One-eyed Jack

Some Christians are claiming that the bones of giant humans, the Biblical Nephilim, have been found and are being hushed up by the secular science establishment. I've been poking about after Clews, and I'm hoping that someone will toss me a link or two.

I know about the story spread by Charles Baugh and Ken Hovind about the 11'6" skeleton found in Italy some time in the 1800s--there is absolutely no evidence that the story is true, and it appears to be nothing but a fiction built around an unidentified drawing clipped from an old magazine.

I also know that extinct herbivorous apes called Giganthropus, known only from two jawbones and a multitude of teeth, are posited to be between 7 and 10 feet tall--but they were not Nephilim because they were non-human, non-technological apes who ate mostly bamboo (like pandas) and fruit. (At least that's what analysis of the teeth and some small inclusions on them indicate.)

That leaves rumors of giant tools in Pleistocene gravels in Australia, as well as giant skeletons there, and a number of 19th-century stories about giant skeletons found in burial mounds and lakebeds and whatnot in the USA. Most of the info I've found on these is so vague it's hard for a casual websurfer to verify or debunk.

Anybody else done any poking around along this line?

Marduk

"Anybody else done any poking around along this line?"

Yes. there was a guy on Art Bell the other week claiming these skeletons pop up in the US as well from time to time
But he claims the Nephilim were aliens. I once asked an archaeologist at experts.com about this, he said that in the 1920's & '30's Archaeological hoaxes abounded, people would put bones together to make all kinds of creatures to put on display and charge admission. The Cardiff Giant comes to mind. (a farmer commisioned a stone carving of a giant man, and buried it on his farm, to 'discover' it later)
However, I do remember about 30 years ago reading an article in our local paper about a group of 10 foot tall sleletons with red hair being found in Minn. I don't remember any sort of followup on that, another hoax?

[ August 10, 2002: Message edited by: marduck ]</p>

CX

Would this not be better off in E/C?

One-eyed Jack

Better placed in evolution/creation? I dunno. It doesn't really address evolution, but rather the confirmation of the Bible through archeology. The Nephilim were supposed to be around in the time of Joshua, I believe?

But of course the Giganthropus and Meganthropus findings are paleontology and not archeology, and reasonably well embedded in the scientific literature. I have no preference: move it or leave it?

Thanks for the info, marduck. Indeed a lot of the nebulous stories I've seen refer to "finds" from the USA in the 1800s, usually with no names of discoverers or exact location attached.

Peter Kirby

Since the main evidence in this regard would come from analyzing the fossil finds rather than criticizing the biblical statements, I thought it would be more appropriate, or at least be available to more of the knowledgeable and interested people, if it were posted in the Creation/Evolution forum. Perhaps you could say that C/E trumps BC&A, since the C/E forum is concerned only with a small portion of the Bible, the first few chapters, through an examination of the scientific pre-historical record and with reference to the theory of evolution. Since this is my first action as a moderator, I am open to having another moderator or administrator reverse this decision.

best,
Peter Kirby