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GIANTS! The Tall Tales of Archaeological Hoaxes - Aliens 55
608 Plays1 year ago
Giants have long fascinated us humans and seem to be a never-ending resource for archaeological hoaxes. Towards the end of the 19th century, there almost became a trend to create giant hoaxes. In some cases, this was just to amuse; in others, it was to prove the Bible right.
In this episode, we will look at three cases. The love lock giant. The San Diego giant. And, of course, the most famous of them all, the Cardiff giant. Let's investigate the origins of these giants and see what archaeology has to say about these cases. What are the sources telling us, and what have other people invented afterward?
In Digging up Ancient Aliens, our host Fredrik uses his background in archaeology to discover what is genuine, fake, and somewhere in between in popular media, such as Ancient Aliens, Ancient Apocalypse, and many other places.
In this episode:
The Lovelock giant
The San Diego giant
The Cardiff giant
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The intro music is Lily of the woods by Sandra Marteleur, and the outro is named “Folie hatt” by Trallskruv.
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Transcript
Introduction to Ancient Aliens Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:19
Speaker
Hi, hello and welcome and tuning up ancient aliens. This is the podcast where we examine strange claims about alternative history and ancient aliens in popular media. The reclaims will water to an autologist. What are the better explanations out
Overview of Giants in Alternative History
00:00:33
Speaker
there? We are now on episode 55. I am Frederick, your guide into the world of pseudo-artiology. Coming to you with a broken hand. And of course I did break the finger bones in my right hand, making typing a bit of a challenge.
00:00:49
Speaker
I have to admit. So this time we have to dip into one of those backup episodes that I've created in the past for, well, not maybe this particular reason, but for similar reasons. So today we will not talk about the number one pyramid on our top 10 list from ancient aliens. No, we will talk about giants.
00:01:13
Speaker
Yes, those creatures who is claimed to have been found well on the very specious website and in Facebook post with clearly AI generated pictures. And there's particular three things we will talk about. The Lovelock Giants, the San Diego Giant and my favorite sociological hoax, the Cardiff Giant.
00:01:37
Speaker
Now, remember that you find sources, resources, and reading suggestions on our website, digging up ancientaliens.com. And if you want to support the show, you can do that either with money, I will tell you how you do that later in the episode, or you give a five star review anywhere you can. We also sell t-shirts now, check those out. But well, that's all the preparations we need,
Fascination with Giants and Misinformation
00:02:01
Speaker
I think. So let's dig into the episode.
00:02:10
Speaker
So we will talk about giants here. And why? Well, it all really started, or we were destined to talk about giants. We already have a couple of times, but I wanted to get deeper into the giant lore just a little bit. And it all started with a post that I stumbled upon on, I think it was Instagram.
00:02:34
Speaker
Yeah. And I think it really demonstrates the fascination and how everybody can quite easily be fooled. And that's why we maybe shouldn't be so aggressive when we talk to the believers of these things. Everybody can be duped, tricked and fooled.
00:02:56
Speaker
While we can take steps to make it harder for us to be all those things, things can obviously into the crack. But as I mentioned, I was looking at Instagram. I follow a couple of authorities there on top of all the pseudo-autological stuff that I also encounter. But then I suddenly see a picture of one of those famous giants.
Debunking the Lovelock Giants Myth
00:03:21
Speaker
And I'm sure that you have seen it if you think about it. It's what is supposed to be a mummified remain of a Native American giant. And it has a loincloth, it stands in a wooden box with one arm over it. Tombian besides, stands two 18th century dressed gentlemen, one imitating how
00:03:43
Speaker
the mummy stands in one just stands there looks slightly annoyed and the skull on this mummy giant is a piece like it looks like your stereotypical idea of um a Neanderthal as presented through a 18 or 19th century lens and there's a couple other pictures there tying to these type of themes and the caption were written
00:04:11
Speaker
For those who know that I work with the PYOT Indians in Northern California, you know that I can't tell you the stories I was told on the reservation. However, now you get to know a little bit of their stories of giants in this link. And the link is to a clickbait site. I love that these 10-foot giants were discovered for nothing else to show the PYOT lore quotation mark of the love of giants or not just lore.
