An Astounding 1827 "Giant" Investigation; Plus: A Celestial Battle in the Skies over Derby in 12533/25/2015 First off, I’d like to talk a little bit about giants. Yesterday, a regular reader sent me an interesting passage from Helena Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine in which she seems to endorse the idea that the skeletons of giants were really those of Ice Age mammals. If we turn to the New World, we have traditions of a race of giants at Tarija on the eastern slopes of the Andes and in Ecuador, who combated gods and men. These old beliefs, which term certain localities "Los campos de los gigantes" -- "the fields of giants," are always concomitant with the existence of pliocene mammalia and the occurrence of pliocene raised beaches. This comes smack in the middle of a credulous discussion of the reality of giants, and it was fairly clear that Blavatsky was making reference to a source she only partially digested in appending it to her chapter. In this case, the source was pretty obvious: It seems likely that she was borrowing from Humboldt’s Kosmos or later works, or a discussion based thereon, one of the rare references to campo de los gigantes by (more or less) that name, from whose notes she surely consulted Garcilaso de la Vega (Royal Commentaries 9.9), who gives the history of the sodomite rapist giants from Pedro Cieza de Leon (First Part of the Chronicle of Peru ch. 52). Humboldt was the first to connect the famous Giant’s Field near Bogota with mastodon fossils, and before Blavatsky wrote, Clements Markham, who translated (give or take some sodomy) Cieza de Leon, made the same observation regarding the place where these giants supposedly lived and died. Blavatsky seemingly inserted the sentence without really thinking through the consequences. This is interesting but unimportant, though it led me to a fascinating piece inspired by Humboldt. A traveler to Peru named Edmond Temple went to South America in 1825 in search of wealth and in 1827 ended up investigating the discovery of a “giant” skeleton in Bolivia, near the site, as he himself noted, where Pedro Cieza de Leon placed God’s massacre of the all-male giants during a gay orgy. His diaries, published in 1830, give the full account, which is much too long to paste here. I’ve posted it in the “Giants” section of my website for your enjoyment. His account has everything you could want in an investigation of giants: The corporation that he worked for found a giant skeleton and dreamed of selling it to a museum for $10,000 (approximately $240,000 today). Temple investigated and discovered that the skeleton had tusks, indicating it was a mastodon. True believers refused to accept his findings and denied the truth. Sound familiar? It’s a great read. Now, let’s move on to another weird problem with fringe claims. At this point, most readers recognize that Jacques Vallée and Chris Aubeck don’t understand the languages they claim to translate, but did you know they are also plagiarists? Today’s example shows how our authors have lifted material from an unacknowledged source and presented it as their own work, unaware that in so doing they were repeating century-old errors made by the amateur from whom they stole their work. Our story begins with a claim, that the medieval Annales de Burton, a chronicle of history from England’s Burton Abbey, contains a passage in which frightened peasants fled in terror from a battle of UFOs in the evening sky. Here is how our authors present the material: 14 October 1253, England: A battle of stars Let’s first dispense with the facts. The quotation is not accurate. The authors give the wrong date, and many of the details are incorrect. Here is the correct translation, which I verified against the original Latin (Annales de Burton, folio 41, entry for 1253): In the same year (1253) on the 14th Kal. Oct. (18th Sept.) the sky being clear about the close of the evening, at the manor of Ailwaldeslon (Alvaston) near Derby, Sir Thomas Hanselin, very aged, lord of that manor, and Galfred his son, and many others, as well of the village as of their own family, standing by and beholding this matter, as also a certain freeman, by name Nicholas, of Findern, who also saw the occurrence and related it to us. Suddenly in a wide dark cloud there appeared a large bright star, like the radiant sun, and near it two small red stars, like sparkling candles, which instantly leaped fiercely towards the great star, and (as we may say) were attacking it, rushing upon it, and waging a desperate war with it; so that it seemed to those who were witnesses of this sight, that fiery particles descended from them. This combat lasted until the close of the evening, so that those who beheld it, ignorant of what it might portend, retired to their homes, struck with terror and astonishment. (trans. Stephen Glover) In the longer version, it appears to be much more clearly a meteor breaking up