There Are No Giants, Johnny
~Mandella~
(Read the bibliography for disclaimer)
"Fe Fi Fo Fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman!" Nearly every child has heard these words at some time in their life. And if you were to ask where they came from, the answer "Jack and the Beanstalk" would come nearly before the question was finished being asked. Of course, this is a fairy tale, and fairy tales don't exist. But still, it is told as a bedtime story to young "Johnnys" around the world. After the story is told, and Johnny begins his never ending questions, mothers around the world can also be heard saying, "There are no magic beans. Go to sleep. Children don't climb up mile-high beanstalks to find palaces in the sky. Good night. No, Geese don't lay golden eggs- and no, Johnny, the magical harp doesn't exist. No! Giants aren't real!" And occasionally you will hear an exasperated sigh of a mother regretting she ever began the story. But she achieved her point. Johnny won't bring up the questions again. He knows the truth now, and it is irrefutable, because mommy said so- right? But what if she wasn't?
As for the harp and the beanstalk, they might not exist and maybe never will. But as for the giant? Well, maybe no one lived up in the clouds and they probably weren't 200 feet tall, but they did exist. Scientific evidence supports a race of people called Giants.
"Giants were a race of people with great stature, of whom some lived only 2,000 years ago. These giants stood to be 8-15 feet tall, and weighed 600-1200 pounds. The dimensions of these people are hard to picture. They could have had hands 12-20 inches long, heads 12-19 inches tall, shoulders 3-4 feet wide and feet 18-25 inches in length."(Bob Earl Miller, GIANT HUMANS A REALITYâ€"Aspects of an Ancient Civilization)
Many giant races in Australia have been found with members up to twice as tall as the average human today. This race was called "meganthropus". Weather they were actually humans or not, however, is still in question.
But even these giants would have had to look up to the giant exhibited at Rouen in the early part of the eighteenth century- it was two inches shy of eighteen feet tall! Amazingly, even that giant was not the tallest one yet found. Two giants were found to be twenty feet, one with footprints 36 inches long and one found in the Blue Mountains. Towering over these two was a fossil deposit found by naturalist Rex Gilroy. He found physical evidence of a giant that was at least 25 feet tall, weighing about 1,000 pounds. The thirty-foot woman from South Africa reigns over them all, with a foot four feet long! Even the "little" Swedish giantess recorded by Gorapus, a surgeon, was ten feet tall when she was only nine years old.
Giants have a future, also. According to Van Wieringen, from Holland, as quoted from TIME magazine, " If you say human spines couldn't cope with such height, well, giraffes and other animals manage to combine enormous height and weight. Maybe our skeletal power would increase at the same time. I don't think our upper height limit has been reached." The other possibility lies not on Earth, but really beyond even the 'cloud palaces'. Giants could one day exist on the moon, or a planet smaller than Earth. Given how fast needed resources, such as coal and oil, are being used up, many scientists have turned to the stars. The space station is out there, waiting. Maybe a century or two from now, humans could be forced to take up a new home on the moon. Because of the gravitational pull, over time, we would become lighter and taller. Through natural selection, short people would become nearly, if not entirely, extinct. Due to this fact, tall people would have children with other tall people, and produce tall offspring. Within a couple generations, giant-sized people could dominate once again.
So maybe Johnny's mother has a reason. If she did say that giants existed, poor Johnny would never sleep again, for fear of a giant falling from a very large stalk in the sky. Or maybe it was because her mother told her that when she asked when she was younger. Since the race known as giants existed so long ago, and the tallest modern person was only three feet taller than the average man is, giants have slowly disappeared into a mythological people, slow and idiotic. But they weren't. Maybe tonight, a child somewhere is hearing for the first time the legendary words "Fe Fi Fo Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman." And when that child's mother begins to leave the room and turn off the light, she might be inquired over the truth. And when she denies the singing harp and gold-egg laying goose, and the huge beanstalk leading up to a palace in the sky, she might hesitate on the last question. "Were there Giant's, Mommy?" Then she'll remember herself and say no. But I'm here to correct the rare mistake of an all-knowing mother.
Yes, Johnny, Giants did exist.