00:04:40
Speaker
This is from a working archaeologist which made everything a bit more problematic from my end and I went to the article, I looked at it, it's your classical Lovelock cave giant mythological telling that we will get to in just a moment but the pictures isn't really connected to Lovelock
00:05:02
Speaker
But this post demonstrates on how a working professional can easily be fooled by myth, legends and the internet lore, so to say, because they want to believe in these type of things. So what is this Lovelock Cave then? Well, as the story goes, well, at least online, it's the home for a cannibalistic
00:05:27
Speaker
race of giants who, according to these legends, were hunting the Pyutes and made their children and women and all of that. And what's interesting in this story is that it's claimed that we have found these giant remains and that they are now either stoved away in the Smithsonian
00:05:50
Speaker
institute or hidden away somewhere. We also have an instance where David Childress go to an unknown museum and picks out what he claims is giant skulls but clearly it's just normal humans and then he will mistreat those human remains quite severely on camera but that's a different story. So the question here is of course is there any truth to this? And the answer is yes and no.
00:06:20
Speaker
The origin for this story comes from a book published in 1882 by Sarah Winnebuka Hopkins. And Sarah is one of the first known indigenous authors that was actually published. But in 1882, she published a novel called Life Among the Pious, Their Wrongs and Claims.
00:06:42
Speaker
and we will note here that the story is quite different from what we hear if we would go online and read or go to youtube and listen or well podcast whatever you want to do so the whole story starts with
00:06:59
Speaker
Among the tradition of our people is one of a small tribe of a barbarian who used to live along the Humboldt River. It was many hundred years ago. They used to waylay my people and kill and eat them. They would dig large holes in our trails at night and if any of our people travel at night, which they did, for they were afraid of these barbarious people, they would oftentimes fall into these holes. That tribe would even eat their own dead.
00:07:27
Speaker
Yes, they would even come and dig up our dead after they were buried and they would carry them off and eat them.
00:07:34
Speaker
So here is the cannibalistic part of it. And Sarah goes on and described the conflict they have with this tribe of barbarians. But it is important to note that they never claim that these are giants or a larger demand. In fact, they claim that they are just like the Payuz, except they are barbarians. They are savages. She even writes
00:08:03
Speaker
My people would ask them if they would be like us and not eat people like coyotes or beasts. They taught the same language, but they would not give up.
00:08:12
Speaker
And he goes on to describe the war that they have, and that they at last managed to push this barbarian tribe into a cave. And then they filled this cave with wood and other stuff, and they set it on fire. But the pyutes are trying to reach out a hand to save them, give them a way out. She wrote,
00:08:34
Speaker
We called out to them as loud as we could. Will you give up? Say so, and you will not die, but no answer came. Then they all left the place.
00:08:45
Speaker
So again, no mention of giants, but they were cannibals. They were killed. And she go on to describe that this tribe was called people-eaters because, you know, they ate people. And that the Paiutes, Sarah of Inamocas people who had killed them, the other tribes, neighboring tribes would go on and call them Seidukara, which she claimed means conquer.
00:09:13
Speaker
or enemy. And then she goes on trying to explain why they are really called pilots today when the real name is Seidukara. And it's also often, if you go online trying to look this up,
00:09:28
Speaker
you will see that these giant cannonballs are often referred to as Ziteka, so it seems to be some sort of bastardization of Sarah Winnemucca's writing here, because among the stories, among the Paiutes and other Native Americans.
00:09:46
Speaker
tribes in the area. The name Sitaka is not present. It's only in later retailing on a very suspicious website. We find this name, but again, it's most likely lifted from Seidou Kara. And often in these tailings, the giants have red hair. And this is also lifted from Sarah Winemockel's account. To write quote,
00:10:11
Speaker
My people say that the try we exterminated had reddish hair. I have some of their hair which have been handed down from father to son. I have a dress which have been in our family for great many years, trimmed with this reddish hair. I am going to wear it at some time when I lecture.
