According to Coast to Coast AM, Micah Hanks is a self-proclaimed “but not self-righteous” skeptic who explores “the more esoteric realms of the strange and unusual,” including how UFOs, which represent non-human intelligences, will not be so mysterious when human technology catches up to their imaginary technology in the UFO singularity. Hanks describes himself as “the mouth of the South” and as “open minded, but skeptical.” I imagine that’s what makes him “not self-righteous”—he’s willing to believe some things that lack conventional evidence, like ghosts, incorporeal non-human intelligences, time travel, etc. Why does this matter? Well, yesterday Hanks published an essay in which he described the article I posted earlier in the week about the allegation that the Smithsonian is covering up the discovery of the skeletons of “giants.” Hanks agreed with most of the points I made before deciding that even though I made logical claims they must nonetheless be wrong because giants are real. In doing so, he cited actual documents from the Smithsonian, which in turn actually support the case I was trying to make earlier in the week. …what may be the very best evidence of curiously large skeletons from America’s past were published more than a century ago by the very target of the so-called conspiracies: The Smithsonian Institute (sic). Hanks cites the Twelfth Annual Report of the Smithsonian’s Bureau of Ethnology, published in 1894 and covering the years 1890-1891, which reported the 1889 discovery of a “giant” skeleton in Mound 12 on the Holston River’s Long Island in Roane County, Tennessee. In nearby mounds, excavators found several skeletons they considered too uninteresting to describe in detail. Cultural artifacts found in these mounds indicate to modern scholars they were of Mississippian origin, and the succeeding Cherokee considered the island and its mounds sacred. In Mound 12, the Smithsonian men found a layer of mussel shells. Underneath the layer of shells the earth was very dark and appeared to be mixed with vegetable mold to the depth of 1 foot. At the bottom of this, resting on the original surface of the ground, was a very large skeleton lying horizontally at full length. Although very soft, the bones were sufficiently distinct to allow of careful measurement before attempting to remove them. The length from the base of the skull to the bones of the toes was found to be 7 feet 3 inches. It is probable, therefore, that this individual when living was fully 7½ feet high. At the head lay some small pieces of mica and a green substance, probably the oxide of copper, though no ornament of copper was discovered. This was the only burial in the mound. (pp. 361-362) Sadly, there is not enough information to draw firm conclusions. The Victorians, for example, were not aware of modern paleopathology, which has studied how bones change in various environments. The Smithsonian researchers noted that the mounds in question, being on a low-lying island in a river, were heavily saturated with water. Standard texts on paleopathology state that the repeated freezing and thawing of the water “will produce expansion by ice crystal formation.” This can make the bones appear larger, until such time as the ice crystal formation process results in the bones shattering. The Smithsonian report that the bones were “very soft” implies that they were in the thawing phase (obviously, they were not frozen during the warm-weather excavation) and had already lost a great deal of their integrity due to the gradual expansion of the bone structure due to such ice crystal action.
