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GIANTS IN OLD CENTRAL AMERICA, OLD SOUTH AMERICA, AND ANCIENT POLYNESIA

 

The first great waters came. They engulfed the seven islands (Atlantis). . . .
And the unholy (necromancers and militarists) were annihilated, and with them most of the huge animals born of the sweat of the Earth.

No. 46 STANZA OF ARCHAIC AND SECRET RECORDS OF OLD ASIA

As his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow—
“Shadow,” said he,
“Where can it be—
This land of El Dorado?”
“Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,”
The shade replied—
“If you seek for El Dorado.”

EDGAR ALLAN POE, EL DORADO

AZTEC CREATION AND THE GIANTS

Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxóchitl, the sixteenth-century Mexican chronicler and historian and great-great-grandson of Cuitláhuac (the former Aztec ruler of Tenochtitlan), provided European scholars with varied accounts of Aztec and Central American beliefs and legends, including those of giants.

The Spanish viceroy of New Spain commissioned Ixtlilxóchitl to write a history of the indigenous people of Central America and write he did. As Ixtlilxóchitl explains, according to Aztec cosmology, creation is not a single event but rather a continual process of birth, death, and rebirth. Following the destruction of each world, the Earth is reborn by the sanctified blood sacrifice of a god, a reality mimicked by the ceremonial blood sacrifices performed by the Aztec priests. Through each death a new sun could be born, and hence a new age would begin.

According to Aztec myth, during the first age, or Sun, the gods Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca created a race of giants from ashes, giving them acorns for nourishment. But the giants so enraged the gods due to their wickedness that the gods decided to end the giants’ existence and sent the jaguars to destroy them. Only seven survived the onslaught of the savage beasts. Later, when the gods summoned forth the waters to flood the Earth and destroy the first race of humans, these seven giants, the Xelhua, climbed the mountains to seek refuge from the thrashing waters that were enveloping the planet. Five of the giants survived the torrent, and in the end they built the great tower of Cholula to commemorate their survival of the flood.

Boston University geologist Robert M. Schoch discusses this myth in his book Voyages of the Pyramid Builders (2004). He notes that in a variation of the same myth, the race of giants built the Great Pyramid of Cholula not merely to mark their survival but also, like the Mesopotamian Tower of Babel, to reach the clouds. The mythological backdrop for the real giants of antiquity has given us great insight into the true nature of those long-forgotten times. Simply put, every myth bears some nugget of truth. Mythology is a kind of cultural GPS device that guides us through the hidden history of the human race. But mythology alone cannot give us a clear indication of where the giants came from and ultimately where they went—that great task is left up to science and what it teaches about the evolution of Earth and of humankind.

GIANTS OF CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA

According to Stephen Quayle in his book Giants: Master Builders of Prehistoric and Ancient Civilizations, Diego Durán, a friar and early Spanish settler in the New World who grew up closely with the native population, was familiar with giant Indian tribes. He writes: “It cannot be denied that there have been giants in this country. I can confirm this as an eyewitness, for I have met men of monstrous stature here. I believe that there are many in Mexico who will remember, as I do, a giant Indian who appeared in a procession of the feast of Corpus Christi. He appeared dressed in yellow silk and a halberd at his shoulder and a helmet on his head. And he was all of three feet taller than the others” (Quayle 2002, 288).

Durán lived more closely with the native population than perhaps any of his contemporaries, and his accounts of the indigenous beliefs of the Aztecs and other Central American groups are by far the most well-respected among modern historians. Many who lived at the same time, Bernardino de Sahagún and José de Acosta among them, recalled vividly the days when Central America was dominated by a cult-driven center of giants who predominated over Aztec and earlier Toltec and Olmec civilizations.

According to the Aztecs, originally giants and a bestial people of average size dominated the region. Then in 902 CE, emigrants from Teocolhuacan, also known as Aztlán, or in European terms, the lost civilization of Atlantis—which is “found toward the north and near the region of La Florida (where Edgar Cayce proposed it would be found)”—began to arrive in Mexico. According to Quayle, these six kindred tribes included the Xochimilca, the Chalca, the Tepanec, the Colhua, the Tlahuica, and the Tlaxcalans. A seventh tribe, the Aztecs, were brothers to these people, but they “came to live here three hundred and one years after the arrival of the others” (Quayle 2002, 289).

According to Durán: “They recorded to their painted books the type of land and kind of people they found there.” These books show two types of people, one from the west of the snow-covered mountains toward Mexico, and the other from the east, where Puebla and Cholula are found. Those from the first were the Chichimecs, and people from Puebla and Cholula were the giants, or Quiname, which means “men of great stature.”