00:10:29
Speaker
So again, that these giants having red hair is again a callback to Sarah's account. That again isn't about giants. Now, is there any archaeological remains from the Lovelock Cave?
Archaeological Evidence Against Giant Myths
00:10:44
Speaker
Well, it is. And if we go to Nevada and the area called Humboldt Sink, we can actually find this rather small cave.
00:10:55
Speaker
Once upon a time it was part of Lake Lahoton, but that was some 13,000 years ago. In this cave there has been found a lot and a lot of archaeological remains. And the habitation seemed to go back some 4,000 years and
00:11:12
Speaker
Today we refer to the people living in the cave and in that particular area for the Lovelock culture to make things easier. So the area has been inhabited for 4000 years and we also have one of the earliest
00:11:28
Speaker
duck decoys found in this cave and it was found in 1911 by a couple of guana miners or farmers. So they were digging guano out of the cave and they quickly started to find a lot of Native American artifacts
00:11:45
Speaker
And it was to a point where they just throw both human remains, as it turned out, and the artefacts just out on the, well, dump they had created outside of the cave. But during 1912, the artefacts just, it was too much in the layer that they had hit. So they decided to go and tell the local museum and give the cave over to them because it wasn't really worth it with all the artefacts that they found. They wanted a guano.
00:12:15
Speaker
but it was more artefacts than Guam at this point. So the excavation was performed by Levelyn L. Loud and M. R. Harrington who published their found in a 1929 publication called The Lovelock Cave.
00:12:34
Speaker
And this publication is available online, but in it we can learn a bit more about what the real excavation was, what they found and everything else. And we also learn how the cave was treated before the archaeologists took over the excavation. So for example, they write quote,
00:12:59
Speaker
It would appear from a study of the skeletal material brought to the museum that the guana crew found at least 13 individuals. The remains were salvaged from the hillside refuse pile left by the guana crew.
00:13:13
Speaker
So they basically again toss the human remains that they found out on the refuse pile. Also might show a little bit about their view about these individuals that they encountered when they were digging but another discussion. And they go on and in total they write that quote
00:13:33
Speaker
The full number of individuals found by the writer in the cave is estimated to be about 32, making all told at least 45 individuals deposited in the cave. They go on to describe some of these remains that they found and several were actually mummies with hair and other garments still on them. They note in its report that some of these remains actually had
00:14:01
Speaker
red hair. But before you start to run out yelling that the ions are real, hold on for a moment, red hair among archaeological remains isn't that unusual, especially in locations where they often have black or dark hair.
00:14:18
Speaker
You see, there is an interesting process that can happen in human hair that can change the color from black to red. And this is due to different chemicals and processes. So it's about the pigments that we have within the hair. That's the case. But how about this cannibal claim about the cave?
00:14:40
Speaker
Is there any truth to this? Well, again, if we go back to the Loudon-Herrington publication, we do find a mention of cannibalism. So they write, quote, three human bones found near the surface in Lot 7, just back of the great fallen rock blocking the mouth of the cave. These had been split to extract the marrow as animal bones were split.
00:15:06
Speaker
and probably indicate cannibalism during famine. These were the only artificially split human bones found during all our digging in the cave. So the claim goes back to three bones that were found that might indicate that the marrow was extracted by people. But again, might and was is not necessarily the same thing here, but there's some truth to this claim.
00:15:36
Speaker
So we have people living here around the time the pirates would enter the area and they could have thought the story can be based in real history to some extent as usual. It seems as there might have been cannibalism. We have some indications of red
00:15:54
Speaker
hair, so there might be possible that some part of this oral tradition actually is based in real history, which is fascinating in itself. I don't need to add these giant claims, but when we now are back on the giant part of this whole story, where did it originate from? Well, it goes back to Loud and Harrington. Most likely, most likely.
