https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-americas/giants-0013621
Is the answer of the downfall of the giants found in ancient texts? Source: grandfailure / Adobe Stock.
Giants were here. In using the term giants, I am referring to persons at least 7 feet (2.1m) and up to 13 feet (4m) in height. Given that pre-modern man was significantly shorter on the average than we are today (many athletes in modern times are 6’5” or taller (2 meters)) these giants would have certainly seemed of extraordinary stature.
That an ancient race or races of giants once existed throughout the world, from China to North America, is a matter attested to not only in the written records of various civilizations but in the archaeological record as well. As Jason Jarrell and Sarah Farmer note, the vast number of gigantic humanoid skeletal remains excavated in the North American region alone makes it statistically highly unlikely for us to interpret all of them as genetic anomalies as mainstream scholars often do.
Giants were here. Yet, this observation leads us immediately to another problematic question: If giants-as a race or races-once existed in antiquity, why do they not exist now? What happened to them? What factors led to their extinction?
The archaeological record largely, though not entirely, fails us in answering these questions. This is particularly evident in the work done on giant civilization(s) in North America. North American archaeologists and anthropologist have done amazing work addressing the unique cultural features of the Hopewell and Adena, pre-Columbian peoples who were either themselves giants or direct descendants of a previous race of giants. At the same time, North American archaeology is at pains to explain the sudden disappearance of both of these civilizations sometime around 500 AD.
In this article, I will propose an alternative anthropological method for determining the fate of the ancient giants. Rather than attempting to interpret the sparse and inconclusive archaeological evidence, I suggest that scholars turn to ancient texts and the mythological/religious traditions they contain. As Erik Von Daniken notes, ancient literature, while highly mythological, often retains fact at its core.
Colossal statue of the giant Appenino. (Picryl / Public Domain )
Furthermore, as Von Daniken also points out, many of the narratives contained in ancient texts are themselves far more literal than modern 21 st century academics give them credit for. When this material is taken into consideration, it suggests that many of the ancient giant civilization(s) were violent and oppressive in their culture and that eventually they were destroyed through their own violent tendencies and actions.
The Description of Giants in Ancient Literature
As Xaviant Haze notes in his recent work Ancient Giants , tales and stories of giants are a universal phenomenon found in nearly every human culture throughout recorded human history. When these various accounts are examined, one common theme emerges, namely that the giants and the civilizations they created were defined by violence and bloodshed. While a comprehensive examination of giants in ancient oral and written traditions is well beyond the scope of this article, it is possible to narrow our focus here to the treatment of giants within a particular culture and their body of literature.
As someone with a background in biblical studies, the ancient Israelites immediately came to mind as the best candidates for such an examination. In contrast to many other ancient Near Eastern societies, the history of ancient Israel is very well documented in both biblical (i.e. the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible) and extra-biblical sources.
The ‘Book of Giants’ tells the story of pre-diluvian origins of evil and the fate of the Watchers and their giant offspring.
One of the earliest references to giants in Israel comes from the Yahwist account of the great deluge found in Genesis chapter 6. (The Yahwist being one of the four authors or sources for the material in the first five books of the Old Testament commonly referred to as the Torah or Pentateuch. The four source theory was popularized in the late 19th century in the work of the famous German biblical scholar Julius Wellhausen.) Here they are linked to the “ sons of God ” (Hebrew: bene ‘elohim ) who forcefully take the “daughters of men” ( banot ‘anashim ) as wives.
The Latin translation of the Genesis 6 passage reads:
Gigantes autem erant super terram in diebus illis: postquam enim ingress sunt filii Dei ad filias hominum illaeque genuerunt isti sunt potentes a saeculo viri famosi
But giants were over the earth in those days. For after the sons of God entered into the daughters of men and these (women) gave birth. These are the powerful ones from long ago, the famous men. (Genesis 6:4)
(All translations of Latin or Hebrew texts are mine unless noted as otherwise.)
The Latin translation of the Genesis 6 passage reads:
Gigantes autem erant super terram in diebus illis: postquam enim ingress sunt filii Dei ad filias hominum illaeque genuerunt isti sunt potentes a saeculo viri famosi
But giants were over the earth in those days. For after the sons of God entered into the daughters of men and these (women) gave birth. These are the powerful ones from long ago, the famous men. (Genesis 6:4)
(All translations of Latin or Hebrew texts are mine unless noted as otherwise.)
The Old Testament shares stories about giants taking human women. (JarektUploadBot / Public Domain )
This article continued at: https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-americas/giants-0013621
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