Such a process may well explain the frequent reports that “giant” bones disintegrated as soon as excavators tried to touch them; their integrity had been compromised and the bones shattered. Indeed, in the same Smithsonian report a similar skeleton of more than seven feet at another site was said to have “crumbled to pieces immediately after removal from the hard earth in which it was encased” (p. 115). Obviously, of course, this kind of expansion won’t add feet to the size of the bones, but enough to turn a slightly above average body into a “gigantic” one. The report makes plain that the body buried in Mound 12—uniquely buried alone in that mound cluster—was a high status individual, and it’s likely that an abnormally but not super-humanly tall man achieved high status by virtue of his height and size. This is hardly unheard of, and it is probably telling that virtually no scholar discussing these mounds or citing the report found anything worth commenting on in the story of the more than seven foot tall man. Reports of Native Americans between six and seven feet tall occur with frequency from Vasco de Gama down to the colonial era, and there isn’t much reason to be shocked by it. Native Americans were consistently taller than Europeans. The Susquehannocks were also said to be giants. A forensic investigation of their skeletons, however, found that Susquehannocks averaged 5’7” in height, but still several inches taller than the Europeans. Nevertheless, occasional individuals of great height popped up from time to time. De Soto’s men said that the great chief Tuscaloosa was nearly seven feet tall. Sadly, we can’t go visit the site to find out what was in Mound 12. In the 1940s, the Tennessee Valley Authority constructed the Watts Bar Dam, whose reservoir flooded the Holston River valley and submerged all by the highest ground of the former Long Island. In 1941, emergency excavations were conducted in advanced of the dam project. These excavations determined that some of the 19 mounds were in fact natural hills, and no “giant” skeleton was seen. However, the TVA and the Works Progress Administration pressured the archaeologist in charge to excavate and report faster in order to expedite national defense preparations. But I guess this must be part of the conspiracy. Funny, though, isn’t it that the Smithsonian would publish an account of the giant in their annual report? Funnier still that this occurred more than a decade after David Childress claims that the conspiracy to hide the truth began in 1881. Micah Hanks wants to see the Smithsonian report as proof of “a deeper level of the mystery that has yet to be explored,” but in fact the inclusion of “giant” skeletons in the report makes plain that such skeletons were not being hidden, and the scholars of the era didn’t think they were particularly unusual or unnatural either.
68 Comments
Tara Jordan
8/1/2013 07:15:13 am
With all due respect Jason,is it absolutely necessary to debunk this junk?.By collaborating with FATE Magazine,Intrepid Magazine,Mysterious Universe ( The three little brats of the paranormal community),Hanks (who unsurprisingly doesn't have any credentials at all) already discredits himself beyond repair.
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8/1/2013 09:42:53 am
I wrote about it because Hanks discussed me specifically by name.
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8/2/2013 02:22:57 am
And the 1st comment of your post shows you've never bothered to hear what Micah has to say, or his stance on "things that lack conventional evidence." 8/2/2013 02:42:53 am
I've never read Micah Hanks' books. My statement was based on the description his publisher provided of his book, "The UFO Singularity," which promised to explore how UFOs related to the singularity. 8/2/2013 02:50:12 am
It's my fault for assuming Hanks was using the word "singularity" the way every other science writer uses it. Of course he has some completely different definition of it since alternative writers love to coin their own terms. Apparently his publisher didn't quite know either, since the description doesn't make it clear. I will amend the above post to note that he believes the "UFO singularity" refers to a time when human technology catches up to imaginary alien technology.
Christopher Randolph
8/2/2013 06:06:22 am
Aside from 'singularity' the sentences don't make much sense because of the use of 'UFO.' Isn't a UFO simply any sky observation the viewer can't identify? "UFOs" are and always will be 'real,' and are more accurately described as a failure of human intelligence. Once you understand a UFO it isn't one any longer.
Tara Jordan
8/2/2013 04:44:09 am
Red Pill Junkie.At least Jason is not censuring anyone on his blog.
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8/2/2013 04:55:35 am
You'll have to forgive me, but I don't recall the exchange --I engage on multiple online discussions on a daily basis. Having said that, I don't have any saying on Mysterious Universe's commenting policy, I just blog for them.
Tara Jordan
8/2/2013 05:02:48 am
Red Pill Junkie.I am not blaming you,I am aware you are not running the game.As far as I remember,we had a civil exchange.You are ok in my book,but Ben & Aaron are running a "business",they dont appreciate people like me.
The Other J.
8/1/2013 09:16:51 am
Don't skeletons also appear longer after the joints have been dis-articulated? And if so, how long have paleopathologists been taking into account that "spreading" when considering how tall a buried body might have been when alive? Add the freezing/thaw effect to the dis-articulation, and a body gets exaggerated.
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Te Other J.