00:16:20
Speaker
So in the appendix in their 1929 report, they did some interviews with Guano miners that first encountered Native American artifacts within the cave. And in the interview with James H. Art, in regard to his first excavation in Davila Cabo, first mining operation, or what we should call it. In this interview, he says, quote,
00:16:49
Speaker
In the south end of the cave, about 20 feet deep, we unearth some skeletons. In the north central part of the cave, about 4 feet deep, was a striking looking body of a man, 6 feet 6 inches tall. His body was mummified and his hair was distinctly red. There was a grass rope around his neck, with a knot under his left ear.
00:17:12
Speaker
The rope was about 8 feet long. The feet were bound together from the ankle to above the knees with stout roll. The mummification was complete except for a part of the abandonment. The other mummies all had red hair. I think there were either 4 or 5.
00:17:30
Speaker
Those appeared to be women who were small, something like a Japanese woman in height. This was not altogether due to the shrinking of the bodies in mummifying because the man was, quote, a giant, end quote. So there we have the giant, claimed origin of the giant in the Lovelop Cave.
00:17:51
Speaker
and I mean as someone who is six feet four inches or 195 centimeters I wouldn't say that 198 or whatever it is in metrics is giant is I mean large sure giant I mean not really but
00:18:13
Speaker
Or am I a giant? Will I have some existential crisis over here now? No, but he was tall, of course. Tall, but not really what I would describe a giant. So while there are some truths to the Piet oral tradition, we need to look at the evidence when we evaluate this history. And while Sarah probably wrote down a much earlier version,
00:18:39
Speaker
the stories that go around now might be influenced by modern retellings of the history. And this type of stories seem to have up somewhere in the 1970s when you try to look for terms giant and love luck in different resources in libraries and databases. I don't see those two terms together until the 1970s. And we don't see any reports mentioning it in 1940, 50 or 60.
00:19:09
Speaker
Clearly, this is a modern retelling based on misrepresenting the evidence that we actually have from the cave. And when we look back, the real story of the cave is much more interesting and fascinating than the made up giants because they didn't exist.
Exposing the San Diego Giant Hoax
00:19:26
Speaker
Unfortunately, this six, six foot, six inches tall mummy wasn't preserved, it seems like. I don't find it in the material that they were reporting.
00:19:36
Speaker
So most likely it went out on the garbage tippet, and it's one of these unidentified remains that they described earlier in the report. But that's a whole mystery of the love-love giant. And then we have the second part of this post that I mentioned in the start. The picture the giant put in the box with the two 19th century gentlemen on either side of it. And I think you have seen it as I mentioned.
00:20:05
Speaker
So this is not from the Lovelock. It has nothing to do with Lovelock. It is what's referred to as the San Diego Giant. And when it comes to giants and pictures, they have for a very long time been a, well, never ending source for hoaxes. And if you go online looking for giants, you will find a lot of hoax pictures.
00:20:32
Speaker
Some dating back to the 19th century, some go back to early 2000 and I kind of get a bit nostalgic when I look at those old 2000 photoshopped pictures of giants because well you see two humans with a huge skull in the center and you can clearly clearly see that this is old Photoshop. I mean it screams of it but back then I mean it
00:20:59
Speaker
looked quite real. People already was talking about, well, how will we be able to differentiate between Photoshop pictures and this, but now you clearly can see that. Yeah, it is Photoshop. Compare that to the picture we have now, which really getting dangerously good in the quality and how they look.
00:21:20
Speaker
real with AI and all of this starting to make all of this a lot harder. If you know what you're looking at and have a good eye for photos, you kinda can point out some issues in the pictures, but you kinda have to sit like a moon landing denier. Oh, that shadow goes the wrong direction.
00:21:42
Speaker
I mean, it will make things a lot harder to spot right off the start, which is sad. But again, the giant hoax stuff goes back to 1800 and this San Diego giant, it was proven to be a hoax in 1908.
00:22:01
Speaker
So in 1908, on June 7th, the Salt Lake Tribune, Sunday morning edition, published an article called Sheet and Hoaxes recalled by National Gallery forgeries. And it goes through different hoaxes that had been discovered, one of which is this picture that we have talked a little bit. And the portion about the San Diego stardust, both
00:22:29
Speaker
The mummy of the tallest human giant who ever lived was being barked by a sideshow man at Atlantic Exposition, while a number of these Smithsonian scientists were there. They asked permission to examine it, and when consent was given, applied their tapes and found, it measured eight feet, four inches, from crown to heel.
