“Skeleton of a Giant Found,” “Reported Discovery of a Huge Skeleton,” “Monstrous Skulls and Bones,” “A Race of Indian Giants,” “Giant Skeleton Unearthed at Buzzards Bay,” “Skeleton Found of a Man Over 9 Feet High With An Enormous Skull,” “New Mexico Discovery: 12 Foot Giant Found,” These are newspaper headlines and they’re not from the National Enquirer or any other disreputable tabloid like that, they’re all from the New York Times. These are just a few examples of hundreds of similar newspaper articles about giant skeletons that were published throughout the 19th century and into the early 20th century. These articles were published in newspapers and magazines all over the United States, many of them quite credible, written by all different authors, and reported by unrelated people, mostly workmen - well-diggers, miners, quarrymen. But did you know, despite all this press, there are no actual giant skeletons on display anywhere and no follow up stories to explain what happened to these amazing discoveries? Let’s fix that. 

 

Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and you’re listening to History Fix where I discuss lesser known true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. Halloween is fast approaching and, if you live in the United States at least, you’ve probably caught on to the giant skeleton craze. That’s right, 10 foot tall skeleton yard decorations are trending hard right now. I have no idea why, like where do you store that thing for the rest of the year? I have no idea how it got started. There was a pandemic and then all of a sudden it was okay to go trick or treating again and boom, giant skeletons, everywhere. 

 

My two year old is obsessed. We’ve gone to our local big box hardware store at least 20 times since the beginning of September. I wish I was exaggerating. He asks almost every day to “go see the scary guys at Lowes” where he marvels at massive plastic skeletons with light up eyes that move around. And some of the stuff is really scary, like honestly way too scary, he doesn’t care. He’s all for it. So I’m dedicating this episode to Jules. This one’s for you buddy. 

 

But while giant plastic skeletons make for festive Halloween yard decorations, the giant skeletons we’re talking about today were reportedly real. Some cite the newspaper articles as proof of an ancient race of giant humans that once inhabited North America. Others say it’s all completely false. I see a giant rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and speculation that is all too easy to fall straight into with the simplest of Google searches. So of course I spent way too much time on this one and I’m more confused than ever. But it’s a really interesting study on how we know what we know and also how much we probably don’t know. I don’t want you walking away from this one like “an ancient race of North American giants is real, I learned it from History Fix,” but I’m also not going to tell you they aren’t real. I’ll let you form your own opinions.

 

We’re talking about ancient humans here, humans from before recorded history - prehistoric, if you will. So let’s take it all the way back for a sec. There are a few different theories about where modern humans originated. The most popular theory is the “Out of Africa” theory. According to this theory, human ancestors evolved from apes like chimpanzees and bonobos between 8 million and 6 million years ago. According to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, at around 4 million years ago, one of the earliest defining human traits emerged - the ability to walk on two legs. Other human qualities - a large brain, the ability to make tools, and spoken language emerged much more recently and advanced traits like using symbols and art only appeared within the last 100,000 years. According to the Smithsonian, scientists recognize anywhere from 15 to 20 different species of early humans before homo sapiens which are modern humans - you and me. Homo Sapiens seem to have evolved from earlier species around 300,000 years ago in east Africa. They hung out in Africa for quite a while and then eventually started to leave between 60,000 and 90,000 years ago - they headed to Asia, Europe, Australia, and eventually the Americas. But there are still major questions about when homo sapiens actually arrived in the Americas. 

 

The theory had always been that humans walked over to Alaska from Siberian Russia, likely following large game. Today, that’s water, but during the last ice age, the water was frozen into solid ice - glaciers. The last ice age started around 100,000 years ago and lasted until around 12,000 years ago, but for most of that time, the glaciers would have been impassible to humans. Scientists theorize that this “land bridge” between Siberia and Alaska could only have been crossed between 20,000 years ago when the glaciers melted enough for humans to actually walk on them until 10,000 years ago when they were gone, completely melted back into water and now you’d need a boat. So they’ve always believed that humans crossed over from Asia to North America during that span of time, 20,000 to 10,000 years ago. And for a long time, the archaeological evidence supported the theory. 

