If there were giants, where did they go?

I have always been fascinated by the stories of giants, the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk, the giant lantern genie in the tales of the Thousand and One Nights, the giant robots in science fiction films… They are mighty beings, we love to see and hear their stories because they emit in our souls a mixture of strength, vanity and mystery, and who does not love to be strong? And strength is often characterized by vanity, an acceptable vanity when you are the length of a three-story building, because whether you like it or not, you are compelled to look arrogantly at those little ones who run under your feet. And this arrogance, full of mighty power, is also the source of the mystery surrounding these giants, because it makes us wonder how they reached their size? How did they come into existence and how did they live? .. And the most important question is why did they disappear? And did they ever exist, or did they never exist except in the world of myths and legends?

Do we know everything?

Of course, if you asked a historian or biologist about the giant sitting on top of the gigantic beanstalk that grew in Jack’s garden, he would laugh and he would answer you confidently: “There are no giants.”
but how ? .. What about all that folklore and religious heritage about them, how can they not exist? .. You will inevitably ask, and he will answer you, saying: “Ok, if they existed, where are their remains? .. Their traces.. Their cities.. We know that dinosaurs are giant creatures that actually lived on Earth millions of years ago because we have thousands of fossilized skeletons that indicate their existence , while we did not find a single skeleton belonging to a giant.”
Scientific speech is sound, but let us ask innocently: Do scientists know everything? ..

They tell us that modern human appeared and colonized this earth about two hundred thousand years ago, but what do we know about these thousands of years? …almost nothing! .. Most of our knowledge of human history is almost limited to the last five thousand years, and let us be more specific, since man learned to write and left us records of his life, beliefs, kings, wars and cities. Writing is the standard of knowledge, and for this reason, scholars know a lot about aspects of ancient life in the Ancient egypt and Mesopotamia, because the peoples who founded those two civilizations left us millions of hieroglyphic papyrus scrolls and cuneiform clay tablets to the extent that many of them are still in the museums vaults arount the world, waiting to be deciphered and read.. But what do we know in return about Britain’s history before the Roman invasion in 43 AD? ..

almost nothing..

Is this reasonable! Great Britain, “The empire on which the sun never sets”… Its ancient history is unknown? ..

Yes, this is true, and the reason is simply that the ancient “British” were not fond of writing and reading and did not know it at all. They were barbarians, they did not leave us any information about themselves, and for this reason scholars today stand puzzled in front of a great historical monument like Stonehenge without knowing anything about Who built it and why was it built in the first place? All they have are conflicting historical accounts left by medieval historians that scholars refuse to believe, such as that the famous magician Merlin brought a people of giants who inhabited Ireland in ancient times and used them to move the huge rocks and build this majestic edifice.
A legend that’s hard to believe, isn’t it? .. But if these are just myths, how can we explain the construction of great edifices such as Stonehenge and the pyramids by using simple and dilapidated wooden levers and cranes? Doesn’t that seem impossible? .

In Baalbek, Lebanon, there is a great boulder carved out of stone called (The Pregnant Woman). This rock was cut from the stone quarries in the south of the city and carefully polished its sides. It is 21 meters long and weighs about 1500 tons. It is a giant rock in every sense of the word, but its size is not the only cause of mystery in it. Scientists do not know who cut it and how he was able to move it from its place and transport it for a long distance. It is supposed that it was prepared to be part of the luxurious temples built by the Romans throughout the city, but scholars today believe that its age dates back to an era older than that, perhaps in the time of Alexander the Great. The problem here is that they do not know who was living in the city at the time, because Baalbek emerged as a city and became famous after the reign of Alexander, when it became known as Heliopolis, meaning the city of the sun. Before that, its history is surrounded by mystery, but it is known that the area was ancient home to the Phoenicians and Canaanites, and the evidence for this is that its name is of Semitic origin (Baal = Lord or Master), and therefore It is not excluded that the owners of the rock were Canaanites, And the Bible tells us that some of those Canaanites were giants, which leaves us in front of two hypotheses. As for those who cut the rock and moved it had advanced equipment and cranes similar to those we have today, and this is not consistent with the copper chisels and wood levers that the ancients owned. As for those who cut the rock and moved it had enormous physical strength, to be more precise, they were giants, and therefore they did not find much difficulty in moving and lifting this huge rock.
Someone might say that this is pure nonsense.. just the legends of the ancients..

Probably ..

But wasn’t Troy just a legend that Homer narrated to us in his poems that he wrote in his famous epic, The Iliad, and scholars used to meet the existence of the city with a sarcastic smile, until suddenly a German merchant fond of antiquities appeared to us ,his name was Heinrich Schliemann, he went with his wife to Turkey and extracted for us the remains of the city of Troy from Under the dirt in 1870, guided by the poems of the Iliad, which everyone has considered for centuries a myth! .

