Imagine our world long ago, when the Great Pyramid at Giza and Stonehenge were young. The freshly cut stones are smooth to the touch without the erosion and decay that will eventually besiege them. Their towering architecture rises into the sky as a beacon of human ingenuity and accomplishment.
Megalithic structures are found all over the world, from South America (Puma Punku) heading east to Japan (Ishibutai Tomb), and just about everywhere in between.
Is it possible that ancient giants built some of these towering structures?
Construction of the Great Pyramid and the megalithic foundation at Baalbek temple complex in Lebanon still stump scientists. If giants existed, they would naturally have an advantage over a typical man in constructing large, megalithic structures.
In 1901, in “The World’s History: A Survey of Man’s Record,” Han Ferdinand Helmolt and James Bryce Bryce wrote: “For the erection of these in their present position without the technical resources at the disposal of modern builders, human strength appears inadequate, in popular opinion, only giants could have made such structures.”
Giants are not, however, the only possible explanation for the construction of ancient megastructures.
We know that giants did not construct the modern Coral Castle near Miami, Fla. That was done by a solitary man named Ed Leedskalnin who weighed just about 100 pounds and stood little more than 5-feet tall. Leedskalnin single-handedly cut and moved stone blocks, some weighing 9 tons, into place with near perfect precision. Unfortunately, when he died in 1953, he took his construction secrets to the grave with him.
However, some of the ancient megalithic structures are far heavier and larger than Coral Castle. Ollantaytambo in Peru was an Incan military stronghold and outpost against the invading Spanish 500 years ago. Today, it is one of the last surviving towns that retain the original Incan walls and street grid. It is the site of six towering megalithic pink granite slabs that stand about 13 feet tall and each weigh some 50 tons or more.
Stonehenge’s blocks tower up to 24 feet and weighing more than 45 tons each. But Stonehenge isn’t the only megalithic formation in England, it’s just the most famous. The Cove at Avebury in England consists of two gigantic cove stones, which stand as some of the last remnants of the northern inner circle of the Avebury Henge. There were originally 98 standing stones in its outer circle, estimated to stand about 13 feet tall and weigh more than 40 tons each. They date to about 3000 B.C.
But where are the records of these massive projects? Should we expect to find documentation or some trace in history of how, when, or why these structures were erected? Archaeologists are left guessing, or inferring.
However, archaeologists have found intriguing imagery in the reliefs at the Tomb of Rekhmire in Luxor (ancient Thebes), Egypt. One image shows two men herding a giraffe. What’s odd about the image is that the men are of nearly equal stature to the giraffe. An elephant is also shown as smaller than the men and leopards and baboons seem to be proportionally smaller. It is difficult to tell, however, as oxen are shown to be of normal size in relation to the men.
Although most of the men depicted in the facades are of equal stature to each other, there are a few images where some figures loom over others. The smaller figures may represent children rather than smaller men. Some of these figures appear in construction scenes, carrying blocks and donning shoulder harnesses.
Were the artists and craftsman of these reliefs depicting giants building ancient structures?
Rekhmire was mayor of Thebes and vizier to pharaohs Tuthmosis III and Amenophis II during ancient Egypt’s 18th-dynasty. He may have overseen many construction projects during his tenure as both mayor and vizier. It’s also possible that while he was vizier under the pharaoh, he was privy to ancient knowledge, which could have included knowledge about giants if they existed and other secrets from remote history. These may have been depicted in his tomb.
In 1988, Gregor Spörri went to Egypt as an amateur researcher interested in the pyramids. According to an article written by Annemieke Witteveen for Ancient Origins, Spörri made an interesting giant-related discovery. A local introduced him to a farmer named Nagib, whose ancestors were tomb robbers. Artifacts had been passed down in his family, some sold at intervals to buy land and other assets. One strange artifact that Nagib was said to guard jealously was a decaying giant finger.
The finger measured just over a foot long, said Spörri. Spörri took photos of it, but could not again find Nagib when he returned to Egypt in 2009 to search again for the relic, and during the 1988 visit, Nagib insisted he would not part with the finger.
Lastly, a discussion of megaliths wouldn’t be complete without the Easter Island heads. The mystery surrounding these giant heads not only leads bold investigators to consider the possibility that they depict giants with elongated faces and heavily pronounced jaws, but also introduces a variety of equally bold theories including the possibility of sunken continents and advanced prehistoric civilizations. Easter Island is considered one of the most remote locations in the world, sitting almost half-way between New Zealand and South America, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Some wonder if a lost civilization left these artifacts in this now isolated place.
These heads, called “moai” by the islanders, remain a mystery; no historical record of their construction, written or oral, exists today even though there are nearly 900 of them. These heads are about 13 feet tall and weigh about 14 tons each.
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