In support of this, in his 1952 book, Secret Cities of Old South America, Harold T. Wilkins writes:

In the fall of 1929, Dean Byron Cummings of Arizona University and Professor Manuel San Domingo, a Mexican Government scientist of Sonora, went to a dangerous spot 160 miles from the international border where the turbulent Yaquis smash excavation work with rifle butts and menace intruders with sudden death. They found three giant skeletons of two men and one woman eight feet tall. The skulls were a foot long and ten inches wide, and three were remains of six children, all six feet tall. In tall ollas were human ashes suggesting either cremation or human sacrifices. The remains were in an ancient burial ground called “Cyclopes necropolis.” Beautiful ceramics were buried with the giants’ remains which were also covered with fine jewels.

Earlier in the same year (1929) Mr. Paxon Hayes found mummies of a peculiar race of Mongoloid giants in dry caves in the sierras of New Mexico, USA. He got out 34 of these mummies, and did four years’ hard work in the region. He saw facial angles of these and their burial customs are different from those of the Indians. They have slanting eyes and sloping foreheads, and the adults are about seven feet high, though their feet are only seven inches long. Their hair is black, with a peculiarly sun-burnt tinge when closely examined. The remains were preserved in asphalt, or resin, and wrapped in burial cloths bound with fiber. (Childress 2010)

Wilkins also notes, “Telegrams from Casas Grandes, Mexico, in 1923, announced the discovery of several skeletons of Indians fifteen feet tall, buried side by side, with vases of precious stones. The news came from Ciudad Juarez” (Childress 2010).

GIANTS OF PATAGONIA

Perhaps the most intriguing mystery involving a lost race of giants in South America involves those of Patagonia, an area of southern Argentina and Chile where European explorers repeatedly reported encountering native Indians of tremendous stature. The very name Patagonia points to the persistent rumors of giants in the region, for Patagonia means “Land of the People with Long Feet” (Childress 2010).

Ferdinand Magellan discovered Patagonia in 1520, during his monumental journey around the Earth. While his fleet lay at anchor in the natural harbor, he witnessed a startling sight: a native, gigantic in stature, approached him. Figafetta, a companion of Magellan, reported that “This man was so tall that our heads scarcely came up to his waist, and his voice was like that of a bull.” Later, Magellan learned from normal-sized natives that the giant belonged to a neighboring tribe. “Remarkably,” science writer Terrence Aym writes, “Magellan’s logs show that he and his crew captured two of these living giants and brought them aboard ship, intending to bring them back to Europe. Unfortunately, the giants grew ill and they both died during the return voyage. Magellan had their remains buried at sea” (Childress 2010).

The later British explorer Sir Francis Drake anchored in the same harbor as Magellan had several decades earlier. In 1578, in that same vicinity, Drake reported seeing natives of unusually high stature, some seven feet tall or more. Another individual, Anthony Knyvel, who participated in an exploratory mission to the Strait of Magellan in 1592, claimed to have witnessed, firsthand, Patagonians from ten to twelve feet in height. He was also said to have measured bodies of the same size at Port Desire, in modern-day Argentina. Additional skeletons, ten or eleven feet long, were discovered in 1615 by two crewmen from the Dutch schooner Wilhelm Schouten (Childress 2010).

It is clear from these reports that the remnants of an ancient race of giants were well established during this period. However, for nearly 150 years after this last sighting, no further reports were made of the Patagonian giants. Other natives of Patagonia were of normal size, but even they regularly maintained that a race of primordial giants inhabited the interior of the land (Childress 2010).

TIAHUANACO: LAND OF THE GIANTS

One place on Earth raises the bar on the question of whether giants once inhabited the world. It is the ancient fallen city of Tiahuanaco, which is a few short miles from the shores of Lake Titicaca in the Andean highlands of Bolivia, not far from the Ecuadorian border.

From the early reports we have of the city, wherein it is described with obvious amazement, we learn that it was popularly understood to have been the dwelling place of giants. The first recorded account that comes down to us was written by the Spanish chronicler Pedro Cieza de León, who visited it in 1549:

Tiahuanaco is not a small village, rather it is famous for its grandiose buildings. . . . A short distance from a hill stand two stone statues shaped as men. . . . They are so large they look like giants. . . . But the thing that elicits the greatest amount of wonder is the size [of the stone slabs], which are so huge we cannot understand how men could ever have moved them. Many of these platforms have been worked in various ways. . . . There are also stone slabs with doorways, all made from a single block. . . . We do not comprehend with which tools such work could have been achieved. . . . What’s more, the blocks must have been even greater in size before they were worked. . . . No one understands how these great weights could ever have been moved. . . .

