I remember ,other than Goliath , there was a race of giants in the Bible... The land which we have viewed, devoureth its inhabitants: the people, that we beheld, are of a tall stature.33There we saw certain monsters of the sons of Enac, of the giant kind: in comparison of whom, we seemed like locusts.
"There also we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight."
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.
Sorry to disappoint everyone, but this story about the lost civilization of the Uluru originated on a spoof website a while back. None of it is true.
I do not wish to be unkind. But this story to my mind is as fake as Pinocchios nose. Some of the stories on that site are precarious. God bless!
My apologies to all for this link & story, if it is in fact a hoax. I didn't check the source page before posting it because I saw it on someone's blog who usually is cautious about his sources. My mistake. I don't have time for now to search this subject to see what I can find to confirm or deny, so Padraig, I'd appreciate it if you could delete this entire thread...
Well, gigantism does exist as a condition. Maybe the bones of these prehistoric giants aren't in our museums, but giants were on display in fairs and still are today. Coincidentally, yesterday I was at a fair, and at the entrance there were two extremely tall gentlemen of African origin who were both over 8 feet tall (almost 2,50 meters). Loads of people were posing with them for photos next to s statue of Robert Wadlow, the tallest man on record. It is easy to imagine that whatever dysfunctions in them could have occurred in a worse way thousands of years ago.
Yes gigantism is s true medical condition the same way dwarfism is a medical condition. I believe the biblical references to "giants" but I'm not sure what qualified as a giant back then, such as Goliath. The Septuagint gives his height as about four cubits and a span, which is about 6 feet 9 inches whereas the Masoretic Text gives us about six cubits and a span, that about 9 feet 9 inches. So I guess we really don't know which is correct. There have also been studies on the skeletal remains of Egyptian mummies that show that they weren't very tall. The tallest being about 5 feet 5 inches. So someone that is 6 feet 9 inches would kind of be a "giant" to them. I saw this on one of the Egyptology shows on tv. Very interesting.
Yeah, don't feel bad. I've fallen for stuff like this many times. I'm guessing we're not the only ones. Just shows you're human like the rest of us.
I was suspicious as soon as I saw how they spelled "skeleton"! Although I suppose that may be appropriate in some places - still, to my eyes it looks funny!
Charles Byrne - 7 feet 7 inches (231.14 cm) Charles Byrne (1761 – 1783) also known as Charles O'Brien or "The Irish Giant", was a human curiosity or freak in London in the 1780s. His exact height is of some conjecture, but most accounts refer to him as from 8 feet 2 inches (248 cm) to 8 feet 4 inches (254 cm) tall, however true and undeniable skeletal evidence pitches him at just over 7 feet 7 inches. At the age of 21 he left his home in Littlebridge, Ireland and traveled to London to seek his fortune. He found work at Cox's Museum, an establishment not unlike P. T. Barnum's American Museum. He moved in next door in an elegant apartment with custom-built furniture at the cane-shop, in Spring Garden-gate. He soon became the toast of the town, a May 6, 1782, newspaper report bears out: "However striking a curiosity may be, there is generally some difficulty in engaging the attention of the public; but even this was not the case with the modern living Colossus, or wonderful Irish Giant". Fame and wealth soon overtook him, and he took to drinking excessively. According to newspaper reports he was out drinking when his pocket was picked of his 700 pound life savings. Inconsolable, he tried to drown his sorrows in drink and died June, 1783, in his apartment on Cockspurstreet, Charing Cross, at the age of twenty-two. It was rumoured that he was so afraid that doctors would dissect his corpse that on his deathbed he requested to be buried at sea. Against his wishes, Byrne's corpse was purchased by John Hunter for five hundred pounds, and his 7'-7" skeleton now resides in the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. One journal allegedly states that on his death "The whole tribe of surgeons, put in a claim for the poor departed Irishman and surrounded his house just as harpooners would an enormous whale." Author Hilary Mantel wrote a fictionalized novel of his life in The Giant, O'Brian. The plot of the novel focused on the battle between the revolution of science and the ways of poem and song. O'Brien (Byrne) was portrayed as a man whose faith was in tales of kings and the little people, while his polar opposite John Hunter was portrayed the dawn of the scientific age, destroying all that is old and cherished. It also mentions that O'Brien (Byrne) was related to another Irish giant in Patrick Cotter O'Brien of Cork, who exhibited himself shortly after the death of Charles, stating that he was 8 feet 7 inches in height. An exhumation of his bones in 1972 showed that his true height was 8 feet 1 inch. The book also mentions a sort of kinship with two other Irish giants known simply as 'The Brothers Knipe' who both stood 7 feet 2 inches each. They are/were recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the tallest identical twins in history. Although Charles Byrne was 22 years old when he died, radiographic images of his wrist bones showed that the epiphyses were not yet fused. His “bone age” was estimated to be only about 17, indicating that he was still growing at the time of death.
The thing I noticed about people with this condition, they don't live very long. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigantism
