Giants in the Ohio Lands
It's true, but not like you may think...
OHIO GIANTS
In the earliest days of North American exploration, Europeans who were traveling across eastern America encountered Native Americans of large stature. These people were about 6 feet tall or larger and of massive build. They had grown up with rich diets as a result of the abundant game and their successful agriculture. Coupled with active lifestyles, these Native people developed the maximum height and muscle mass that the human body would allow. Many of the Europeans, on the other hand, had come from impoverished, inner city environments and had grown up with poor nutrition. Most of them were 5 foot five and under as a result.
The Native Americans were formidable adversaries in hand to hand combat against the scrawny Europeans. The explorers wrote journal entries chronicling their battles with the Native warriors that towered over them, describing them as ‘giants’. These journals were often turned into books that became popular reading material in Europe. They helped to build the belief among early immigrants to the New World that giants lived in America.
In the early 19th century, Ohio farmers began to exhume thousands of human remains from burial mounds. Many skeletons were of large size, comparable to the Native people originally encountered in the East. Ohio farmers had no real training in human anatomy so reconstructing human skeletons was not their strong suit. This led to the skeletons being incorrectly assembled and were often stretched out to be much larger than they originally were. A 6 foot tall skeleton wound up being over 7 feet when the locals were done with it. Small, underfunded, country newspapers were always looking for a big headline to spur sales. So that skeleton, originally 6 foot tall, which had grown to 7 feet after the locals assembled it, then became 8 feet tall when a local news reporter wrote up the story. This happened time and time again across Ohio in those days. Some headlines were pretty crazy : “ Two Dozen 8 Foot Tall Giants Found Buried Along the Ohio River!”
Sometimes one newspaper would steal the story of another but change it slightly. That 8 foot tall giant inevitably became 9 feet tall and so on.
In addition, huge ceremonial blades and other large artifacts were found buried with the remains. These artifacts were intentionally created to be so large that they were of no practical use. This was a way of demonstrating wealth and the idea that these objects contained unusual power. These large artifacts helped bolster the belief in giants.
At the same time, there was a great deal of speculation about who created the mounds. Many eastern tribes had suffered terribly at the hands of whites. They were mercilessly killed, and their land and wealth was stolen. They suffered from European diseases and often faced long periods of starvation. This lead to tribes becoming shadows of their former selves. White people began to believe that the Native Americans were always in that desperate condition and therefore never possessed the ability to create the civilizations that erected the mounds.
The white Ohioans speculated, and eventually convinced themselves, that ancient white people, such as the survivors of Atlantis or the Vikings were the people that created these earthworks. In those days, scientists and scholars took the Bible as fact so they then naturally believed that the giants mentioned in that ancient book were real. Eventually tall tales were spun that white skinned, red haired giants of European heritage built the mounds. Other tall tales stated that a ‘lost tribe of Israel’ built the mounds, as can be seen by the Newark Holy Stone hoax, which was designed to promote and cash in on this burial mound situation. Several religions, such as Mormonism, sprung from these beliefs that groups other than Native Americans built the mounds.
Some things we know for certain: There were originally over 11,000 burial mounds in Ohio. Thousands were opened by professional and amateur archeologists, most of whom took photos of the skeletons exhumed. There are hundreds, if not thousands of photographs of these human remains (These photos can be found in archeological journals, magazines and textbooks). All of the skeletal remains photographed were within the range of normal human size. Not one of the photographed skeletons can be said to be of gigantic proportions.
From the Youngstown Archeology Department…
So this leads to the question…
Do any of these giants still roam the Ohio Lands? One can never be sure…
very intresting ARcheology article, I would like read more
on these giants. even thought I don't belive in them much.
thanks DAve-Fisherman.-U.S.A.