00:22:52
Speaker
The giant had been found in a cave near San Diego, California by a party of prospectors, according to the exhibitor. Over the head were the remains of a leather hood which appeared to have been part of a shroud. Worn teeth were visible in the mouth and the outlines of the ribs were plain to see through the skin. The elongated, emacitated body stood erect in a great, narrow coffin, ten feet long.
00:23:18
Speaker
The exhibitor agreed to sell it for £500 to the Smithsonian which dispatched Lucas to the scene. He, Professor W.J. Mackey and others made a careful test. A piece of the giant's dried skin was removed and when tested in the chemical laboratory at the Smithsonian was found to be gelatin. Professor Mackey is shown on the left of the giant in the accompanying picture and the exhibitor was
00:23:47
Speaker
perfectly innocent of the fraud is shown on its right. So that's the story of the San Diego giant and even if it's claimed to be all sorts of giant it was back then already known to be a elaborate hoax and it was not the
00:24:04
Speaker
only, only hoax of the time. The next section of the same giant deals with the Cardiff giant, already then known to actually be a hoax.
The Cardiff Giant: Belief vs. Evidence
00:24:22
Speaker
So let's talk a little bit about the Cardiff Giant then. And it's an interesting tale that I think can give some insight to our current media, or maybe show us that nothing haven't really changed in the last hundred years or so.
00:24:39
Speaker
But how the giant got so popular can be explained by a couple of things, I think. So first of all, we have the religious aspect. During this time, it was quite common to try to prove the Bible as literal.
00:24:56
Speaker
fact. And since there are giants in the Bible, the most well-known giant in the Bible might be Goliath of Gotha, who was slain by David in 1 Samuel. And it was quite common in America during this time to claim that they have found giants both as evidence for, well, biblical literacy. And we see these, for example, in the early 17th
00:25:26
Speaker
hundred with Cotton Maher who claimed to have the remains of sinful giants in America. We also see it later in time these claims about giants and there's again both the religious aspect but also a sort of sort of nationalistic idea
00:25:45
Speaker
The myth about giants in America ties quite closely into the idea that white people had settled America before the indigenous people, enhancing the claim to the land that the white settlers wanted to use as a way to justify their settling and relocation of the Native Americans.
00:26:11
Speaker
And still to some extent lives today. And I think that the Edvar Watts make a good case for this in his book, colonizing the past. So these legendary voyages of Welsh Vikings, all of that ties into the myth about the American giants being white. And we saw that kind of in the Lovelock case, again, they are specified having red hair.
00:26:38
Speaker
who has red hair, well, the white people. So it ties in together this religious aspect and the notion that the white settlers had a claim to the land that they were settling, that was from a past that was more ancient than the Native Americans have. So let's talk a bit closer about the Cardiff Giants specifically.
00:27:06
Speaker
And if you want to learn even more, I highly recommend the Scott Tibbles book about this Colossal hoax published in 2009, where he goes into great details about all the different aspects about the giants. But we will have a short introduction here. So the main creator of this hoax was a cigar manufacturer from Binghamton, New York named George Hall.
00:27:34
Speaker
And a whole story seemed to start in 1866 where according to Hall he were visiting his sister's house in Iowa. Well there he got into an argument somehow with a Methodist minister and Hall was, well as Professor Fader puts it, a devout atheist, pun intended according to himself.
00:27:58
Speaker
But they started to talk about, well, all the myth and legends in the Bible and an afterward hall is supposedly going to bed and laying awake wondering quote, why people would believe those remarkable stories in the Bible about giants when I suddenly thought of making a stone giant and passing it off as a petrified man.
