute appears do not actually contain any mention of giants.  The Humboldt skull does not have double rows of teeth (and neither do any of the Lovelock skulls, if you noticed).

Why does this mythology about Lovelock have such staying power?  This is one of the relatively few cases where the skeletal remains of supposed giants have been available to look at.  Even when it is perfectly obvious that these are normal human remains, wishful thinkers proclaim them to be the remains of giants.  David Hatcher Childress, actually holding the normal-sized skull in his hands, says "these are really the skulls of giant people." I just don't get it.  At least when people found mastodon bones in the 1700s they were looking at something that was unexplainable given their knowledge of the natural world. But this isn't that. This is the willful maintenance of a fringe myth that can be easily discarded based on what is sitting right there in front of you.  The desire for the "smoking gun" is so strong that not even the most obvious evidence to the contrary can dampen it - when you've made yourself immune to the evidence, you've inoculated yourself to the "truth" you claim to be uncovering. So silly.

If you're mad at yourself for some reason, you can watch this video of M. K. Davis spinning tales about why so many of the skulls from Lovelock Cave appear to be missing.  He says that an earlier photo of the cabinet that David Hatcher Childress looked in shows that there used to be more skulls.  As pointed out by one of the comments to the video, what Davis is actually looking at is an image that is two photos of the same skulls (in a different arrangement) spliced together.  Note that the "shelf" disappears into nothingness on the right side, and the skull on the far right on the top is the same as the second skull from the right on the bottom (you can tell by the missing teeth in the upper and lower jaws).  Davis' website makes the same mistake. 



19 Comments
Gary
5/8/2015 02:39:07 am

Andy, those photo are the same. They are copies of the same photo. I placed one over the other in Photoshop. The difference is that someone edited out the extra white areas of the cast, which makes it seem smaller.

Reply
Andy White
5/8/2015 02:42:47 am

Ah ha! Thanks for pointing that out Gary. I'll add a note. So it looks like we only have Stan Nielsen to thank for the plan view comparison.

Reply
Interested
1/7/2018 07:49:17 am

Even if you remove the jaw and show only the teeth they are significantly larger than the present time teeth. where did they get the model for the present teeth ? what is the age ?

Shawn link
8/18/2015 03:57:55 am

Seriously, are you saying that you can't tell that the teeth in the supposed "giant" jawbone are bigger than normal?
I'm as skeptical as the next guy, but this is obvious.

Reply
Andy White
8/18/2015 05:11:11 am

The teeth in the mandible are larger than those in the plaster cast, but what does that mean? Does that make it a "giant"? There is a large normal range of variation in human tooth sizes, especially when you include prehistoric populations that did a lot more hard work with their teeth (and hence benefited from larger grinding surfaces). If you think that Lovelock jaw is somehow outside of the normal human range of variation, I would love to see you demonstrate it.

Reply
Sid Read
2/17/2016 04:23:04 am

This is a pretty good debunk, but to my untrained eye, those old teeth still look quite a bit bigger that the ones in the cast...

Would whomever wrote this like to have a go at debunking Michael Tellingers videos? The first shows Tellinger & friends examining very convincing & quite large hip bone that was found in a Namibian mine in the 60's & has been kept in Witswatersrand University since. The other video shows Tellinger guiding us around Goliaths Footprint in South Africa. These are both pretty interesting in my opinion.

Giant hip bone in SA University - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnAgOagVO2c

Giant footprint in SA granite - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv6i40INKWk

There are also some very, very large stone-age tools which are said to have been discovered in Botswana & I am curious as to whether anyone can debunk of these too -

http://phys.org/news/2009-09-giant-stone-age-axes-african-lake.html

I guess you could say I'm a sceptic who would love to believe. I have no religious reasons (Nephilim) but I am very interested that some of this evidence is coming from the region in Africa where I grew up. I'm also fascinated by the numerous alternative theories surrounding human evolution, the huge gaps in our knowledge of it, & the efforts of alternative history authors such as Eric Von Daniken, Graham Hancock & Tellinger to fill those gaps.

The debunk of the giant footprint basically claims that human knowledge of geology, which although deep is only a few hundred years old, proves that the footprint is a natural, coincidental erosion or an ancient hoax. I suggest that perhaps the footprint is evidence that we don't know as much as we think we do about geology, the creation of granite or human history itself, which is being proven to be older & older every time someone digs something new up! No matter what we think we know about granite, that does not explain the hip bone or the giant tools that a puny human would find impossible to wield & thus pointless to create!

But I am always open to being proven wrong. All I'm doing is saying, "hey, look at this. Wtf?"

Thanks :) Sid

Reply
Sid
2/17/2016 01:36:57 pm

sorry, I see your name is Andy White. Apologies :) Sid

Reply
Biologist
5/4/2016 11:15:09 am

First, let me say that Tellinger, in my opinion, is not a scientist.
A real scientist would not name a group of rocks as something
that belonged to Adam from the bible.

Now as for the skulls of Lovelock cave and their teeth,
I doubt that A. White or I should be deciding what is or is not
big teeth, big enough to be considered a giant. A real dentist that has researched teeth would be far more qualified.

I once studied deer skulls and teeth. I could have shown
greater variation than that in the above article just between males
and females. But that does not mean that I think these
skulls were not from giants. The original field notes should
have provided measurements of long bones that would have
clarified this problems.