Works Cited
Holland's' Van Wieringen: TIME Magazine. October 14, 1996. Volume 148, No. 16A. TALL STORY FOR OUR TIME. Visited: Feb, 2002
Bob Earl Miller. http://www.voy.com/17011/2/5768.html. December 22 2001. GIANT HUMANS A REALITYâ€"Aspects of Ancient Civilizations. Visited: Feb. 2002
Extratall.com.http://www.extratall.co.uk/news_human_survival_is_determined_i n_.htm Human Survival is determined in part by Height. Visited: Feb. 2002
~Mandella~
(Read the bibliography for disclaimer)
"Fe Fi Fo Fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman!" Nearly every child has heard these words at some time in their life. And if you were to ask where they came from, the answer "Jack and the Beanstalk" would come nearly before the question was finished being asked. Of course, this is a fairy tale, and fairy tales don't exist. But still, it is told as a bedtime story to young "Johnnys" around the world. After the story is told, and Johnny begins his never ending questions, mothers around the world can also be heard saying, "There are no magic beans. Go to sleep. Children don't climb up mile-high beanstalks to find palaces in the sky. Good night. No, Geese don't lay golden eggs- and no, Johnny, the magical harp doesn't exist. No! Giants aren't real!" And occasionally you will hear an exasperated sigh of a mother regretting she ever began the story. But she achieved her point. Johnny won't bring up the questions again. He knows the truth now, and it is irrefutable, because mommy said so- right? But what if she wasn't?
As for the harp and the beanstalk, they might not exist and maybe never will. But as for the giant? Well, maybe no one lived up in the clouds and they probably weren't 200 feet tall, but they did exist. Scientific evidence supports a race of people called Giants.
"Giants were a race of people with great stature, of whom some lived only 2,000 years ago. These giants stood to be 8-15 feet tall, and weighed 600-1200 pounds. The dimensions of these people are hard to picture. They could have had hands 12-20 inches long, heads 12-19 inches tall, shoulders 3-4 feet wide and feet 18-25 inches in length."(Bob Earl Miller, GIANT HUMANS A REALITYâ€"Aspects of an Ancient Civilization)
Many giant races in Australia have been found with members up to twice as tall as the average human today. This race was called "meganthropus". Weather they were actually humans or not, however, is still in question.
But even these giants would have had to look up to the giant exhibited at Rouen in the early part of the eighteenth century- it was two inches shy of eighteen feet tall! Amazingly, even that giant was not the tallest one yet found. Two giants were found to be twenty feet, one with footprints 36 inches long and one found in the Blue Mountains. Towering over these two was a fossil deposit found by naturalist Rex Gilroy. He found physical evidence of a giant that was at least 25 feet tall, weighing about 1,000 pounds. The thirty-foot woman from South Africa reigns over them all, with a foot four feet long! Even the "little" Swedish giantess recorded by Gorapus, a surgeon, was ten feet tall when she was only nine years old.
Giants have a future, also. According to Van Wieringen, from Holland, as quoted from TIME magazine, " If you say human spines couldn't cope with such height, well, giraffes and other animals manage to combine enormous height and weight. Maybe our skeletal power would increase at the same time. I don't think our upper height limit has been reached." The other possibility lies not on Earth, but really beyond even the 'cloud palaces'. Giants could one day exist on the moon, or a planet smaller than Earth. Given how fast needed resources, such as coal and oil, are being used up, many scientists have turned to the stars. The space station is out there, waiting. Maybe a century or two from now, humans could be forced to take up a new home on the moon. Because of the gravitational pull, over time, we would become lighter and taller. Through natural selection, short people would become nearly, if not entirely, extinct. Due to this fact, tall people would have children with other tall people, and produce tall offspring. Within a couple generations, giant-sized people could dominate once again.
So maybe Johnny's mother has a reason. If she did say that giants existed, poor Johnny would never sleep again, for fear of a giant falling from a very large stalk in the sky. Or maybe it was because her mother told her that when she asked when she was younger. Since the race known as giants existed so long ago, and the tallest modern person was only three feet taller than the average man is, giants have slowly disappeared into a mythological people, slow and idiotic. But they weren't. Maybe tonight, a child somewhere is hearing for the first time the legendary words "Fe Fi Fo Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman." And when that child's mother begins to leave the room and turn off the light, she might be inquired over the truth. And when she denies the singing harp and gold-egg laying goose, and the huge beanstalk leading up to a palace in the sky, she might hesitate on the last question. "Were there Giant's, Mommy?" Then she'll remember herself and say no. But I'm here to correct the rare mistake of an all-knowing mother.
Yes, Johnny, Giants did exist.
Works Cited
Holland's' Van Wieringen: TIME Magazine. October 14, 1996. Volume 148, No. 16A. TALL STORY FOR OUR TIME. Visited: Feb, 2002
Bob Earl Miller. http://www.voy.com/17011/2/5768.html. December 22 2001. GIANT HUMANS A REALITYâ€"Aspects of Ancient Civilizations. Visited: Feb. 2002
Extratall.com.http://www.extratall.co.uk/news_human_survival_is_determined_i n_.htm Human Survival is determined in part by Height. Visited: Feb. 2002