00:28:20
Speaker
and some will paint Hall as someone who wants to thumbing his nose towards the religious establishment trying to make the religious people look like fools and show them that their beliefs are just fairy tales stories and others paint him more as an opportunistic fella who just were in it for the money and I'm not sure really what it is but if we think about how much money he actually made on the Cardiff Giant
00:28:49
Speaker
I would suspect it's more about the latter than the former, even though he might have had his thumbing of nose kind of approach initially. But in June, Hall purchased an acre of land in Iowa and there he placed a large gypsum stone block and he hired a
00:29:13
Speaker
artist who went about to try to create this giant petrified man and Hall seems to have a lot of input on the statue maybe because it was kind of modeled after Hall himself might explain why the well male member on the statue has the proportion it have but speculation on some my side there
00:29:39
Speaker
But after a bit more input and some remodeling of the statue, removing hair, he also had a bear like George Hall in the beginning. And when it was done, he still wasn't really satisfied to make the statue look even older. Hall is supposed to have taken, well, basically a spiked board
00:30:00
Speaker
He took a piece of wood, hammered some knitting needles through it and then went to town on the statue, probably surprising the poor artist something immensely. And then he also started to pour acid on the statue to get this old timey look on the statue.
00:30:19
Speaker
And then he got a wooden box, wrapped it up, and made more peoples war secrecy and sent it to his relative Stub Neville, who then in secrecy buried the statue on his land. And then they waited.
00:30:39
Speaker
Not very long, but, you know, enough so people might forget that Mr. Neville got a several meter long, large wooden box that somehow just disappeared all of a sudden in the night. But yeah, so on a Saturday in October, to precise October 16, in 1869, Stubbe Neville hired some workers to dig a well on his land.
00:31:08
Speaker
and it didn't take too long for them to stumble upon this petrified human and they seem to have found a face first. And Neville seemed to have been a great choice to include in this post because he seemed to be a quite good actor. He is taking his time, he is playing reluctance, for example, he don't really put up a tent to sell
00:31:32
Speaker
tickets until other people start to push him to do this. Oh, you should show it to people. You should, you know, takes a ticket money. And then he goes and he even suggests in the beginning to the papers that he maybe should just fill it out and just forget about it because it's such a hassle all the day. So
00:31:51
Speaker
He seems to be a good actor and a good choice to include in your hoax, and in the paper there's a lot of speculation and some are more skeptical than others. For example, the Fort Wayne Gazette wrote on October 27th, quote,
00:32:08
Speaker
The discovery near Syracuse continues to excite a man's interest, and the question petrified or sculpture is being vigorously debated. Rev. E. Owen of the C-Team, who visited his giant ship yesterday, confirms our statement in every particular end, addition to the measurement we gave, states that the figure measures 27 inches around the neck and the depth of the head is 19 inches.
00:32:36
Speaker
He informs us that the head is remarkably well shaped one, but presents no appearance of hair. It is the opinion of Mr. Oven and indeed most scientific men who have given their investigation that it is a petrified human body." And the Fort Wayne gassette goes on to say that
00:32:57
Speaker
The well which Mr. Neville was intending to dig was to have been a shallow excavation where the water would naturally gather for the purpose of watering his cattle. The trench dug out is about four feet deep, the soil appears to have been washed in around and above the statue from the high ground surrounding the place and is a mixture of sand and mucking clay. The Aegean country is filled with rumors
00:33:22
Speaker
which insinuated Mr. Neville was in collusion with parties who seek to impose upon and humbug the public. His good character, the circumstances of the discovery and the evidence open to the public scrutiny contradict these rumors.
00:33:38
Speaker
So some papers seem to be more lenient to this being a real thing, helping to propel the story into the minds of people. And then we have some a bit more skeptical papers, for example, Harper's Weekly, who in December of 1869
00:34:00
Speaker
wrote an article on the Cardiff Giant, but they have an article that is a bit more skeptical, and in some cases, as you will see, a bit more tongue-in-cheek. And Harper's Weekly talk about Dr. Boyton, who was on the site and investigated the Giant. And at first he seemed to believe that this is a real thing.