And weren’t the stories of the lost Inca cities also a myth, until an unknown American explorer named Hiram Bingham visited the Andes Mountains in Peru in 1911, there an eleven-year-old Inca child guided him to the ruins of a great city that lies above the clouds, Machu Picchu, the holy lost city that scientists were dumbfounded by its discovery. They used to ridicule its existence and consider talking about it just a myth, while it was for four centuries, towering with its great stone edifices on the mountain and mocking their ignorance and arrogance.

These simple examples clearly show us that scientists do not know everything, and that human history is full of dark gaps and missing links, the ancient egyptians, for example, left us a record of everything, their gods, their priests, their lives, their rituals, their harvest seasons, their floods, their taxes, their wars etc.. They even mentioned the name of the woman who was combing the queen’s hair! but they neglected or deliberately not to mention the most important and greatest achievements of their civilization .. the pyramids.

It is true that there are records of workers who contributed to the construction of the pyramids, as well as the discovery of housing belonging to ancient workers and engineers in Giza, but the confusing thing is that the ancient Egyptians never told us how they built the pyramids, there is no inscription or drawing depicting workers building the pyramid and placing rocks one on top of the other . Doesn’t that seem strange, especially when we know that the ancient Egyptians were fond of engraving and writing everything about the details of their civilization, so how did they forget to tell us about the most important event in the history of the Old Kingdom! .. And why did they leave us wondering about how to lift these great rocks to great heights without modern cranes? ..
Here we are talking about a building with a height of about one hundred and forty meters, a skyscraper of fifty-eight floors, and rocks that weigh an average of three tons, not to mention others, such as those covering the king’s chamber, whose weight reaches between 70-80 tons, so how did they lift it with ropes of hemp and flax and reels of wood!! .
Did the engineers of ancient Egypt have tools and machines that we know nothing about today, what if they had used a people of giants to carry the rocks and put them in their proper place? Doesn’t that seem a logical explanation?! Or is it too.. just nonsense.

Giants of antiquity

The Greeks left us many legends, one of which came from the famous philosopher Plato, in which he talked about a great island with wide plains and high mountains lying in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, its inhabitants are strong and wise who extended their influence on the four sides of the earth. But the gods were angry with this island for some reason, so they sent it with those on it to the bottom of the ocean, and only a few of its people survived.
The story of the lost continent was not inspired by Plato’s imagination, as he heard it quoting from the priests of ancient Egypt, those great philosophers and magicians who told people what was and will be. They said that the people of the island were giants, one of them was twice as tall as the average person, and that they dispersed in the land after the sinking of their continent, becoming kings and gods, teaching people writing and architecture, and laying the foundations of civilization. Perhaps this explains to us how civilization suddenly appeared in the middle of the third millennium BC, after more than two hundred thousand years of cave life, barbarism and darkness!.
Suddenly, in just five thousand years, human civilization has developed to the point of sending spacecraft to the Moon and Mars, while not an inch has evolved in two hundred thousand years!!! . Isn’t that confusing, isn’t it a reason to think that something great happened five thousand years ago that moved man from the cave stage to the stage of civilization, a qualitative leap that changed everything forever, but it did not happen on its own, but was done by great teachers who transferred wisdom to humans and took their hand towards the paths of science and urbanization, and in recognition of their merit, humans painted these wise masters on the walls of their palaces and temples, portrayed them as kings and gods, and made it clear to us that they are not like humans, they are much taller and stronger .. They are the giants of the lost continent who left their traces in every part of the world.

And again some might say – myself included! – That this talk is just nonsense… But if it is, then how do we explain this common heritage about giants among all the nations of the earth? ..

In Japan they have oni
In India they have the Daitya
In Scandinavia, they have the Jötunn
In the Basque Country, they have the Jentil
In the Philippines, they have Kapre
In Ireland they have Fomorians
In Greece they have the Gigantes

And there are many other names.. The bottom line is that giants are present in the folklore of all nations. Religious books are also not devoid of mentioning them, as the Old Testament of the Bible tells us about the Nephilim, a people of giants who lived on earth before the flood. There are also the Canaanites, it was said that they are giants, or perhaps some of their tribes, and perhaps King Goliath is the most famous of the Canaanites giants. He was two or three meters tall. David killed him after he threw a stone from his slingshot, and the story is well known.

The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus wrote in the first century AD, saying that the Amorites were giants. The Amorites are Semitic peoples who settled in the north of the Arabian Peninsula since the third millennium BC, and the Canaanites mixed with them later. Flavius says that people in his time were finding giant skeletons belonging to this mighty extinct people, which he describes as follows:
“Had bodies so large, and countenances so entirely different from other men, that they were surprising to the sight, and terrible to the hearing. The bones of these men are still shown to this very day, unlike to any credible relations of other men”.

The ancient Arabic texts also tell us that the Canaanites were giants, and attribute them to an ancient people called the Amalekites, from the “Extinct Arabs”, who became extinct as a result of their mixing with other tribes and peoples. It was said that some of them lived in Yathrib, and that several of them were still alive when Prophet Muhammad appeared, and they were described as very tall.