8/1/2013 09:19:20 am
(Should make it clear the docent noted that the Viking appeared longer once it was just bones and armor than he would have been alive.)
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8/1/2013 09:41:57 am
That's a great point. I was giving the Smithsonian scholars the benefit of the doubt about the dis-articulation, but without photographs or detailed drawings, there isn't any way to know at this far remove.
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8/1/2013 10:45:25 am
Hi Jason,
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8/1/2013 10:58:25 am
Philistines choose a Goliath (and his four brothers) to represent them in combat, or the Israelites similarly choosing a tall man - King Saul to lead them in battle.
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Adrienne Mayor
8/3/2013 01:45:45 pm
Mayor's paper on "Giants in Ancient Warfare" does not claim that there were actually giants 7-9 feet tall, instead it collects ancient reports of "giants" from the bible and other sources and argues that in antiquity there were relatively short ethnic groups (eg Greeks and Romans) who encountered relatively taller ethnic groups (eg Celts-Gauls, Germans) who seemed like "giants" to the shorter folk. 8/1/2013 11:04:37 am
I'm not sure I see the problem. Since the Smithsonian reported such skeletons, they were obviously not in a conspiracy to hide them. No one accuses the Victorians of being incompetent at measuring; however, they almost certainly weren't familiar with the various factors that can cause bones to change size or shape during the decomposition process. Again, though, individuals of large but not supernatural height are not particularly shocking, as I mentioned above. The question is whether the museum purposely destroyed evidence, and they almost certainly did not. Many alternative researchers have no idea how many human remains were sent to the Smithsonian. One single collection (out of many) had 3,800 skeletons in 1927, of which only 2,000 of the Robert J. Terry Anatomical Skeleton Collection were still there when the collection was reevaluated after 1967. And those were normal skeletons with clear documentation and a chain of custody. Don't attribute to conspiracy what is better explained by inefficiency and incompetence.
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Mordecai Rodnipoff
8/1/2013 11:39:30 am
Oh, I agree definitely, inefficiency and incompetence of chain of custody and poor record keeping is definitely at play here... That still doesn't take away the question, where are the skeletons the Smithsonian unearthed which did not crumble? But as Ross Hamilton and Jim Vieira and I have noted, there may also have been other factors behind the suppression of these finds of tall elites, and warriors, and that it may have been politically advantageous to portray the native Americans as short, brute, savages unsophisticated so that the American pioneers were justified in grabbing their land and plundering their tombs and plowing through the burial mounds. Finding skeletons of powerful kings and queens, seven feet or more tall with rich sophisticated, intricate culture of trade, copper-smiths, workers of obsidian and stone and an ability to build edifices with astronomical precision and high mathematics may have been a threat to the savage mythos... of those days... the finding of physically taller or superior ancient peoples may have had many connotations. While articulated skeletons may shift an inch, or few inches from original position, entire limb bones growing say... from 18 inches to 25 inches... hmmm... Sorry I don't buy that. The sponge factor I really don't buy. Advocating that the bones adn skulls can grow and expand a quarter to half again their normal size post mortem?... is more spectacular to me than putting a marshmallow peep in the microwave. 8/1/2013 11:51:43 am
I don't suppose you read what I wrote above, where I said that the expansion due to ice crystal formation would not double or triple the size of a bone, but by adding fractionally to every bone could contribute to an overall distortion of the whole skeleton's size. For example, just an eighth or a quarter inch added to each bone would add up to a few extra inches of height across the whole skeleton. Skeletons, after all, are made up of many bones. As I said before, there is nothing unusual about tall people; if these giants were a "race" we should find whole communities of giant burials, not isolated individuals. 8/1/2013 12:33:45 pm
Hi Jason,
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Mordecai Rodnipoff III
8/1/2013 12:46:06 pm
According to the Spokane Chronicle - Aug 21, 1989 pg 6, The National Congress of American Indians estimated that the bones of 2.5 million Indians were held in public and private collections across the US, although other estimates were 250,000.