I have been assured that these constructions were already there before the Inca ruled, and much of what the Inca later erected in Cuzco had been inspired by what they had seen in Tiahuanaco. . . . In the presence of Juan Varagas, I asked the natives whether these buildings had been erected during the age of the Incas: they laughed and answered, the buildings had been there for many years before the Incas began their rule. These structures, they assured me, and they knew this with certainty from their forefathers, had been built in a single night, constructed by beings whose provenance they did not know. And may the fame of these things remain intact throughout the universe. . . . There were none still living who knew this unearthly site as anything other than ruins.” (Däniken 2010, 42–43)

In book 1, chapter 23, of his work on the subject, historian Garcilaso de la Vega (El Inca) wrote of Tiahuanaco:

I looked in wonder at a great wall built of such mighty stones that we could not imagine which earthly power could have been used to accomplish such a feat. . . . The natives maintain that the buildings were there before the Incas. . . . They do not know who the builders were, but know with some degree of certainty from their ancestors that all these wonders were erected in a single night. (de la Vega 1723)

It is easy to interpret the undertones. These chroniclers were confident that some greater forces, or group of forces, were at hand here. . . . It seems likely that they were.

Another account of Tiahuanaco comes from author Harold T. Wilkins. In his book Mysteries of Ancient South America (1947, 187), he describes an encounter at Tiahuanaco with a “colossal statue, wearing a strangely inflated skullcap, one hand clasping to his breast a scepter of a condor-head, the other a tablet with hieroglyphics.” This colossus, according to native sources, represents a giant master race that was known as the Ra-mac. This is similar to the name of the sun god Ra-Mu that, according to the Sanskrit writings of India, was the chief deity of the drowned Pacific continent of Mu, or Lemuria. Ra, of course, was the sun god of ancient Egypt and the earlier Osirian Empire. In addition to depictions of gigantic proportions, statuettes of black men were also found in Tiahuanaco—“the cradle of mankind”—which may also be of Lemurian origin (Wilkins 1952, 110).

ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS AT TIAHUANACO, 1904–1945

Two individuals are credited with offering some of the most extreme views concerning the antiquity and origin of Tiahuanaco, although they most certainly were not the only ones to do so. Engineer and avocational archaeologist Arthur Posnansky and German archaeologist Dr. Edmund Kiss were considered to be the dominant and unconventional authorities of Tiahuanaco prehistory in the early to mid-1900s. These two men of uncompromising resolve single-handedly rewrote the books on Tiahuanaco. Posnansky was the Royal Bavarian Professor of geodesic engineering from 1904 to 1945 and a man of many interests. For him, Tiahuanaco was much more than a collection of fabulous ruins that had possibly been erected by giants. It was, as he called it, “the cradle of humanity.”

“Tiahuanaco,” Posnansky affirmed, “is the greatest sun temple ever to be constructed by mankind—not just in South America, but in the whole world” (Däniken 2010, 55). He went on to report that the native population had named their temple “Akapana,” which in the ancient Aymara language means “the place where the observers dwell.”

Dr. Edmund Kiss spent nine years studying in the Andes and excavating at the site of Tiahuanaco. Part of his research involved the monolithic gateway known as “the Gateway of the Sun.” Kiss believed that the inscriptions and symbols on the sun gate were features of a complex calendar, though initially he was unsure what type of calendar it might be. At one point, Kiss concluded that it was in fact an ice age calendar predicting the cycles of the sun, moon, and stars—and as such it marked the coming of the winter and summer solstices.

This provided the scientific basis of yet another theory. Kiss calculated that Tiahuanaco was built in 27,000 BCE and believed that the city had been overswept by a great flood early in its history, approximately eighteen thousand years in the past. Although Posnansky only partially agreed with this view, further research confirmed this dating. Evidence suggested that the city’s dominant feature was a sun temple: the great Kalasasaya—a name inspired by a connection to the inundated continent of Mu. This temple comprises the vast stadium of present-day Tiahuanaco, which was constructed between 21,600 BCE and 2800 BCE—a range of 18,800 years (Wilkins 1947, 18).

