The “Lost Race of Giants” episode is already available for streaming on the Travel Channel’s website, part of their continuing effort to destroy their own ratings, so I took a look at what two ignorant doofuses came up with as they searched for giants in South America. The show opens with “history buff” Casey Keefer (who has no history training) and drone enthusiast Chris Keefer (whose technology hobby is irrelevant to our subject) visiting Ecuador, where Casey alleges that the country is said to be home to a “colony” of giant “humanoids”—they aren’t fully human in this telling—though he omits that these rumors exist primarily in hoax newspaper articles, other pseudo-documentaries from the Discovery Communications family of networks, and online fringe websites. After stating that there have been stories of giants for “hundreds, even thousands of years” (apparently because they do not know that Greek myths and the Bible date back thousands of years), they allege that a giant skeleton was discovered in the Julcuy River valley in December of last year. To investigate giants, the brothers… well, you can already guess. The Keefer brothers enlist the former host of the History Channel’s failed series Search for the Lost Giants, Jim Vieira, to tell them lies about giants. The brothers call Vieira the “world’s foremost expert on giants” and say that the title is “impressive.” Let’s stipulate that Vieira’s expertise is specifically in nineteenth century newspaper hoaxes and mistaken local history accounts reporting the alleged discovery of giants, since he has never seen nor examined the remains of a giant, nor has he ever found a real giant. He has mistaken Victorian sensationalism for facts and took stories meant as goofy humor and tall tales of wonder for reality. Vieira claims that his method of research involves “comparative analysis” of myths, legends, and newspaper hoaxes. This is not really an appropriate way to hunt for giants, any more than we could find talking animals by comparing “ubiquitous” myths that animals can talk. Since I have found and translated texts about giants that even Vieira hasn’t read, and have identified his many errors, I guess that makes me as much the “world’s foremost expert” as he is. Vieira claims that legends have to have a physical reality, which is false, and the brothers claim that the recently discovered Asian hominin species known as the Denisovans are the real giants. Vieria says that the large tooth size of the Denisovans (as big as those of a cave bear) means that they must have been giants, (though it really only implies that they had robust jaws. He falsely claims that our only evidence of the Denisovans is two teeth. There are actually a handful of other bones, including a jawbone whose discovery was announced in Nature this spring (full text here). The jawbone did not belong to a giant, and the scientists who reported on it said that it was similar in size to those of other Pleistocene Homo species. The normal-sized jaw had only 14 teeth, against the 16 found in an anatomically modern humans (32 total), accounting in part for the larger size of the teeth. Vieira claims that all giants are of “one race” and the show implies that this “race” is Denisovan. The Keefer brothers then travel to see the bones of the “giant” found in the town of Julcuy in the interior of Ecuador. According to Casey Keefer, the skeleton has not been fully excavated or reported in the scientific literature, which its excavators later confirm. They meet with Theofilos Toulkeridis, a geologist, and Florencio Delgado, an archaeologist, both of the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, who tell the Keefers that they found skeletons “taller than us today. They are our first giants.” However, later in the show Toulkeridis says that only one skeleton was large in size, contradicting this statement. Delgado tells them that a local man uncovered the skeleton below a Valdivian layer from 5,000 BP (i.e., before present—c. 3,000 BCE), but the Keefers and the producers don’t understand him, misreport his clearly spoken date as 5,000 BC, and then state that a “civilization of giants” existed two thousand years prior. The skeletons were found in a layer dated to around 5,000 BCE, but the show places it wrongly at 7,000 BCE. The producers simply can’t understand Delgado’s Ecuadoran accent, and their subtitles misstate his words. That shows exactly how much effort anyone put into this production. Toulkeridis estimates the height of the skeleton at seven feet, but the body has not been fully measured or studied. An on-screen graphic says that the femur measured 24 inches and the tibia 21, but no full measurements are given. Toulkeridis says no other giant bodies have been found in the area, so the Keefers falsely conclude that the body belongs to an immigrant from “somewhere else” rather than a person suffering from a hormonal condition or other medical issue that might have led to gigantism. I will give Code of the Wild credit for this: This is the first time any show has actually had a large skeleton to show, and that is at least better than any other in its field. However, the “giant” still falls within the reported range of regular humans (being smaller than many modern basketball players), so this does not