in the sky. Obviously, the version quoted by Vallée and Aubeck misunderstood the Roman calendar and gave fourteen days before the Kalends (1st) of October as October 14 instead of September 18, and the details are all wrong, too, and the text is dramatically condensed. But here Vallée and Aubeck are not the responsible parties—at least not entirely. They lifted the text verbatim from a 1906 book by Arthur William Davison called Derby: Its Rise and Progress. But when I quote Davison, notice where he puts the quotation marks: In the thirteenth century records of Burton Abbey appear several detailed accounts of marvellous signs displayed in the heavens, all elaborately done into Latin by the Abbey scribe. On October 14th, 1253, according to this chronicle, a wonderful sight was witnessed at Alvaston, near Derby, by a large number of people, one of whom, Nicholas of Findern, duly reported it to the Abbey authorities. About the hour of vespers, the sky being clear, suddenly a large bright star appeared out of a black cloud, with two smaller stars in the vicinity. A battle royal soon commenced, the small stars charging into the great star again and again, so that it began to diminish in size, and sparks of fire fell from the combatants. This continued for a considerable time, and at last the spectators, “stupefied by fear and wonder, and ignorant of what it might portend, fled.” We can debate the degree to which Davison was justified in translating recesserunt (go back, withdraw) as “fled,” but the larger point is clear: Davison was for the most part paraphrasing, and the authors stole his text verbatim and presented it as a translation of the Annales de Burton, when it bore only a partial resemblance to the original. They even repeat Davison’s misunderstanding of the calendar date. Once again, though, the authors gone back and found the correct passage in the Latin edition and cited it, and they must have seen that some of the words matched up and left it at that. Do either of them read Latin well? The authors omit any mention of Davison, whose work they have stolen, and instead lead the reader to believe that they have translated the Latin.
20 Comments
EP
3/25/2015 07:14:11 am
Lest anyone is inclined to forget that Theosophy was completely batshit, here is a representative passage about giants from a book by Annie Besant, one of Blavatsky's most important students:
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666
3/25/2015 08:53:31 am
Ah, Theosophy - where you can digest literally warehouses and warehouses of books about its beliefs and still end up none the wiser.
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Mike
5/4/2015 06:56:26 pm
Just utube Mike tellinger, or Klaus Dona, or Michael Cremo, and if you wanna get a little more ecentric check out the skulls and skeletons Brian Forester has found in Peru...Wanna go past the hand down the pants and make it a home run, Zacharia Sitchin...And watch you guys will come back with Ad Hominem attacks instead of just looking at whats been found, without making any claims. Ep the way you talk is so corny..Who the hell says "he be like." Trying to sound intelligent with phrases like mind-boggingly, are you serious?
Only Me
3/25/2015 08:54:33 am
So these giants were invulnerable to human weapons, but could heal like Wolverine when subjected to cruel human torture?
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EP
3/25/2015 10:48:13 am
My favorite part is that all the minerals were also comparatively harder. A mind-bogglingly silly claim clearly added to make the whole seem more sensible, yet having exactly the opposite effect.
Shane Sullivan
3/25/2015 11:37:17 am
That was my favorite part too.
EP
3/25/2015 12:30:47 pm
Surely to suggest anything else would be just silly! ;)
Mike
5/4/2015 07:20:09 pm
Heres another one, so the Gilgamesh is BS? Annunaki never existed...The Hopi's ant men were fake you say...No giants or fallen angels or genetic manipulation...Ok look at the Gilgamesh creation story...Look at an apes 48 chromosomes, and look at our 46...Their 2nd and 3rd has been combined into out 2nd (Our 2nd chromosome is equivelant to their 2nd and 3rd combined, almost as if someone had to make room in our chromosomes to make us compatible with ?...Could you imagine a geneticist even saying that in public, instant job loss. Same problem institutional archaeologists face today....
Byron
3/25/2015 09:39:24 am
That quote EP... it seems like the Theosophy crew was trying outdo one another with such outlandish stories and claims. The 'visions' or prophecy or whatever comes off like they've taken transcription during an hallucinatory acid-trip. What's remarkable is they seemed to understand some of the value in the rise of science (like the way New Thought uses. pseudo-science) yet completely untethered from any modern tenor by claiming 27 foot tall clay immortals like stories in the bible. Strange, navel-gazing movement.
