FOREWORD

GIANTS AND THE SEARCH FOR HIGHER INTELLIGENCE

PAUL VON WARD

Over the last few decades millions of people have begun to realize that our academic history books are filled with holes and patched with misleading conclusions based on flimsy evidence. The human story programmed into the minds of today’s high school and college graduates is now being proven false in very fundamental ways.

Ironically, scholars in our major research and scientific institutions whose roles include discovering the true story of our past have not initiated these revelations. Instead, the intellectual movement to more accurately reconstruct ancient history has been led by independent, interdisciplinary scholars such as Erich von Däniken, the late Zecharia Sitchin, and a growing number of others—including Patrick Chouinard. Books by these authors focus on discoveries that reveal gaps in standard history books. They also reexamine the academic assertion that ancient texts must be seen as myths or metaphors instead of descriptions of real events. Chouinard’s scholarly evaluation of new and old discoveries turns so-called myths into historical narratives.

Books based largely on intuition about the myth of a lost Atlantean era in the human past are often as mystical as the legend itself. In this book, however, Chouinard presents tangible evidence to help fill the “Atlantis gap”—perhaps one hundred thousand years or more—in the documented history of Earth and its humanoid inhabitants.

This book is significant for seekers, skeptics, and believers because it grounds many legends and myths in real-world events, providing authentication of the tales about giants. The evidence that giants were historical beings is proof that many ancient texts must now be seen as valid, if partial, historical documents. Chouinard’s investigations mean we can no longer view Hebrew, Christian, Islamic, or other religious documents referring to “giants of old” as divine descriptions of other realms. Neither can we label Greek and Roman legends of Titans as fantasy created by writers who wished to glorify the birth of their cultures as something unique.

The following chapters make it clear that large flesh-and-blood humanoids are an integral part of the human evolutionary trajectory on planet Earth. Based on the ancient texts mentioned above, one can reasonably postulate that “giants” were a transitional genetic link between nonhumans and some subspecies of Homo sapiens.

To place Chouinard’s important contribution within the “bigger picture” of human evolution, I propose an up-to-date, twenty-first-century view of our origins and the sweep of human history. This history includes what I call the “advanced being intervention theory” (ABIT). ABIT postulates an “intervention” of human history by beings with physical, technological, social, and psychological levels of development advanced far beyond our human abilities.

Historical accounts from all cultures describe beings who came from the skies or the waters, or even from other dimensions. Some were very much like humans, while others had animal or other forms never before seen on Earth. For these reasons they were called devas in Sanskrit, which means “beings from the skies or heavens.” After they ceased public contact with humans, humans called them “gods” and began to worship them mentally, rather than actually bowing before a more powerful physical ruler. Due to the many different names given such beings, I use the generic term advanced beings or ABs. In my view, the giants discussed in this book are not ABs, but, like humans, they are hybrids between Earth-seeded species and more advanced species from other locations in our universe. However, they are an important part of the human development story on Earth.

The ABIT is supported by evidence in plain sight—but wrongly identified—in hundreds of books and thousands of academic papers available in brick-and-mortar libraries as well as online. Many describe a time when ABs from the skies descended to Earth. Most describe these ABs as fighting among themselves even as they became involved in the development of humans and their cultures. This involvement included genetic input in Earth species, but ABs also provided us with valuable assistance.

For example, the Enûma Eliš, the Babylonian creation myth, identifies ABs Apsu and Tiamat. Chinese myths say AB P’an Ku instructed early humans about the universe. An Apache account claims AB Hactein created human beings. Similar themes are found among artifacts in Egypt, India, Japan, and practically every other culture on the globe.

Many Sumerian, Hindu, and Hebrew texts report human interactions with advanced beings. These include the Dead Sea Scrolls, Nag Hammadi library, and Gnostic Gospels. An excellent analysis prepared by my colleague Roger Voss illustrates the quality of such information found in the oldest publicly available version of the Paleo-Hebrew Torah. Voss shows that just over two thousand years ago, Hebrew scribes still acknowledged advanced beings. For instance, Deuteronomy 10:17 states, “For Yahweh your God—He is God of the Elohim, and Lord of the lords; God, the great, the mighty, and the fearful.” The names Yahweh, Lord, lords, God, and Elohim all refer to real-life ABs in both singular and plural forms. Later versions of Hebrew texts were redacted to distort these facts.

PHYSICAL EVIDENCE

Many people who are open to Chouinard’s “race of giants hypothesis” believe that all the evidence comes from texts like those described above. We know that written documents are often difficult to interpret or can be edited to suggest whatever a person desires. However, the above texts have internally consistent, plausible accounts corroborated by physical artifacts.

As an example, a collection of fossilized humanoid teeth (dating to 100,000 BP) that indicate a larger bone architecture (9.5 feet tall) than Homo sapiens sapiens has captured the attention of open-minded scientists. Evidence points to the time period when the fossil record and DNA projections suggest Homo sapiens sapiens appeared. This research suggests that the giants may be the progeny of crossbreeding between ABs and the Earth genus Homo. This mixing of genes may have occurred “naturally” through sexual intercourse or, considering the technologically advanced capabilities of the ABs, even through genetic engineering (in vivo and in vitro gene-splicing of AB characteristics into Homo host cells). This correlation gives credence to biblical accounts of human-giant interactions.

There are numerous examples of contacts between humans and “giants” from prehistoric times into the modern era, including: mummies of Caucasoid humans in western China, measuring 6.5 feet in length and dating to 7000 BP; male and female mummies and skeletons of larger stature discovered in Nevada, found among artifacts dating to 10,000 BP; and sixteenth-century Spanish ship logs detailing the capture and death of 10-foot-tall humanoids.