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Tara Jordan
8/1/2013 05:03:02 pm
Mordecai.
Tara Jordan
8/1/2013 06:12:46 pm
There is an underlying "racial" (racist) or ethnocentric element at the core of most of these "alternative" theories.
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Bill
8/2/2013 12:48:56 am
I think there is another reason Greece and Rome are for the most part avoided by alternative historians. There target audience is very familiar with these cultures. That makes it easier for the audience to call BS when the topic alien involvement in the Parthenon is broached. If the culture is unfamiliar to the audience its easier to pass off the alternative theory as plausible. I'm always surprised by the number of believers I talk to that are unaware of how thoroughly the Egyptian and Some of the Middle Eastern cultures documented various aspect of their civilizations.
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Tara Jordan
8/2/2013 04:46:20 am
Excellent point.
Christopher Randolph
8/2/2013 05:56:46 am
Tara -
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Tara Jordan
8/2/2013 06:41:55 am
Christopher. 8/2/2013 02:55:26 pm
The "racial" or "ethnocentric argument used by Skeptics is a red herring. It simply does not exist and has been refuted in practice many times over.
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Tara Jordan
8/2/2013 04:23:34 pm
Of course there is nothing remotely political & ethnocentric behind the alternative theories of the school of "new Egyptologists"of mid 1970`s.RA Schwaller de Lubicz was not a major influence for John Antony West,Graham Hancock,Robert Beauval & many others.I could go on & on for pages,detailing the connections & philosophical "proximities" between particular branches of esoterism, Occultism,organizations & lodges (such as The Great White Brotherhood,Theosophical society,The Nine,etc....) specific New Age belief systems,with white supremacism,"Aryan & right wing ideologies .Today,the same charlatans have no problem pushing up Afrocentric lunacies like "Black genesis the prehistoric history of ancient Egypt",because mentalities have "evolved" & there is a "new market" for mysteries.Alternative historians are now milking a different crowd. A shift in consciousness.... 8/2/2013 02:58:42 am
"Hanks agreed with most of the points I made before deciding that even though I made logical claims they must nonetheless be wrong because giants are real"
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8/2/2013 03:40:55 am
In reading his article, Hanks seemed to me to be suggesting that because giants are real there may be something to the conspiracy claims. If you want me to be more blunt, I can be: Hanks prefers to ask questions with no answers, present information without conclusions, and leave the impression that he has said something when he has not. Much as Erich von Daniken made a great show of never asserting anything ("I'm just asking questions!"), but if he doesn't want the audience to draw certain conclusions, why ask the question?
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8/2/2013 04:22:11 am
Well, allow me to be blunt as well: the fact that you decided to edit the 1st paragraph of your post once I took you to task, without leaving the original text crossed, tells me a lot about your approach to skepticism --the kind that can't stand not to be right.
Bill
8/2/2013 08:27:50 am
So you complained about how Jason phrased something. He acknowledged your complaint and told you how he was going to change the phrasing. Now that he has changed the phrasing he's unethical because he didn't use the same format to change the phrasing you would have used? If it was a case of the skeptic always has to be right he would have let the phrasing stand in its original form. 8/2/2013 06:05:10 pm
Jason, 8/2/2013 06:08:07 pm
Continuing my comment above (which was apparently truncated when I went to post it): This is further evidenced by the wording you used in the comment directly above, where you said, "Hanks seemed to me to be suggesting that because giants are real there may be something to the conspiracy claims." I hope I have now cleared up for you what "Hanks seemed to me" to be expressing, as well as for everyone here.
Tara Jordan
8/2/2013 07:59:23 pm
Micah Hanks 8/3/2013 01:57:57 pm
Micah, I've made a new post to reply to your comments since they deserve a fuller discussion than this forum (with its [I think] 500 word limit) can provide.
