Friday, March 7, 2014

Your Daily Giant 5/4/2013



Today's Daily Giant comes from the Rochester Evening Journal, August 4, 1933 pg 5. Reported is the story of another explorer encountering eight foot skeletal remains. From the article,

"The Western Hemisphere has been remiss in contributions to paleontology so when the director of the American Museum of Natural History heard that Paul L. Vance, New Orleans engineer and amateur explorer, had seen strange skeletons in Spanish Honduras, there was a flutter in scientific circles. Gregory Mason of the University of Pennsylvania museum, head of South American expedition looking for strange monkeys in quest for a theory of man's beginnings, has been asked to investigate reports. Vance, who spent twenty-three years in the tropics scouting for banana plantations and railroad rights of way, told Mason of strange things. In a cave on the hacienda of Don Mariana Leiva, ex-president of Spanish Honduras, in Barbara, he found on a rock platform eleven normal sized skeletons of humans and one, he judged to be that of a man about eight feet tall."

Obviously, Mr. Vance is someone counted on to be an accurate and responsible reporter, understanding the lay of the land for his profession. Once again another trained observer who apparently couldn't observe correctly in this one matter. Quite frankly, you don't need a PhD to competently measure a skeleton. If you have a skull helmet on or are fitting a jawbone over your face like has appeared hundreds of times in these reports, do you need an anatomy lesson? To do Anthropological field work is tedious, challenging and highly skilled work. To evaluate human remains in the manner spoken of here, my cat could do. It's not like when Mr. Vance found the skeleton it kicked him in the shin and ran away. Like several thousand of these accounts it stayed right there to be measured, remeasured, discussed and maybe measured again, meow.

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