Your Daily Giant 5/21/2013

 

 

 

Today's Daily Giant comes from the Omaha Daily Bee, December 25, 1897, page 6. The article reports the opening of a burial mound in Southeastern Iowa in which many artifacts and a giant skeleton were found. A detailed account is given about the constructions of the mound builders, "Some of the forts are remarkable pieces of civil engineering, one in particular being almost impregnable, except to the use of modern firearms. It is situated on the apex of the watershed between the Iowa river and Bear creek. On one side the embankment is a precipice down to Bear creek, 400 feet below and on the other it is almost a sheer fall to the Iowa river. A handful of men could hold it against an army...Some of the mounds are made in the shape of birds, beasts and snakes. One is shaped like a spread eagle: another is a snake with an animal of some kind in its open jaws. In a great many of the graves are copper spears and arrows and also strings of hardened copper beads." As is the case with the opening of ancient American burial mounds, giant skeletons are often reported. "One remarkable skeleton was dug up by myself and another man. It was that of a giant, being over seven feet six inches in height. An idea of the size of this man may be gained by the length of his shin bone. I stood it on the ground at my heel and it reached about two inches above my knee joint, being twenty-five inches in length. The only part of the skeleton we were able to take away was the jawbone. Everyone who has seen it says it is the most massive jaw ever seen by them. It measures from the top of the front teeth to the lower edge of the jaw bone one and three quarter inches. Around the lower edge it measures six and a half inches across the jaw from the two tips is five and a half inches. It has a remarkably perfect set of teeth." The real question is do we think that these thousands of people mentioned in these accounts are capable of taking simple measurements and possess a minimum understanding of human anatomy. If so, then there is an Anthropological mystery here because these are clearly not hoaxes or Mastodons placed in burial mounds with copper artifacts.