Tara Jordan
8/2/2013 04:57:32 am
Red Pill Junkie.I am not gullible enough to post on Mysterious Universe?,since the little dork who monitors the threads prevented from posting after my intervention on the Ancient Aliens bullshit topic.(Michael Heiser also reacted on the same topic on the same day).Don't even think about coming around here & lecturing us about ethical standards
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Tara Jordan
8/2/2013 05:21:33 am
Red Pill Junkie.Forgive me I don't have a beef with you but with the individuals who runs Mysterious Universe.They prevented me from posting although I never used foul language,I was probably arrogant (as usual) but never disrespectfu. But I understand why they did it,its about business,as long as people remains uneducated, there is a huge market for "mysteries".
Steve St Clair
8/2/2013 06:44:21 am
That's right, Red Pill Junkie. What Tara is trying to say is - if you're not going to join the mob in kicking the guy they hate this week, then you should just leave. Clearly you don't understand the 'ethical standards' to which this august group hold themselves.
Tara Jordan
8/2/2013 06:57:38 am
My personal stalker is back (The fake Steve St Clair).I`d respectfully suggest you to pick a new name because you are not fooling anyone (especially me).The real Steve St Clair never engages me.I appreciate the attention but I am not looking for a penpal,but considered me flattered. 8/2/2013 05:38:52 am
@ Tara: Is this the MU conversation you're referring to?
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Tara Jordan
8/2/2013 06:32:27 am
Indeed,I am "Unsocial Darwinist".
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8/2/2013 06:41:14 am
Those published conspiracies are the most closely guarded ones . . . and no one would ever suspect that a human could reach seven feet tall . . . and one such specimen clearly points to a whole race.
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Only Me
8/2/2013 07:57:38 am
I find it telling that the "conspiracy" has so much support that flies in the face of established precedent. I've read articles that demonstrated how excited anthropologists were when skeletal remains of H. heidelbergensis were found, allegedly of a population where the evidence showed the individuals reached a height of seven feet. H.erectus has left behind skeletal evidence of individuals that were well above the average mean, or had the potential to do so (Turkana Boy). The excitement was due to the diverse morphology within these groups, proving that this characteristic is not unique only to modern humans. If anything, it reinforced the belief that these ancestral groups deserved to be recognized for who they were...humans.
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Mordecai Rodnipoff
8/2/2013 11:08:53 am
Mike Heiser, Only Me, Tara Jordan, Jason Colavito et al, 8/2/2013 11:22:44 am
The existence of a few individuals in burial mounds is not indicative of a "race" of giants. Mound burials are, by definition, not representative. The only thing you can conclude from a few large skeletons in mounds is that the people of the time afforded special status to abnormally tall people. Humans varied in size then as now, and you cannot conclude anything about the ethnicity of such individuals relative to the rest of the population. If they were a separate "race," where are all the giant women giving birth to giant men? Or do you propose this is a Y-linked trait requiring no female input?
The Other J.
8/2/2013 07:47:42 pm
Regarding Lee Berger and the Goliaths, maybe check what John Hawks has to say about it (he's the chair of Anthropology at U. of Wisconsin, whose focus is on ancient humans). Berger's giant H. heidelbergensis was first popularized in the National Geographic show "Searching for the Ultimate Suvivor," and comes from one femur fragment. The reconstruction -- at least the one that was represented as a giant in the show -- was based on other cranial and postcranial fragments from the Kabwe skull. Of the reported fragments that could have been used for the reconstruction, Hawks notes that two of them are quite large, but not from the same individual.
The Other J.
8/2/2013 07:51:23 pm
*got cut off*
Bill
8/2/2013 08:35:09 am
A sample of size of one greatly reduces the standard deviation and, if you chose the right sample, makes it much easier to draw the desired conclusions.