00:34:24
Speaker
And Dr. Boyton seems to initially claim that this is a statue of a Caucasian man who is finally caught in all of this, and he suggested it might be caught by Jesuits who dwelled in the well between 1520 and 1760. He then goes back and makes a more careful and thorough investigation
00:34:46
Speaker
And he then started to realize that it is made out of gypsum and must therefore be of a bit more recent origin. Gypsum is quite fragile and wouldn't really survive being down in the ground for an extended time period without being really. And Dr. Boyton wrote to Professor Spencer of the Smithsonian Institute that, quote,
00:35:15
Speaker
I have stated that I thought his organ would not carry us back over 300 years, but I am not certain that the known principles of chemistry will justify me in asserting that the period between his burial and resurrection was over three years.
00:35:32
Speaker
Its antiquated appearance have been produced not by abrasion, as many have said, but by dissolving action on water, which I think could have been accomplished in a few months. A more careful and accurate calculation, admitting the possible chance of some undiscovered error creeping into the calculation, may show that the burial to have taken place about 370 or 371 days ago, as it may happen between two.
00:36:02
Speaker
And then we come to the part I kinda like about this article written by this journalist. Towards the end of the article the journalist wrote. A recent theory has been started that it is a cast iron figure covered with a coating of cement. The head, it is said, gives a ringing sound when struck like that of a hollow metallic body.
00:36:27
Speaker
I kind of like that they claim that the statue has no brain and the kind of hints that those believing in this well might have been a little bit fooled by this whole ordeal. But Neville and Hall is making quite the big bucks on this statue and the entrance fee that they're charging to see it on Mr. Neville's land in the tent that he later set up under the influence of other people again.
00:36:53
Speaker
and Dr. Fader mentioning his book, Frostmists and Mysteries, that it seems as they collected some $7,000 in admission fees, which is equal to around $100,000 in modern currency.
00:37:11
Speaker
So again, there's quite a financial boon to all of this that we need to kind of account for and kind of explain why they did the hoax. All in all, it seems as during its time in Cardiff on Neville's land, there was 32,000 people coming to visit the Cardiff Giant.
00:37:33
Speaker
And with giant dollar signs in their eyes, they realized that Cardiff is a little bit off from the main path and then decide to move the statue to or the petrified man, the giant, to Syracuse to make it more accessible to people.
00:37:50
Speaker
And by this time, Mr. Neville and, well, also Hall to some extent had gotten people who had bought in to the Giants. So they paid a portion so they could own it. So a syndicate of Syracuse businessman and other professional people went together and paid roughly $37,000 to own three quarters of
00:38:17
Speaker
The statue and with the better location in zero cruise, they get even more people coming to see the giant. All in all, some 60,000 people comes to view the giant. Then even the famous circus entrepreneur, PT Barnum came there in attempt to buying the statue. I offer that according to Ithaca daily was supposed to be some $60,000 in that time's currency.
00:38:45
Speaker
and Petey Barnum didn't want to buy it permanently, he just wanted to borrow it for about three months. But Petey Barnum was turned down by the syndicate and Mr Neville and in relation also
00:39:01
Speaker
George Hall, but Peter Barnum was not too sad about it. He went back to his circus and took a moment to think and came up with a brilliant idea. If he can't buy the giant,
00:39:16
Speaker
Well, he makes his own giant and you just place it on the street with a sign saying, come and view the real Cardiff Giant. So you had this time where there were several giants and Peter Barn was not the only person doing this. This kind of became an epidemic with people making their own giants, putting them on display as the real giant or a real petrified man.
00:39:40
Speaker
So you had this weird competition between the real real codiff giant who was created by Hall and the real fake giant by Petey Barnum all claiming it is the real petrified man. But this would not last forever.
00:39:57
Speaker
because after some time Mr. Hall got, well, his conscience started to wear on him and in December 1869 he admitted to all of this being a hoax. It did not stop him to create more giants in the future but he couldn't really get the same attention as this initial Cardiff giant.