 

The first well identified human culture existing in North America is the Clovis people. This name comes from the distinct spear head points they carved out of stone which were first discovered near Clovis, New Mexico. Clovis sites have been found throughout North America and as far south as Venezuela and dated to as far back as 13,000 years ago using radiocarbon dating. So that checks out with the land bridge theory, right between 20,000 and 10,000 years ago… okay 13,000 years ago works. Based on studies of Clovis sites, it seems they originated in the Great Plains region and spread out from there, likely following large game like mastodons. But it’s not like these guys were walking all the way down to Venezuela in one lifetime, like one guy followed a mastodon all the way to the next continent. We're talking about a very gradual spread that took many generations, each one moving a little bit further and a little bit further. 

 

So scientists were pretty pleased with themselves. They came up with a theory cause of the ice age and the glaciers and such and then they actually found evidence that backed it up. The Clovis timeline was spot on. But then, in 1975, remains of an ancient human settlement were found in Monte Verde, Chile dating back to at least 14,200 years ago. So this blows the Clovis land bridge theory wide open. If they supposedly arrived 13,000 years ago, how could they be all the way down in Chile 14,200 years ago. Since then, more and more evidence has surfaced suggesting that humans arrived in the Americas earlier than previously thought. Excavations in 2009 at the Coopers Ferry site in Idaho uncovered 16,000 year old spear heads and very, very recently, like yesterday pretty much 18,000 year old stone tools were found in Oregon. These are pretty solid. But there have been other, more controversial finds. In 2020 archaeologists uncovered around 1,900 stone artifacts in a cave in Mexico that were dated to around 32,000 years ago, which is before scientists even thought it possible that humans could walk across the land bridge. But some argued that the oldest stone artifacts found there may not have been made by humans at all and are just “geofacts” - normal rocks that look man made. 35,000 year old stone artifacts have been found in Brazil but a new study revealed they may have actually been made by capuchin monkeys, not humans. Apparently these monkeys use rocks to break open nuts. But like, hitting a nut with a rock is very different than shaping a rock into a spear point or ax head or pestle or anything really. I feel like a rock that a monkey used to break open a nut 35,000 years ago still just looks like a normal rock. So what about these quote “stone artifacts” made them think they were evidence of early human inhabitance? I’m a little confused. 

 

Possibly the wildest find of all comes from the Cerutti Mastodon site in San Diego. Basically, they were expanding the freeway there back in 1992 and had to dig down to construct a drainage system. But when they dug, they discovered a bunch of mastodon bones. So mastodons are similar to mammoths, they’re just a little bit different - think crocodile and alligator - which, since this episode is dedicated to my 2 year old, Jules, I have to throw in, he calls both of these animals “crocoalligiles.” So, they found a bunch of mastomoth bones, JK they were mastodons, and proceeded to excavate and study that site over the next few decades. Apparently, some of these bones were sharply, like intentionally broken and found next to 5 large stones that looked like they had been used as hammers and anvils. So researchers theorized that the mastodons at the Cerutti site had been butchered by humans. Then in 2017 they dropped a bombshell on the scientific community when they revealed the age of these finds - 130,000 years old. That’s 100,000 years before the earliest even halfway credible evidence of humans in the Americas. And, what’s more, it’s before modern humans were even supposed to have left Africa. So what the heck are they doing in San Diego 130,000 years ago? How is that even possible? Are these just capuchin monkeys cracking open nuts next to mastodon bones that just randomly broke in clean lines? Was it some other early human that evolved separately in the Americas? But evolved from what? There are no apes in the Americas, no chimps, no bonobos. Did they somehow migrate there much earlier than we ever thought possible? Who broke the mastodon bones like that? The evidence is highly contested within the scientific community. But to me, it just means there’s a lot we still don’t understand about human evolution and migration. We clearly have no idea when humans arrived in the Americas. It’s like looking at a puzzle when a bunch of the pieces are still missing. It’s hard to see the full picture. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense without the rest of the pieces. 

 

One thing scientists mostly agree on is that humans have gotten larger as they’ve evolved. I mean there have been some ups and downs but they’ve mostly grown in height. A species of ancient humans called homo floresiensis was discovered in Indonesia in 2003. They found a teeny female skeleton they named Lucy who was only 3 feet tall. Neanderthals, who homo sapiens are most closely related to, had an average height of 5 feet 5 inches for males and 5 feet 1 inch for females. Which, I don’t know why I thought Neanderthals were big. They were pretty short. By the middle ages modern humans in Europe are coming in at an average of 5’8” but this actually decreases some to an average just under 5’6” during the 1600s and 1700s. This is probably because of that mini ice age I talked about in episode 29 that led to a lot of crop failure, famine, poor health in general for a few centuries there. So they’re just malnourished basically, bit of a backslide. But in the 1800s and especially the 1900s, it starts to go back up. Today the average height of a white male is 5 feet 10 inches. And I’m saying white cause apples to apples - all the other numbers I gave you were European heights as well, except for the little tiny Lucy lady of course. That one’s just fun so had to throw it in. But, overall, despite some minor backslides, humans have been getting taller and taller since they first evolved. So the discovery of, say, a 12 foot tall human skeleton would throw quite a wrench in the spokes of the scientific community that has worked tirelessly to put together this puzzle of human evolution. It’s a piece that just straight up does not fit in the puzzle, scientifically anyway. 