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Only Me
8/2/2013 11:04:31 am
This is true. I was merely pointing out that the unaccounted disappearance of a handful of archaeological finds equating to a longstanding effort to "bury" the truth is silly. As has been said before, isolated finds, or even the discovery of a few abnormal individuals, is not earth shattering. These appear to be anomalies that still fall within normal expectations based on population. A greater number, say 15 or more, might be reason enough for anthropologists to focus their research.
William Best
8/2/2013 12:38:15 pm
I just wanted to point something out -- I did a very cursory search for how many people in the NBA have been 7ft since its inception.
William Best
8/2/2013 12:38:26 pm
I just wanted to point something out -- I did a very cursory search for how many people in the NBA have been 7ft since its inception.
Only Me
8/2/2013 03:28:34 pm
Mordecai, I see that I worded my reference regarding H. heidelbergensis wrong; however, it was Dr. Berger himself who said,"These are what we call archaic Homo sapiens. Some people refer to them as Homo heidelbergensis. These individuals are extraordinary, they are giants." This is from the podcast you referenced. My apologies for stating "articles".
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William Best
8/2/2013 11:35:08 am
I just wanted to point something out -- I did a very cursory search for how many people in the NBA have been 7ft since its inception.
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Mordecai Rodnipoff
8/2/2013 05:03:27 pm
Hi William Best,
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Tara Jordan
8/2/2013 06:01:01 pm
Mordecai.
Only Me
8/2/2013 07:19:14 pm
I agree with Tara. In case you misunderstood me, I haven't been arguing against the existence of giants, only against the charge of a conspiracy to hide evidence of them. There are far more rational explanations as to why skeletal remains are missing, which Jason has covered, that don't require the conspiracy angle. 8/3/2013 05:06:51 am
hi all! i followed this thread yesterday with interest, but was too busy and had too much to say to comment at that time. First, my credentials: currently a housespouse, i completed all the course work towards an undergraduate degree in Anthro with concentration in archaeology in the early 1980's (sadly no degree - health - tho excellent GPA and evaluations). i mention the institutions in case you'd like to research their reputations: UCSC and UCB.
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Varika
8/3/2013 08:41:23 am
I'm piping up to say that I agree that racism is an important part of these discussions, for a particularly important reason:
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8/3/2013 12:59:35 pm
I believe the Egyptians built the pyramids. That's a pretty "Afro-centric" point-of-view, as far as I am concerned.
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8/3/2013 01:55:47 pm
Re: Genius and ingenuity, two ancient astronaut theorists explicitly deny this. Giorgio Tsoukalos argued at length that medieval Arab texts prove that the Egyptians required alien blueprints to figure out how to build pyramids, and the late Philip Coppens asserted repeatedly and falsely that the Famine Stela proved that the Egyptians required "non-human intelligence" to understand the fundamentals of architecture. 8/3/2013 03:14:39 pm
Hey Varika,
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Varika
8/4/2013 07:48:29 am
My mother is a full twelve inches shorter than my father, so I do know how much difference that is. I also have a cousin who is six-nine, which is a full foot taller than ME, and thus eighteen inches taller than my mother. I find it difficult to think of this as "supernatural" height, but I also admit I don't live in a pre-scientific era. (Part of it for me, though, is that I grew up on fairytales, and "giants" in fairytales were SHORT if they were ten feet tall.) That we have some graves of very tall people, though, is still stretching a bit to support "stone giants" or "Sasquatch." 8/3/2013 03:15:18 pm
Hey Varika,
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Mordecai Rodnipoff
8/3/2013 03:16:12 pm
oops posted twice. sorry. lol
Mordecai Rodnipoff
8/3/2013 03:24:23 pm
Mexico city * lol I meant New Mexico.
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Cg chase
7/31/2014 05:52:19 am
Believe what you will but several local museums throughout the Hopewell region has compelling evidence of giants including tools. Funny how we can find one ancient dinosaur bone and call it a species but find one giant human bone and call it an anomaly. The selective minds of humans.
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mark
9/1/2014 03:12:41 am
Cg chase just won the internet
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