00:40:21
Speaker
And I think he kind of realized that he couldn't keep this jig up forever, because well, scientists were starting to realize that this wasn't really a petrified man. And as we noticed from Harper Weeklys, there was concerns that this was not
00:40:39
Speaker
very old. And as Dr. Boyton mentioned, the gypsum was too fragile to be in the ground for too long. And we also have Frank Baum, the author of Wizard of Oz, writing a bit of satirical poems about the giant and Mark Twain.
00:41:02
Speaker
write a novel about the giant. So, I mean, it was in the public, quite, quite established that it most likely was a fraud. It didn't stop people from still believing it, which make it tying into what we see today. We have a lot of professionals, a lot of experts. We have science. We have a lot of evidence to show that giants were probably not real. It's most likely either misinterpret
00:41:31
Speaker
animal remains or based on faulty exemption from partial human remains. So for example if you measure the human femur you can kind of calculate the height of the individual that you're looking at but it requires that you have the complete bone if you're working with fragments
00:41:52
Speaker
things can be a bit uncertain and this is what we see in most of these giant cases people who is looking at insufficient data and making conclusion based on this insufficient data and then we also have instances where people have measured people layer as they were found in the ground so if you bury someone
00:42:15
Speaker
they will appear to be taller when you excavate them because things kind of move around and when ligaments flash and all of that decompose, things kind of move away from each other. So measuring human remains as they lay in their grave isn't a great way to calculate the individual's height. But this isn't really about evidence, it is about belief in them.
00:42:42
Speaker
as we see today and then even if Hall came out saying this is a hoax I made this up it is a nude version of me that you're looking at people didn't believe it they still believe that the Cardiff Giants were
00:42:57
Speaker
real, because they wanted it to be real, because it fit within their idea of the world, the Bible being true or white people were living in America before the Native American. The reasons can be several and multiple, but
00:43:13
Speaker
it doesn't really change their belief this. And just as we see today and as we see with the post I started this whole exploration with, it doesn't really matter if you're presented with evidence, your belief will in most cases take priority because it is hard to change one's belief.
The Persistence of Belief and Closing Remarks
00:43:36
Speaker
Something we need to have in mind when we discuss this with believers.
00:43:40
Speaker
You need to view it as it being part of a religious cult, in a sense, that it's not just presenting fact and everything will be sorted out. For some, that might be the way out of this, but for the majority, we kind of have to approach them as individual, different. And it's a slow process that no podcast can really
00:44:05
Speaker
solve like that, unfortunately, but it might give you some help approaching family members or workplace acquaintances or people you meet and give a bit of understanding on what they are thinking, how they thinking it and how you can approach them both with the facts themselves
00:44:30
Speaker
and with a bit of humanity, asking questions, approach them and discuss it. And it might help them get out of this rabbit hole. But that's it. Giants are not real, have not been real. And all of the giants you usually find online is just
00:44:54
Speaker
hoaxes. And there we have it. I hope you enjoyed this episode on giants, and hopefully we will be able to conclude our pyramid exploration next time. As usual, sources, resources, and further reading suggestions is on the website. And if you want to support the show, that can be done by either telling your friends about it, share an episode with them, tell them to listen to your favorite episode,
00:45:23
Speaker
and get them involved into the world of podcasting. If you want to more directly support the show, it can be done financially by becoming a patron member over at patreon.com slash digging up ancient aliens.
00:45:41
Speaker
And if you don't want to support the show through Patreon, we also have a membership thing going on where you get the same bonuses, basically. And you can find a member portal at digging up ancientanians.com slash members. We also have a merch store, if you want to get some cool looking t-shirts or mugs. And if you want more skeptical content or watch all of the content, check out the archaeologicalpodcastnetwork.com where you find a bunch of other shows to fill
00:46:11
Speaker
your earholes with. And on that note, I will bid farewell, go back and rest my arm a bit, and hopefully I will be back to my old health shortly. Sandra Martelor created the intro music, and the outro is by the band called Thrallscrew, who sings their song fully hot. Until next time, keep shoveling that science.
00:46:37
Speaker
I've been waiting for you for a long time I've been waiting for you for a long time I've been waiting for you for a long time I've been waiting for you for a long time I've been waiting for you for a long time