constitute evidence of a lost race of giants in the mythical sense. The South American giants of myth were said to be so big that a normal human stood only as high as the giants’ knees (Pedro Cieza de Leon, First Part of the Chronicle of Peru 52). The failure to define “giants” means that men like Vieira can claim virtually anyone among the 50 percent of humans who are, by definition, above average might be “giants.” The brothers managed to damage their own argument by gradually expanding the size of the Julcuy skeleton over the hour, until it becomes “almost eight feet” when it had been estimated at “around” seven feet. As the hour progresses, they also assert that the body belongs to a separate “species,” though Delgado told them no such thing. The brothers next talk to a local about oral traditions of giants in the Llanganantes National Park rainforest of Ecuador. Vieira claims that the rainforest contains a megalithic wall made by a “pre-Flood race of giants” which was “melted” with high-tech tools. (Why melted? To cover the fact that the rocks aren’t separate but are connected to each other.) You will remember this Ecuadoran wall because the Science Channel did a pseudo-documentary in which Bruce Fenton claimed that the geological formation was not natural. The brothers don’t seem to understand Vieira’s biblical worldview, or else ignore the allegations that Noah’s Flood was a real geological event. Two long segments follow the brothers as they trek through the park to the wall. They contain no information but eat up about a third of the show. When they arrive at the alleged wall, even on camera from a distance, the naturalness of the stones seems apparent. A landslide sheered off part of a hill, and the underlying stone contains cracks and fissures and layering that resemble irregular cyclopean stonework, but only in a superficial way. Chris Keefer doesn’t believe that the fissures could be natural because they have too many straight lines and “hard” angles. He has apparently never seen naturally occurring geometric patterns like the Giant’s Causeway or even the Rock Wall of Rockwall, Texas. Since the two men have difficulty understanding the difference between cyclopean construction and natural cleavage, they claim that rocks that have, as obviously as a camera can capture, split apart are actually placed next to one another by giant hands so cunningly that they fit together perfectly. Maybe it is just because I grew up in areas where eroded walls of rocks are rather common, both from glacial action and from the blasting done to cut highways through hills, I am not convinced that the latticework grooves could only be the result of artificial construction. The Keefers ignore Vieira’s claim that the rocks are melted and instead imagine them to be stacked stones in the manner of Sacsayhuaman, the famed Peruvian fortress.
The two brothers neglected to bring a geologist with them, though they had one with them in Julcuy and they somehow managed to get a camera crew out there, so they climb the rockface and simply speculate about how hard it would be to build the wall. They wonder if it is part of a hidden pyramid, or if it conceals “something important.” They make no effort to walk around and find out. After returning to the ground, they look around for more alleged buildings and claim that small cracks and grooves on another rockface are actually brick-like stacked stones. Tweedledee and Tweedledum then claim that the small cracks mean that the “structure” was built hundreds of years before the large pyramid, before the giants developed the “technology” to build a pyramid of massive size. The towering castles of speculation are crowned with the ignorance brought by two cable hosts who have absolutely no comprehension of the topics they are discussing. They make people like Scott Wolter and Giorgio Tsoukalos look knowledgeable by comparison. The show does not bother to ask for an expert opinion on the supposed wall—because they know what the experts would say—and instead end the show by asking a long series of leading questions designed to suggest that there is a “race” of giants who formerly occupied the country. They then threaten to do a follow-up episode if someone finds real evidence of giants in Ecuador. They could, of course, have spent time and money to find some, but that would undercut the ethos of cable TV, which is to parachute in, shoot everything in a couple of days, and get the hell out before the hotel bill gets too high. And heaven forfend that any of that sweet, sweet ad revenue go toward doing actual science, which might risk undercutting the whole venture.
48 Comments
Kent
8/15/2019 09:00:17 am
Jason,
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8/15/2019 09:02:49 am
Yeah, it should be 32. I'll fix it. Sometimes I type faster than I think.
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Kent
8/15/2019 09:26:42 am
Everyone types faster than I think.
Rainbow unicorn
8/15/2019 12:29:05 pm
^ Is this the same person who recently claimed that he employs editors to proofread his own writing because such a task is too “small” for him and yet he comes here regularly to proofread Jason’s blog entries for free?
Kent
8/15/2019 12:44:16 pm
Don't believe everything you read and nothing that I write.
