Your Daily Giant  5/31/2013

 

 

 

Today's Daily Giant is from the New York Tribune, December 12, 1897, Pg 1. An account of the unearthing of a giant skeleton in a Wisconsin burial mound is given. From the article, "An interesting relic of prehistoric times has been discovered on the banks of the Chippewa River, in Northern Wisconsin, just between Maple and Potato creeks...The skull and leg bones of a human being were found close to the bottom of the mound, and were taken out in fairly good condition. The skull was as large around as a half-bushel measure and Dr. McCormick estimated the height of the man, judging by the bones of the leg, to be at least nine feet and six inches...While excavating there was picked up a slender rod of copper, finely molded and as rigid as a piece of steel. The rod is about double the thickness of a shoemaker's needle and nearly thirteen inches long. So finely tempered is the copper that the strongest man could not bend or break it." So did a bunch of mastadons build a burial mound and put their buddy in there with a copper rod? Maybe Dr. McCormick had a four martini lunch and forgot how to measure correctly. Or maybe another burial mound yielded giant remains. This story also ran in the New York Times. The description as big as a half-bushel measure is found in other accounts as well as finders tried to convey the enormous size in relatable terms of the time. As big as a peck basket was also used many times, including an eight footer with double rows of teeth reported in the town History of Deerfield, Ma. Wisconsin was the site of many giant skeleton finds including at the Mississippian mound complex of Aztalan as reported in the New York Times.