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EP
3/25/2015 10:51:16 am
Chrck out "Thought-Forms" and "Occult Chemistry" (both by Besant & Leadbeater).
Mike
5/4/2015 06:28:51 pm
Do all you guys work for the Smithsonian?....Besides these eccentric theosophists, just put in a few hours of research on bones discovered of people 8 to 12 feet, and I'm not talking about one or two of them..From Arizona, Nevada, Ecuador, Bolivia, etc...Here's another "batshit" guy who spoke about red haired giants in North America, Abraham Lincoln..Is he credible enough for you? I sweer its probably one person with three accounts having this fake convo but if your not do a little research and open your eyes...The truth is way stranger than fiction..
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Mike
5/4/2015 06:49:33 pm
Furthermore, everything posted here discrediting any existence of "giants" are all using ad hominem faulty logic..Yeah I get it. Blavatsky may be out of her mind, but look into the archaeologists that lost their careers as soon as they spoke about any extraordinary..Think about that the next time you say "wheres the evidence." Maybe if you would look beyond the major museums around the world that all base eachothers exhibits off there sister museum in the next country over..For you guys who have short attention spans check out the Alberino analysis, you can watch it 2x speed and bang it out in 15 minutes..Newspaper article after newspaper article, even previously legitmate ones like the NYT..This guy show like 30 different newspaper articles and from different places all saying the same stuff...Because the Vatican doesnt tell you about pedophile rings and the Gay Vatican Lobby you assume that some who brought it up 50 years ago, who probably was an eccentric, is wrong or lying just because of their personality type!? Theosophists aside there are dozens of archaeologists, even ones dating back over 100 years ago who dug up giant bones...You guys probaby get your stock picks from Jim Crmer, Do YOU OWN DUE DILIGENCE, with everything..You guys only focus on the findings and works of the biggest freaks....Look into archaeology. not theosophy....You'll never find out whats truth if you only focus on whats fake...No disrespect to Mr. Colavito but in his bio he states that hes into horror fiction...Really!?
Mike
5/4/2015 07:09:30 pm
Mind you some of these "theosophists" were mixed in with some of the greatest minds such as Swami Vivekenanda...The more I think about it SS and Ep are probably the same person..But kudos to Mr. Colavito because at least he's putting in work, and this world would be a much better place if people were skeptic about and questioned everything....But not to you SS and EP who just attack people using faulty logic which you should have learned about in high school...Why dont you guys stop reading Blavatsky and read about elite pedophile rings in Belgium, US, England, Swiss, or the scweizer kinderficker...Or baby eater statues in Switzerland and Norway, dedicated the baby sacrifices of the God saturn, which are always displayed with hexagon platform and hexagonal symbology, all of em..Ever look at Saturns poles, what shape are they? My ass Nasa discovered that 30 years ago...Mr Colavito, you want horror non-fiction, utube retired FBI director satanism pedophile rings illuminatii...Forget fiction real life is sick enough...
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Andy White
3/25/2015 07:17:52 am
The 1827 giant story is great.
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Cathleen Anderson
3/25/2015 09:28:17 am
'Our story begins with a claim, that the medieval Annales de Burton, a chronicle of history from England’s Burton Abbey, contains a passage in which frightened peasants led in terror from a battle of UFOs in the evening sky. Here is how our authors present the material:'
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Bob Jase
3/25/2015 09:50:36 am
What is it with the carnivorous mastodons? Other than the Bertha Walt incident in 1945 have there been any examples of carnivorous elephants?
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3/25/2015 10:26:35 am
No, not at all. Early scientists mistook mastodon molars for spiked, flesh-tearing teeth and proposed they were meat-eaters.
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Hypatia
3/25/2015 03:16:08 pm
Could some of these 'carnivorous' giants have been much older fossils of reptiles or dinosaurs, instead of mastodons?
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Mark L
3/26/2015 01:05:32 am
I live about 20 minutes drive from Burton Abbey, if you ever need a man on the scene to find out some exciting bit of information, I'm ready to step into action.
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