Ep 98: The Tall Ones Part 2

Illustration of Paul Bunyan and his blue ox "Babe" by Astonishing Legends' resident artist Chad Lewis.  Go to www.chadlewisart.com to see more of Chad's fantastic artwork, or commission him to create an original piece!  Image copyright Chad Lewis Art 2016.

 
 
 

"It was taught by the wise men of the Sioux tribe that the earth was originally peopled by giants, who were fully three times the size of modern men.  They were so swift and powerful that they could run alongside a buffalo, take the animal under one arm, and tear off a leg, and eat it as they ran."
– "Buffalo Bill" Cody, from Last of the Great Scouts, written by Helen Cody Wetmore and first published in 1899

 
 
 

LOCATION: Spanish Hill, near the communities of South Waverly and Sayre, Pennsylvania, where a supposedly 7' tall skeleton with horns and two rows of teeth was unearthed in the late 1880s from a pre-Columbian burial mound.

 

Background:

What constitutes a "giant" in your mind?  Certainly, people who are 6 to 7 feet tall are commonplace nowadays, unlike the Middle Ages, or even a hundred years ago.  But what about someone who's seven feet tall or more? We may call them "giants" in jest, but it's not the same as when we think of the giants in our legends.  A measurement of more than seven feet is rare, but there are plenty of healthy people living today in that range that prove it's not so legendary by our contemporary imagination.  Rarer still is a human that's eight feet tall, but there has been one in recent history: Robert Pershing Wadlow stood 8' 11.1" tall (2.72 m) and weighed 490 pounds (220 kg) and showed no signs of stopping his growth at his untimely death in 1940 at age 22.  So it's possible that a height for a human can approach nine feet, but could any height beyond that be sustainable? Because taller than that and it seems we venture beyond not only what is biologically viable for the human body, but also what is believable.  It still leaves us with the question, "What makes a giant?"  And if a skeleton is unearthed that appears to have horns?  Well, that is another matter altogether.  

 

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The Dark Myths Collective  

http://darkmyths.org/

 

Credits:

Episode 98: The Tall Ones Part 2.  Produced by Scott Philbrook & Forrest Burgess; Audio Editing by Sarah Vorhees Wendel; Ryan McCullough Sound Design; Research Assistance by Tess Pfeifle and the astonishing League of Astonishing Researchers, a.k.a. The Astonishing Research Corps, or "A.R.C." for short. Copyright 2018 Astonishing Legends Productions, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Folklore & LegendForrest BurgessGiants, Mound Builders, horned skull, Sayre, Spanish Hill, Andre the Giant, Serpent Mound, Hopewell, Hopewell Mound, Adena Mound, Valley of the Giants, Brad Lockwood, Goliath, Gilgamesh, Bilgames, Nimrod, Nephilim, Adena, Serpent Hill, Adena Moundj10 Comments