 

Now if we look at it instead through legends and folklore and myth, it fits quite well. Many different cultures have told stories about giants forever. Fee Fi Fo Fum, right? The name “giant” comes from Greek mythology. The gigantes were a race of giant demigods who were the offspring of Gaia, goddess of the Earth. Latin based words like gigantic, gigante, géant come from the Greek gigantes so we literally describe big things by relating them to these mythical Greek half god giants. The gigantes were powerful and violent and they challenged the Greek gods for power. They were bad guys. 

 

What’s interesting is that indigenous people living in the Americas also had legends and myths about giants and they had zero contact with ancient Greece so these stories evolved independently of one another. The giants in these stories were also wild, violent, man-eaters. The great chenoo from the Passamaquoddy people of New England, the stone giants from the Iroquois of New York state, the si-te-cah from the Paiute in the southwest, even the Sasquatch from the Chehalis people of the Pacific northwest, but you may know that one better as Big Foot. Giants run rampant throughout the legends told by indigenous Americas. 

 

Even some Christians believe in a race of ancient giant humans based on the Nephilim mentioned in the bible from before the great flood. These giant half human offspring were supposedly born through a sinful relationship between angels and human women. They were also violent bullies and tyrants. Nephilim are mentioned in the books of Genesis and Numbers. So, I can’t help but see the connection between all these mythical giants. Is this just some weird insight into human psychology that these different groups at different times in different places would all come up with the same creatures? Or is it all based on creatures that actually existed?

 

This is a history podcast, so I can only speculate but so much there. What I can tell you, with certainty, is that starting in the 1800’s newspapers started publishing stories about people finding giant skeletons all over North America. Let’s get into some of these.

 

The first series of stories to come out, all over the country really, were in 1845 - the Cleveland Herald in Ohio, the Jeffersonian Republic in Pennsylvania, the Western Weekly Review in Tennessee, and the New York Herald all reported that the skeleton of an 18 foot tall human was dug up by well diggers in Franklin county, Tennessee. These are followed up two years later by an article in the American Journal of Science in which William M. Carpenter, a medical doctor and professor of medicine in Louisiana examined the skeleton found in Tennessee and determined that they were actually the bones of a small mastodon, not a man at all. Carpenter writes quote “Much interest has been recently excited by the announcement of the discovery in Tennessee of the remains of a man eighteen feet high.  The papers teemed with accounts of the prodigy, and public confidence was secured by the assertion that the distinguished physicians of the west had testified that they were human remains.” After seeing the skeleton in person he writes, quote “At a glance it was apparent that it was nothing more than the skeleton of a young mastodon.” and he goes on to explain that the mastodon bones had been pieced together to resemble a human skeleton with pieces of wood standing in for missing bones. So this one’s debunked. Not a giant human at all. Actually a small mastodon. But the fact that it has any follow up update at all is exceedingly rare. 

 

On November 21, 1856 the New York Times published an article titled “Skeleton of a Giant Found.” It read quote “A day or two since, some workmen engaged in subsoiling the grounds of Sheriff Wickan, at his vineyard in East Wheeling, came across a human skeleton. Although much decayed, there was little difficulty in identifying it, by placing the bones, which could not have belonged to others than a human body, in their original position. The impression made by the skeleton in the earth, and the skeleton itself, were measured by the Sheriff and a brother in the craft locale, both of whom were prepared to swear that it was ten feet nine inches in length. Its jaws and teeth were almost as large as those of a horse. The bones are to be seen at the Sheriff’s office.” end quote. And then just nothing. No follow up. Nothing to verify whether or not the Sheriff’s find was actually a 10 foot tall human. 

