7-Foot Skeletons Claimed for Science
Claims that giant skeletons from prehistory had been dug up and delivered to scientific institutions are not hard to unearth in 19 th -century U.S. newspapers. Such tall tales were popular in part because they underscored White prejudices that Native Americans were an exotic inhuman species, their extermination worthy of no more human sympathy that, say, the fate of the passenger pigeon; and because believers in a literal, inerrant Bible could claim these ancient behemoths as evidence for the multiple Old Testament references to giants, most famously the demigods of Genesis 6:4: There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. (KJV via BibleGateway.com) Sometimes, however, the bones of long-dead people of unusual heights (anomalously tall or short) are indeed found – unsurprisingly, given the remarkable, everyda...