Kent
8/15/2019 01:01:18 pm
Also, fact-checking is a separate deal from proof-reading. Did I mention that Jason didn't close the last quote ('') in 8/13's entry or that "..." is not generally used for blockquotes? No I did not.
Rainbow unicorn
8/15/2019 02:49:16 pm
I didn’t catch that one, nice find! In any event, there’s no need to explain yourself, I just figured that it’s pretty nifty that Jason has a free proofreading/fact-checking service while you have to pay someone to do it.
E.P. Grondine
8/15/2019 11:10:55 am
There are also Spanish colonial records of giants in the mountains of Mexico. It seems likely to me that the giants of the western mountains were a different population group than the giants of eastern North America.
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Kent
8/15/2019 11:19:55 am
Similarly, the Elves were a different population group than the Goblins in Middle Earth.
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Jim
8/15/2019 12:17:45 pm
E. P.
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E.P. Grondine
8/15/2019 07:53:33 pm
I am at the point where I do not care about your ignorance of colonial and mixtec documents, and I can not think of any reason to give you the time of day, for that matter. Based on my experience with the Andaste materials, there is simply no percentage in it. Get back to me about 10 years from now.
Kent
8/24/2019 12:57:03 pm
And in an unsurprising twist quite analogous to your imaginary giant Indians, Al Kapp had no character called "Kickapoo Joe".
Machala
8/15/2019 11:27:41 am
Giants are in the eye of the beholder. Compared to many people here in Ecuador, - especially those who have Laron Syndrom and average between 3 and 4 feet tall, I would be, at a little over 6' tall, considered somewhat of a giant.
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Kent
8/15/2019 12:54:49 pm
If there were "populations of giants" at or before the time of the Spanish conquest, it's clear that giantism was an evolutionary disadvantage. This explains why we have no "populations of giants" in North America today. Yes, I know Mexico's in North America too although some say it's the 9th continent.
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Doc Rock
8/15/2019 11:48:18 am
It is astonishing how people continue to recycle topics that were old hat 40 years ago when they were turning up in cheap paperback "Mysteries of the Ancient world" type publications.
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Jim
8/15/2019 01:09:22 pm
"The team believes the summit was used for some form of human activities, possibly sacrifices. Some have suggested that it could have been the venue for human sacrifices, with the incline deliberately engineered to allow a head to roll down the side."
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Kal
8/15/2019 12:49:57 pm
Fake giant stories are not my area of interest, but it is interesting to note there is barely anything online about the Julcuy site skeleton show of this article and the one from the History Channel.
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Doc Rock
8/15/2019 01:10:05 pm
Any discovery of unusually tall skeletons tends to get spun into "giants" by the fringe crowd. Not long ago I saw someone touting the discovery of a burial ground full of giants in China. Turns out that the giants were actually a number of people who were about 6'2".
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Kent
8/15/2019 01:05:46 pm
Not having watched the show I don't know, but I suspect that they never showed a ruler or yardstick next to the "Juicy" skeleton.
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Jim
8/15/2019 01:36:36 pm
They went with a graphic instead, showing a "normal" skeleton measured at 1.73 meters (as I recall) side by side with a 3.0 meter (10 feet) skeleton.
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Jim
8/15/2019 02:24:39 pm
I went back and re-watched them viewing the skeleton.
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El Chupacabra
8/25/2019 01:32:29 pm
For years I have watched these shows searching for giants. This was the first to show a large set a remains that seem to have some validity. Did anybody else realize the first emage shown was an excavation of a skeleton with an entact skull, then showed the entire skeleton with a totally smashed skull. Shortly after they identify that there has been only one set of remains found!
Kent
8/25/2019 04:07:02 pm
"For years I have watched these shows searching for giants."
Marty the Marion
8/15/2019 02:17:25 pm
There are Giants in San Francisco. They moved there from New York in 1958. They moved a few years ago from Candlestick park where they resided. They now have Giants like Buster the Posey, Madison the Bumgarden and Brandon the Crawford. Flee, flee you other member of the National league, they are coming.
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Doc Rock
8/15/2019 02:29:00 pm
Maybe the SF Giants were the source of legends about homosexual orgies on the beach?
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Jim
8/15/2019 02:58:52 pm
At least we know why the Giants disappeared.