 

New York Time again December 25, 1868 “Reported Discovery of a Huge Skeleton” reprinted from the Sank Rapids Sentinel in Minnesota quote “Day before yesterday, while the quarrymen employed by the Sank Rapids Water Power Company were engaged in quarrying rock for the dam which is being erected across the Mississippi, at this place, found imbedded in the solid granite rock the remains of a human being of gigantic status… The grave was twelve feet in length, four feet wide, and about three feet in depth, and is to-day at least two feet below the present level of the river. The remains are completely petrified, and are of gigantic dimensions. The head is massive, measuring thirty-one and one-half inches in circumference, but low in the asfrontis, and very flat on top. (which, by the way, I have no idea what an asfrontis is, Google is also stumped) The Femur measures twenty-six and a quarter inches, and the Fibula twenty-five and a half, while the body is equally long in proportion. From the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, the length is ten feet nine and a half inches. The giant must have weighed at least 900 pounds when covered with a reasonable amount of flesh. The petrified remains, and there is nothing left but the naked bones, now weigh 304¼ pounds. The thumb and fingers of the left hand, and the left foot from the ankle to the toes are gone; but all the other parts are perfect.” And then, once again, nothing. Where is this 31 inch skull? What happened to it?  304¼ pounds of bone… where are they? 

 

Toronto Daily Telegraph, August 23, 1871 “Niagara’s Ancient Cemetery of Giants” quote “On Wednesday last, Rev. Nathaniel Wardell, Messers Orin Wardell (of Toronto), and Daniel Fredenburg were digging on the farm of the latter gentleman, which is on the banks of the Grand River, in the township of Cayuga. When they got to five or six feet below the surface, a strange sight met them. Piled in layers, one upon top of the other, were some two hundred skeletons of human beings nearly perfect: around the neck of each one being a string of beads. There were also deposited in this pit a number of axes and skimmers made of stone. In the jaws of several of the skeletons were large stone pipes, one of which Mr. O. Wardell took with him to Toronto a day or two after this Golgotha was unearthed. These skeletons are those of men of gigantic stature, some of them measuring nine feet, very few of them being less than seven feet. Some of the thigh bones were found to be at least a foot longer than those at present known, and one of the skulls being examined completely covered the head of an ordinary person. These skeletons are supposed to belong to those of a race of people anterior to the Indians. Some three years ago, the bones of a mastodon were found embedded in the earth about six miles from this spot. The pit and its ghastly occupants are now open to the view of any who may wish to make a visit there.” Huh? 200 giant skeletons? Open to be viewed by anyone? Then just nothing. No follow up. No further reporting on this find. 

 

New York Times, February 8, 1876 “The Early American Giant” quote “The public will be unpleasantly reminded of the callous indifference to the future on the part of the prehistoric Americans by the recent discovery of three unusually fine skeletons in Kentucky. A Louisville paper asserts that two men lately undertook to explore a cave which they accidentally discovered not far from that city. The entrance to the cave was small, but the explorers soon found themselves in a magnificent apartment, richly furnished with the most expensive and fashionable stalactites. In a corner of this hall stood a large stone family vault, which the men promptly pried open. In it were found three skeletons, each nearly nine feet in height. The skeletons appear to have somewhat frightened the young men, for, on seeing so extensive collection of bones, they immediately dropped their torch, and subsequently wandered in darkness for thirty-six hours before they found their way back to daylight and soda-water.” Huh? They wandered around in a dark cave for 36 hours and then chugged some soda water? What about the 9 foot skeletons NYT? Nothing. No follow up. 

 

The Marion Daily Star and Scientific American both reported on a burial mound uncovered in Ohio in 1880 that contained 11 giant human skeletons including 9 foot tall men and 8 foot tall women. Let’s skip ahead a little to May 4, 1908, New York Times again “Giant’s Skeletons Found: Cave in Mexico Gives Up the Bones of an Ancient Race” quote “Charles C. Clapp, who has recently returned from Mexico, where he has been in charge of Thomas W. Lawson's mining interests, has called the attention of Prof. Agassiz to a remarkable discovery made by him. He found in Mexico a cave containing 200 skeletons of men each above eight feet in height. The cave was evidently the burial place of a race of giants who antedated the Aztecs. Mr. Clapp arranged the bones of one of these skeletons and found the total length to be 8 feet 11 inches. The femur reached up to his thigh and the molars were big enough to crack a coconut. The head measured eighteen inches from front to back.” 200 skeletons again… I find that interesting. That’s a very specific number. 