Colonel Percy Fawcett, an adventurer and amateur archaeologist of the early twentieth century, goes even further: “These megalithic ruins of Tiahuanaco,” says Fawcett, “were never built on the Andes at all. They are part of a great city submerged ages ago in the Pacific Ocean. When the crust of the earth up heaved and created the great Andean cordilleras, these ruins were elevated from the bed of the ocean to where you see them” (Wilkins 1947, 186). If Fawcett is indeed correct, then the earliest stages of Tiahuanaco could date back as far as one hundred thousand years or more. As such, Tiahuanaco is the perfect laboratory for those wishing to investigate more fully the race of giants hypothesis.

THE GIANTS OF ANCIENT POLYNESIA

Having explored the Americas for traces of ancient giants, we will now turn our attention to Polynesia, comprising more than one thousand islands in the Pacific Ocean. Here we will continue to explore various historical references to giants, as well as spend some fair amount of time on one of the most enigmatic archaeological anomalies on the planet: the very large human figures made of stone on Easter Island, called the Moai.

EASTER ISLAND: HOME TO ARCHAIC CAUCASOIDS

Some 4,000 kilometers southeast of Nan Madol, with its canals and temples constructed of basalt logs, and 3,782 kilometers from the windswept coast of Chile lies the enigma known as Easter Island, a place that has fascinated and perplexed visitors for more than two centuries. It is also one of the most geographically remote and culturally isolated places on Earth. This island’s native inhabitants are of Polynesian ancestry, but centuries of isolation have allowed them to evolve separately into their own distinct race. Although there is evidence of contact between the islanders and foreign visitors, and varying types of ethnicity are exhibited within the native population, including Caucasian traits, their culture remains distinct.

The gigantic Moai, or stone statues of Easter Island, have origins that stretch far back into human antiquity. These cyclopean statues seem to hint at some unspeakable connection with a vanished race of giants. The magnificent and colossal stone figures are 11 to 22 meters high and weigh as much as 45 tons. Despite repeated speculation by mainstream scientists, the reality is that no one knows for certain who built them, how, or why. Furthermore, how ancient is the occupation of the island, and who were its earliest inhabitants?

Today, this tiny speck of land in the middle of the South Pacific known as Easter Island is also called Rapa Nui in the native tongue, meaning “Land of the Bird Men.”

The official records attribute the island’s discovery to the Dutch vessel Afrikaansche Galei, under the command of Admiral Jacob Roggeveen. The discovery occurred on Easter Day, April 5, 1722, at 5:00 p.m. In commemoration of its day of discovery, Roggeveen dubbed this tiny speck of land Easter Island. The following day, after visiting the island, he attempted to describe its material culture:

Concerning the religion of these people, of this we could get no full knowledge because of the shortness of our stay, we merely observed that they set fires before some particularly high erected stone images. . . . These stone images at first caused us to be struck with astonishment, because we could not comprehend how it was possible that these people, who are devoid of heavy thick timber for making any machines, as well as strong ropes, nevertheless had been able to erect such images, which were fully thirty feet high and thick in proportion. (Flenley and Bahn 2003)

After coming ashore, the Dutch sailors, together with their officers, spent a considerable amount of time touring the twenty-five mile island, marveling at its monuments and writing down firsthand accounts of the gigantic figures and the peculiar writings used by the natives. They also had the opportunity to have sexual intercourse with a number of the native females, as tribute from the chieftains and the gods. The Dutch explorers reported that the islanders wore very little clothing and inhabited reed huts (Flenley and Bahn 2003). Tragically, the first contact with these indigenous peoples ended in gunfire and the killing of about one hundred or so Rapa Nui islanders. David Hatcher Childress explains that Roggeveen ordered his sailors to fire into a crowd of natives who were engaged in thievery and touching and toying with the ship and its technology, mainly out of curiosity (Childress 1988, 118).

One of the most obvious realities of the people present on the island was their mixed racial heritage. A large number of the native people appeared Caucasian, while others, fewer in number, had brown or red skin. There were many intermediary groups. A long-eared group was tall and fair-skinned with ruddy cheeks. They often had brown, red, or blond hair (Joseph 2006, 170). This is but one of many out-of-place Caucasian groups that Western European explorers would encounter as they ventured to the remote corners of the Earth.

Some scholars, such as Robert Langdon, claim that Roggeveen and his ship of Dutch explorers were not the first Europeans to set foot on the island. Langdon believes that sailors from a lost Spanish caravel, the San Lesmes, which disappeared in 1526 and apparently ran aground in Tahiti, survived and intermarried with the Polynesian women. Langdon suggests that somehow these offspring made it to Easter Island and entered the gene pool, leaving behind traces of Basque genetic markers. This would seem incredibly complex and fanciful if not for the fact that Easter Islander DNA contains a genetic structure common within the Basque population of Western Europe (Flenley and Bahn 2003).