Jr. Time Lord
8/15/2019 04:37:16 pm
What about the New Jarvik football Giants? Judging by Lawrence Taylor only, I'd say they're into cocaine and young girls.
Rainbow unicorn
8/15/2019 02:58:01 pm
Also, for their first two seasons in SF, they played in Seals Stadium in the Mission District.
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TONY S.
8/15/2019 05:16:14 pm
Here I was all worried that no new fringe shows would emerge to keep beating the same dead old horses.
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Colonel Kernel
8/23/2019 06:11:47 pm
Great read, and quite humorous Jason. A couple of observations on your attempt to discredit the hosts, however they did discredit themselves with several mistakes not being edited out.
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Jim
8/25/2019 02:35:30 pm
"1. Those lengths of the femur and tibia point to a human about 6'10" to 7'6". Which puts someone like that in the realm of giant IMO, considering everyone else running around was about 60% of that. Glean what you want."
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Jim
8/25/2019 02:36:22 pm
"1. Those lengths of the femur and tibia point to a human about 6'10" to 7'6". Which puts someone like that in the realm of giant IMO, considering everyone else running around was about 60% of that. Glean what you want."
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8/25/2019 04:03:18 pm
I am going to focus on one aspect of this really poor review and then you can deem the rest is just as bad. You need to do your research its better than being a propaganda mill for bias:
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8/25/2019 04:17:00 pm
One more thing. My femur regression formula is superior to academia's use "your formula" aka academia's, with Robert Wadlow's femur which was 29.5 " you should do this before you comment confidently about the height of a 24" femur.
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Jim
8/25/2019 05:27:40 pm
"One more thing. My femur regression formula is superior to academia's use "your formula"
Kent
8/25/2019 08:44:44 pm
As I understand the term, in this context, "regression" has to do with statistics. What's your sample size and where is your data?
Kent
8/25/2019 04:29:00 pm
When did you measure these bones? No doubt you can provide photographic evidence?
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OMFG on a Jesus Fish bicycle
8/25/2019 08:51:53 pm
http://greaterancestors.com/
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Jim
8/25/2019 09:38:33 pm
Well, I guess that answers the questions of who he is and what are his credentials. Lol ,,,Nephilim,,,,,,,send money,,,,,,,
Kent
8/25/2019 09:00:51 pm
When did you measure Manute Bol's femur and what precision do you claim for "roughly 24.9 inches in length"? When you express a measurement in tenths of an inch that suggests that you have a hundredths of an inch figure that you threw away because you don't want someone asking where the thousandths of an inch figure is.
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8/26/2019 11:27:30 am
Jason Colavito: please explain: "still falls within the reported range of regular humans (being smaller than many modern basketball players),"
Jim
8/26/2019 12:04:00 pm
"I have "the best" regression formula as it pertains to large skeletons. "the best."
Kent
8/26/2019 12:23:52 pm
Chris, I'll ask you the same question I asked about Manute Bol's femur.
Jim
8/26/2019 12:30:01 pm
"With Wadlow's 29.5" femur, I get 8.973 feet. (8 feet 11 11/16 inches. Tell me what your calculation gets, please post, i could use a good laugh. I have "the best" regression formula as it pertains to large skeletons. "the best." 8/26/2019 04:51:25 pm
The NBA in their history roughly 65,700 "players" since it began.
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Jim
8/26/2019 05:19:44 pm
Just so you know, Jason isn't likely to respond if all you have is nonsense.
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cafeameric
9/4/2019 12:34:01 am
If the creators of this show meant for it to appeal it anyone other males 18-25, they badly missed the boat! The hosts are humorless and look as if they badly need some basic grooming tips (HINT: bushy beards are out, at least if you want to appeal to women they are) The "mysteries" are presented in an unimaginative way, and most are retreads of things already investigated, in a more thorough and interesting way, by Destination Truth or Expedition Unknown. The network appears to feel that bombarding it's viewers with multiple re-runs of boring episodes will help the show to build a following. It won't! Enough already! The sponsors need to remember that most consumer goods aren't bought by millennial men who live in their parents' basement.
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Patricia Rock
11/6/2019 12:29:34 pm
wanted to let you guys know that there are also giants in Sardina. the people of Sardina have tried to hide all of the evidence altho there are structures above ground and below showing evidence the giants were there - i would check it out cuz it seems like they were many places according to the findings
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