 

And, you guys, these are just a handful of the hundreds of articles reporting similar finds. For the most part, the stories are all very similar. Now remember they’re all coming from different newspapers, different states, different authors, different witnesses, and yet most of them contain some key similarities. First of all, most of the skeletons were found, measured, and reported to the press by normal people, laymen, typically workmen, not scientists. They were usually digging wells, mining, or working in rock quarries when they came upon these finds. Something else many of them mention - some sort of scientist is usually on the scene or has been called to the scene to analyze the find. And the final thing almost all of them have in common - they just go completely silent after that initial report. There’s no follow up, there’s no report of the scientists’ analysis, there’s no bones on display. It’s maddening. Like, if it was fake, just tell us it was fake. If they measured the bones wrong or something, or it was actually just another mastodon, tell us that. Don’t just put some wild stuff out there and then nothing. Inquiring minds need to know what the heck these people found. Even it it’s just a regular sized ancient human burial ground and they measured wrong - I’d like to know that too. That still seems like a valuable find.

 

The lack of any sort of follow up conclusion to these reports is a defining feature of almost every single one. Why? It’s a juicy topic. Why not keep reporting on it? I’m left with two possible answers to that question. First, they quickly discovered that the find was not legit - either a mismeasurement, misidentification, or just totally made up, a hoax. It’s possible these newspapers did not want to hurt their credibility by coming out and admitting that they had reported “fake news” essentially, so they just dropped the story and hoped everyone would forget about it. 

 

There is a precedent for this. In 1868 the Cardiff giant was discovered in New York and it made headlines all over. It was a big deal - until it was revealed to be a hoax. A cigar maker named George Hull was, I guess, just really bored with his life, and bought a huge block of gypsum. He then hired a sculptor to carve it into the shape of a 10 foot tall man and gave it to his cousin, William Newell, who buried it on his farm in Cardiff, New York. These two pranksters then hired some workmen to dig a well in the exact spot they’d buried their fake giant, quote unquote discovered it, put it on display, and charged people money to come see. Now, scientists could tell immediately that this thing was fake but a lot of people thought it was real and paid to come see it. But, you guys, if you look at a photo of the Cardiff giant (I have one on my instagram), it’s definitely fake. Like, it’s comically unconvincing. Also, it’s naked and rather explicit, I might add. I know there was all that really really stupid controversy recently about parents being upset that their children were exposed to Michelangelo’s statue of David because it was too quote “pornographic” - of all the things to be upset about, not 180 school shootings in the last 10 years, no, it’s Michelangelo’s tasteful nude. There’s nothing tasteful about the Cardiff giant. It is actually pornographic. Like, I don’t even know if Instagram’s gonna let that one fly. If it’s gone before you get there, just Google it or something. Anyway, George Hull pretty quickly admitted the giant was fake. He was embroiled in a legal battle with PT Barnum, the circus guy, who had made his own giant and was claiming the Cardiff giant was fake and his was real. So Hull and Newell took Barnum to court but then refused to swear under oath that the Cardiff giant was legit and it all just fell apart. What an absolutely silly court case that must have been. Hull eventually admitted it was all fake. 

 

So, that’s one theory. That these reported giant skeletons were not actually giant skeletons at all and the newspapers just didn’t want to admit that they had published bogus stories. The other possible answer to the lack of follow up is that they were in fact giant skeletons and there was a cover up of some kind either by the government or the scientific community for whatever reason. They confiscated the bones, locked them away somewhere, and kept the newspapers from publishing any more reports about the finds. That’s far fetched, I know, but not impossible. 

 

Esotericism is a school of thought based on speculative ideas about spirituality and society. Esotericists are basically fringe theorists who turn to ancient cultures in search of wisdom. I touched on this in episode 14 about Atlantis when I mentioned Helena Blovatsky’s Theosophical Society. Blovatsky published “The Secret Doctrine” in 1888 in which she argued that there was, in fact, a race of ancient giants but scientists were actively covering up evidence that supported it. In this book she writes, quote “Is it possible that prejudice would carry science so far as to class all these men as either fools or liars?” end quote.