The “Extinct Arabs” are the peoples who inhabited the Arabian Peninsula in the past, and it is known from their names that they became extinct and there was no trace left for them, either because of their migration to other places, or because of a disaster that befell them, or because of their mixing and melting with other tribes.
The most famous of the Extinct Arabs are: Thamud, Aad, Jadis, Tasm, Jurhum, Umim, and Abeel.

Aad and Thamud are mentioned in the Holy Qur’an in more than one place In Surat Al-A’raf, the Prophet Hud addresses his people of ‘Ad, saying:
“And remember when He made you successors after the people of Noah and increased you in stature extensively. So remember the favors of Allah that you might succeed.”

According to most interpretations, the stretch in creation means an increase in bodies and tall, and for this it was said that Aad were among the giants, and they were of great strength, they built great monuments that have no equal, and this was mentioned in Surat Al-Fajr:
“Have you not considered how your Lord dealt with Aad – [With] Iram – who had lofty pillars, the likes of whom had never been created in the lands”

The dwellings of Aad were in the south of the Arabian Peninsula, in an area between Yemen and Oman, perhaps north of Hadhramaut, and they were extremely wealthy as a result of their control of the frankincense and gum arabic trade. They exported their goods to the Levant and Egypt through trade routes passing through the Empty Quarter desert, and they had several Large cities, the most famous of which is Abar, which was also known as Iram the Pillars, meaning the one with a thousand columns. It was mentioned in ancient Yemeni writings and some Greek sources, confirming the validity of its existence, but it is a lost city that was never found by prospectors. It is said that it lies under millions of tons of the sands of the Empty Quarter desert.

As for Thamud, they settled in the north of the Arabian Peninsula, specifically in the Mada’in Saleh area in the Al-Ula governorate in Saudi Arabia. They were mentioned in many ancient historical sources, Assyrian and Greek. Some ancient Arab sources say that the people of Thamud were giants as well.

It is worth noting that our saying that this or that people were giants does not necessarily mean that their heads were touching the clouds, as in the famous legend of Uj ibn Anaq, which was mentioned many times in the ancient Arab sources, who was said to have survived the flood of Noah, and that the water of the flood only reached his knee. And that he used to hold the clouds in the sky and drink from it, and he would take the whale from the sea and raise it with his hand to the sun, roast it and eat it! . Rather what we meant by the giants is that they were taller and larger than other humans in a clear and unambiguous manner, and the most likely in my opinion is that their tall was between two and three meters, and that the matter was genetically inherited between them, meaning they shared special genes that lead to gigantism, a condition that exists even in These days we will come to mention later.

Why didn’t we find bones of a giant?!

Ok, if giants existed in such abundance in ancient times, why did we not find any skeletal remains that indicate them? …a question that presents itself strongly.

The answer can be summarized in two parts. The first is who said that we did not find bone remains? .. The second is a conspiracy theory! .

And let’s get acquainted with the first part of the answer. From time to time, websites on the Internet come to us with news and photos claiming that the excavators have found skeletons belonging to giant humans, and it is known with evidence that most of these images are fake, edited and integrated by image-editing programs such as Photoshop and others. . But among the hundreds of stories and fake pictures that talk about the discovery of giants remains, there are two or three stories that are realistic and deserve to be stopped at, and I will mention them to you in detail because of their importance in understanding the second part of the answer.

The first story from France

In the winter of 1890, Professor Georges de Lapouge was excavating an ancient Bronze Age cemetery in Castelnau in southern France. The cemetery soil had several layers, which indicates that the area has been inhabited by humans for a long time. At the bottom of these layers, in soil dating back to the late Stone Age, the professor found something that puzzled and amazed him. He extracted from the ground three bones, it was clear that they belonged to one person, and they are parts of the shin bone, the thigh bone, and the humerus. It was so big that it is difficult to imagine that it belonged to a human being of normal size.
After careful study, Professor de Lapouge concluded that the person to whom these bones belonged was incredibly huge and tall, up to 3.5 meters tall, and weighing hundreds of kilograms.
To make sure, the bones were shown to a number of professors in the field of medicine and anthropology, and all of them reached a conclusion similar to that reached by Professor de Lapouge , they confirmed that they are real bones belonging to a giant human.

The French Nature magazine wrote a complete research on these bones in one of its issues issued at the time, and published its photos. In 1894 the bones were sent to the University of Paris for an extensive study of them, and here something confusing happened, as the bones disappeared and no one saw them after that! .

The Géant de Castelnau case is one of the rare cases whose credibility can be accepted, since all those who dealt with it were academics and distinguished scientists. But the question that arises is whether these bones belong to an individual case as a result of a genetic defect, or do they belong to a giant tribe or race of humans who inhabited France in that ancient era.

Professor de Lapouge later wrote that he had found in the same layer the cranium of a giant boy, and estimated that the boy was more than two meters tall! . Several months later, in an area about three miles west of the de Castelnau cemetery, excavators found a giant skull belonging to a human being estimated by scientists that his height was probably about 4 meters.

Once again, they sent the cranium and skull to the University of Paris.. Once again, these important evidences were lost!