Reply
Andy White
5/7/2016 04:15:37 am

The Tellinger stuff I've looked into is hard to take seriously - it's too ridiculous. I thought about using one of his books for my class but decided against it this time around.

Dentists are not the best choices for saying something meaningful about variation in human teeth. Dentists see a lot of different teeth, but their experience and training is usually limited to the teeth of the populations they serve (i.e, in this country, that would be mostly people subsisting on a soft, modern diet). Physical anthopologists and paleoanthropologists have extensively studied variation in human (and hominid, and ape, etc.) tooth size across space and time and what it means. It varies by sex, body size, genetics, and subsistence (all entangled together, of course). Obviously we don't have measurements of the teeth of the Lovelock crania, but I would bet big money that the dimensions of those teeth fall within the documented size range of normal human teeth. They're not "giant."

This post has some other comments on the relationship between tooth size and body size that you might find interesting:

http://www.andywhiteanthropology.com/blog/tooth-size-bodysize-and-giants-an-analytical-issue-that-has-persisted-for-eight-decades

Reply
Adam Miller
11/1/2017 07:37:04 pm

Your full of it the skull is obviously larger than a normal human skull and has archaic human features plus the native Americans say the remains are from giant hominids stop trying to debunk the truth.

Seamus
9/10/2016 09:35:57 pm

If you take a close look, the teeth are extremely worn down, and therefore appear larger. Subject the teeth in the cast to the diet of the mandible's owner, and they wouldn't look much different.

Reply
Sage
1/18/2018 11:41:46 am

Like you said "I haven't spent a lot of time checking into the various legends cited as evidence...." thats the problem. People dont research enough facts to develop an informed decision. Dont be misinformation, educate yourself!

Reply
Paul
6/12/2018 03:07:13 pm

I just came across this. What I find interesting is the conclusion the writer draws in that he is somehow being logical in his examination, despite the fact that his arguments fail the litmus test of argument examination using known tests of logical fallacy. Basically, he asserts that it (the jaw in the picture) is not giant then somehow logically proves the jaw is not giant by superimposing the smaller "adult human" teeth upon the larger teeth, again by nothing more concrete than simple assertion.

The truth is simple. There is not enough evidence from the photo to draw any real conclusions, except that the person to whom said jaw belongs was significantly larger than the person of whom the dental cast belonged.

Without any actual measurements of either along with data of sex, etc., of the two subjects no logical outcome is present.

If that jaw in the photo is from a female (average smaller than a male) and the plaster dental cast is from a large male, then the jaw is HUGE.

If the jaw is from a male and the dental cast is from a petite female, it is merely fairly large.

Either way, it is indeed large.

Is it giant?

There is not enough data present to either confirm or deny the concept. This last statement is logic.

Reply
Normandie Kent
4/10/2019 03:17:20 pm

Lovelock Cave Skulls are related genetically to modern Paiute's Q ydna and D1 mtdna. 5 specimens.

Reply
Mobu
1/13/2020 03:29:37 am

The teeth/jaw is only slightly larger, but it's not a shock as some individuals just have big jaws (native Americans commonly had bigger jaws that Europeans, even some people in Japan I have seen with big jaws).

This is in no way a giant, it's around some 5-10% larger in jaw size only. The way it's placed inside the jaw as you pointed out is to try to enhance the illusion that it's much larger, added with the fact that the modern cast doesn't include the full jawbone either.
The modern cast without a doubt is build upon an "average" and isn't build upon a modern individual who has a larger than average jaw, thus the old jaw falls totally within the norm of modern humans in fact.

Calling it a giant is simply stupid. A real giant's jaw would not be only a tiny amount larger than an average human jaw, it would be significantly larger, unless it was a pinhead, lol.
To this day there is no actual evidence of giants actually existing anywhere.

Reply
Greg
2/7/2020 08:09:36 am

Actually I've seen the entire mandible side by side with an adult mandible they are kept in a cabinet. They are twice if not tree times larger than the adult male mandible

Reply
Reality bite
1/20/2020 01:58:06 pm

The museum confirms they had them.

Reply
Scarlett R
8/4/2020 03:04:17 am

The teeth of the ‘giant’ are one tooth longer on each row, making me imagine that that skull came from a time when we used our wisdom teeth, since the tooth line otherwise lines up well. Still the teeth are a decent bit bigger than the cast’s teeth. Personally, based off of these images and others I’ve seen, I’d bet the people found in that cave were on the larger side of ppl. While the bones don’t necessarily imply a giant, especially when considering evolutionarily bone shape change, if the ‘giants’ were on the larger side of human development and the natives that encountered them were on the smaller side of human development, technically speaking there would still be some basis for ‘giants’. Sorta like how someone 6’7 is tall but not considered abnormal, however if I as a 5’7 person had never seen someone taller than me, I’d think a 6’7 person was a f*ckin giant. Conclusion- the skulls were definitely a bit bigger, and based off context the lovelock ‘giants’ could’ve been considered ‘giant’ back when they were around. As for whether they rlly were giant compared to other natives?? I couldn’t be f*cked to look right now at 3 am I’m just saying it is technically possible

Reply
Renee
9/10/2020 09:18:58 pm

My new thing is watching Ancient Aliens before bed. (Purely entertainment purposes). I saw this episode, and I just had to read more about it. Found this blog, read summer of these silly comments, and went to the museum's website. It's published that they no longer have the remains, and the bones were not abnormally large.
https://humboldtmuseum.org/mini-tour/6-american-indians/28-lovelock-cave-artifacts

Reply



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