 

Author Richard Dewhurst proposes a similar theory in his book “The Ancient Giants Who Ruled America” but he gets real specific with it, claiming that the Smithsonian Institution, and even more specifically, John Wesley Powell who was the director of the Smithsonian’s Bureau of Ethnology starting in 1879, covered up the giant skeleton finds in order to push his own agenda. Dewhurst believes Powell wanted to cover up any evidence that didn’t fit with the theory of evolution which suggests humans would get bigger and stronger as they evolved and not smaller and weaker. He claims Powell also sought to discredit Native American myths and culture so they would seem less civilized. This was during a time when the US government was seizing land that had been occupied by indigenous people for… well we’re not even sure how long… and Powell wanted to justify that. Now, Dewhurst may seem like an unhinged fringe conspiracy theorist here but I want to point out that he is actually a very accomplished and credible author. He’s an Emmy award winning writer of an HBO documentary called “Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam,” he was a writer and editor for the History Channel, the Arts and Entertainment Channel, PBS, Fox, ABC News, TNT, Paramount Pictures, and the Miami Herald. So he’s not just some weird guy in a basement somewhere who’s got it out for John Wesley Powell and the Smithsonian. But most of his evidence to back this theory is just the newspaper articles. So, we’re kind of back to square one. There’s not really any way to prove the cover up theory. 

 

I suppose it’s possible that the giant skeletons, if they were real, were actually just very large humans, not mythical beasts. I mean, I don’t know about the 10 footers and 12 footers but a lot of these articles report skeletons that are like 7 foot something. That’s not impossible. There are modern humans in the 7 foot range - look at the NBA. Is it possible they were uncovering Native Americans who were just naturally super tall because of a healthy diet and genetics? That seems possible to me. But when you get into 8, 9, 10 feet - eh, certainly less normal, but still not impossible. Maybe these people suffered from gigantism - an actual, explainable medical condition. Children with gigantism usually have a tumor pressing on their pituitary gland that causes it to release extra growth hormones. They just keep on growing, reaching heights far above average, over 8 feet. Robert Wadlow, the tallest human we know about grew to 8 feet 11 inches tall. But gigantism is not genetic and it’s super rare, occurring in only 3 or 4 out of a million people. The chances of finding a bunch of ancient humans with this condition buried all together are extremely low. And it still doesn’t explain why there was never any follow up reporting on the finds, or exhibits of the bones in museums, no mention of 7 foot tall Native Americans in textbooks. 

 

So I’m still left with two possibilities - there never were any giant human skeletons found, or there were giant human skeletons found and, for whatever reason, the powers that be covered it up and kept that information hidden away. But they couldn’t take back those newspaper articles, they were already out there, and now they’ve formed the foundation for a fringe theory of an alternate human evolution or the existence of mythical beasts, I’m not even sure which. 

 

In last week’s episode about Vlad Dracula, I talked about two different types of historical evidence. The first type - the best type - is forensic evidence, bones. Bones can tell us a lot about where humans lived, how they lived, how they died. Bones are irrefutable evidence, except of course in this case, where the bones just disappear. Despite all the reported finds, there are no giant skeleton bones for us to study. The second type of historical evidence is witness accounts. We have this in letters, journals, books, articles. But this type of evidence is less reliable. It’s too easy to twist stories and sensationalize events to work in favor of the witness. Like I said last week, for this type of evidence to mean something, it has to be cross referenced. It has to come from multiple sources independently. And, it does here. These articles are coming out over the course of almost 100 years all over North America, different newspapers, different authors, totally unrelated. But once again, they just disappear with no follow up, no “oh woops nevermind,” no “scientists determined that the bones were dot dot dot.” Nothing. So the evidence is there and also not there at the same time. 

 

I’m at a loss on this one so I’ll leave it up for you to decide. Were all of the newspaper articles wrong? Hundreds of them? All reporting false stories of people digging up giant skeletons? Were these witnesses, as Helena Blovatsky put it, all “fools or liars?” Or were they right? Were these giants really being unearthed all around North America but it was covered up, evidence hidden, newspapers silenced, to satisfy the agenda of a government agency? I’m not sure we’ll ever know. The only thing I know for sure at the end of this episode is that there’s a whole lot we don’t know, a bunch of missing puzzle pieces.

 

Thank you all so very much for listening to History Fix. I hope you found this story interesting and maybe you even learned something new. Be sure to follow my instagram @historyfixpodcast to see some images that go along with this episode and to stay on top of new episodes as they drop. I’d also really appreciate it if you’d rate and follow this podcast on whatever app you’re using to listen, that’ll make it much easier to get your next fix.  

 

Information used in this episode was sourced from an Unexplained Mysteries podcast episode called “Giant Skeletons,” Live Science, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, The Columbus Dispatch, Ancient Origins, Simon and Schuster, CNN, Live Strong, jasoncolavito.com, as well as all of the various newspaper articles mentioned earlier. As always, links to these sources can be found in the show notes.