According to the French explorer Jean François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse, during his visit in 1786, both the statues and people possessed a distinct European quality, which was unmistakable. Other visits were less constructive. For example, the Spanish expedition launched from Peru early in 1770 came back without any commentary or report whatsoever, and only managed to print a ship’s log more than a century later, in 1908 (Flenley and Bahn 2003).

In 1774, the era of exploration and scientific investigation began in earnest. This date marked the visitation of Captain James Cook to Easter Island. He was considered the Great White God by the Pacific Islanders, as were Pizarro and Cortés by the American peoples.

On June 13, 1772, Cook departed Plymouth, England, with two ships, the Resolution and the Adventure. It was Cook’s intention to sail around the world, navigate the southernmost waters, cross the Antarctic Circle, and confirm the existence of the legendary southern continent of Antarctica. They reached Easter Island on March 1, 1774. The British remained on Easter Island for only four days, as they rested and replenished what supplies they could amid the barren landscape. In his log, Cook recorded: “We could hardly conceive how these islanders, wholly unacquainted with any mechanical power, could raise such stupendous figures, and afterwards place the large cylindrical stones upon their heads” (Joseph 2006, 54).

Clearly, the bizarre nature of the island and its inhabitants baffled its European visitors. Katherine Routledge, an early twentieth-century investigator of Easter Island, put it like this: “In Easter Island, the past is the present. It is impossible to escape from it. The inhabitants of today are less real than the men who have gone. The shadows of the departed builders still possess the land” (Joseph 2006, 54). Erich von Däniken called the magnificent and colossal stone figures “robots which seem to be waiting solely to be set in motion again” (Däniken 1970, 111). Originally, the statues also wore hats, and they traditionally faced inland and not out toward the ever-crashing waves.

Dr. Jared Diamond, author of the national bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, offers up these insights into Polynesian architecture:

The largest products of Polynesia were the immense stone structures of a few islands—the famous giant statues of Easter Island, the tombs of Tongan chiefs, the ceremonial platforms of the Marquesas, and the temple of Hawaii and the Societies. This monumental Polynesian architecture was obviously evolving in the same direction as the pyramids of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Mexico and Peru. Naturally, Polynesia’s structures are not on the scale of those pyramids, but that merely reflects the fact that Egyptian pharaohs could draw conscript labor from a much larger human population than could the chief of any Polynesian island. Even so, the Easter Islanders managed to erect 24-ton stone statues—no mean feat for an island with only seven thousand people, who had no power source other than their own muscles. (Diamond 1999)

Diamond was not privy to the more alternative explanations of the monuments’ origins, but his general conclusions from a mainstream standpoint are basically correct. It is also clear that had these societies been left to develop on their own, untouched by outside influence, they would have undoubtedly continued to evolve along the lines of the Mayas, Aztecs, and Old World cultures such as the Egyptians and Mesopotamians.

In The Polynesians: Prehistory of an Island People, Peter Bellwood says, “Easter Island society of the eighteenth century was not described as highly stratified, and was dominated by independent warring tribes who probably spent much of their time fighting over scarce resources” (1978, 113).

Bellwood divided Easter Island prehistory into three main periods. During the Early Period, 400–1100 CE, the earliest of the stone platforms were erected, and during the Middle Period, 1100–1680 CE, these platforms were equipped with the gigantic stone statues that define the island and their inhabitants to this day. During the Late Period, 1680–1868 CE, there was a drastic and devastating decline in the island’s environment and the health and stability of its population, prompting the discontinuation of the peoples’ religion and their traditions. The period concluded with the arrival and domination of Christian missionaries, who further undermined the native beliefs and traditions (Bellwood 1978, 114–15). This spelled certain doom for the age of giants on Easter Island.

Giants, it would seem, have been all over the globe. If they can have reached the far-flung islands of Polynesia, one might think that they must, indeed, have been anywhere, and quite possibly, everywhere. Now leaving Polynesia behind, in our next chapter we will again peer back into the mists of time to ascertain what the world might have been like before the Great Flood, and whether giants were part of this ancient landscape. Integral to this will be an assessment of those enigmatic figures known as the Watchers, and what role they may have played in humankind’s earliest days. Who were they and where did they come from? Our discussion will aim to find out.