Stories from many cultures assert that their ancestors received their language or alphabet from gods. For instance, Egyptians claim the AB Thoth was the author of their language, and Hindus credit their Sanskrit alphabet to the AB Saraswati. Given new genetic discoveries, the AB gift of alphabets and language may have involved a genetic upgrade. The FOXP2 gene, which appeared in human form about one hundred thousand years ago, gave Homo sapiens control over muscles of the mouth and throat. Its appearance coincides with the leap from Homo sapiens to Homo sapiens sapiens. Insertion of this gene could explain how ABs gave giants and humans language skills beyond other hominids.

The following paragraphs connect various threads of evidence that corroborates the evolving ABIT and offer a more complex version of human history.

CORRECTING THE HUMAN STORY

Let’s return to an idea introduced in the first paragraph, that most people do not know that much of what they are taught in school or college is outdated or false. In some cases, information is kept from the public because it challenges established institutions. In others, new discoveries are sidelined by stodgy procedures that delay the testing of new evidence. The more serious, historical problem, however, is the censorship and rewriting of history by elites desiring political, social, and psychological control of others. In this situation, suppression is the result of deliberate manipulation of both historical and newly discovered evidence. Consider the following.

The conventional time line of physical evolution contains many gaps in evidence. These gaps are ignored because of a tendency among academics to push aside evidence that does not support cherished theories. For instance, unexplained gaps in the fossil record are papered over with terms like punctuated equilibrium. Those two words mean that major shifts in evolution can’t be explained by the regular slow, gradual rates of evolution. Therefore, the well-documented theory of cell-by-cell mutations—necessary for natural evolution—can’t explain the gaps. Instead of being a fanciful concept, AB intervention, in my opinion, best explains these otherwise inexplicable leaps to new species. After all, humans now manipulate animal DNA, perhaps in the same way that ABs engineered modern humans through gene-splicing.

While the cover-up of genetic history is serious, the distortion of our social evolution has even more significant implications for the future. It may be interesting to learn that our bodies contain alien genes, but it is even more important to understand how ABs have influenced our intellectual and psychological development. We need to know what roles they played—and still play, as a matter of fact—in wars, technology, social unrest, and knowledge restriction.

The large majority of humans believe they and all other life-forms were directly created by a distant divine god, or gods. They consider their religious texts to be direct communication from that sacred source. This belief system has kept humans from assuming responsibility for the future of this planet and our species. It also supports attacks on those who believe differently.

The new understanding of history in this book and similar publications will make it possible for humans to rid themselves of guilt and the fear of divine retribution. The prevailing notion of an ultimate creator has kept us from realizing our true potential. Supernaturalism chains us to a very limited and inaccurate understanding of other realms and our interaction with them.

The following section details a brief case explaining why we need books like Chouinard’s to help us gain a more realistic understanding of our genetic past, our social evolution, and the morphing of physical AB encounters into a supernaturalistic cosmology. We need a new way to think about what we are and how we fit into a multibeing, multidimensional universe.

DISCOVERING THE EVIDENCE

An updated story of humans on planet Earth is emerging from research that supports the AB intervention theory. However, our current knowledge is only a fragment of what will eventually be known. People who claim to have figured out all the unknowns are egoists with no desire for truth.

The first big gap in knowledge is when and how life began on this planet. The planet’s birth is estimated to have happened about 4.5 billion years ago. Most scientists estimate the first single cells arose 3.8 billion years ago. However, many details concerning these events are unknown. Without access to records lost under molten rock, in the deep sea, and under shifting continental plates, such estimates are speculative.

The same problem arises with any effort to define the Earth’s evolutionary tree. The ages of small organisms, plants, and animals are based on the rates of radioactive decay in certain isotopes or in the rock layers in which they are found. Carbon-14 dating is useful only for specimens less than fifty thousand years old. Thus, the evolutionary time line contains gaps that await new technologies to fill in the blanks.

With these caveats, I sketch out below a plausible time line of human history based on the work of Pat Chouinard and others. Drawing on their research and some of my own, we can construct a skeletal theory—leaving it open to new discoveries in science and history—of how humans reached a population of more than seven billion souls.

About six million years ago, a variety of hominids existed on Earth, in the view of most scientists. These creatures apparently changed at a gradual rate of evolution. It is likely that by 2.5 million BP the genus Homo appeared. Some of them evolved into Homo erectus types about 2 million BP. These erectus types had humanlike bodies and appear to be our direct Earth ancestors.

However, we must consider the possibility that extraplanetary scientists seeded life on Earth in its early geophysical conditions. Or, perhaps they simply took advantage of early species and experimented with them over time. Either way, the evidence suggests that ABs very likely played a role in creating modern species.

Between 300,000 and 200,000 BP, the slowly evolving erectus types—with tool-making and social skills—began to be replaced in an inexplicably short period of time by Homo sapiens arising in Africa. Ancient texts reviewed by Zecharia Sitchin and others, including myself, hold sufficient corroborative evidence to make the case that ABs could have been involved in this “leap” in the evolutionary time line.

About 100,000 BP, we have another “leap” over a “gap” in the fossil record. At that point, an even greater modification in the sapiens genome occurred, producing Homo sapiens sapiens. Fifty thousand years later, a diaspora of these modern humans took place. As they traveled across continents, they likely interbred with contemporary descendants of erectus types in different locations.

These erectus-sapiens matings may have produced Neanderthals and Denisovans. The former have been tentatively placed in Europe and the latter in East Asia. They appeared in our fossil record forty thousand years ago or earlier. That modern Homo sapiens sapiens interbred with these subspecies is validated by the discovery of their DNA in modern humans. Such common genes among all these groups may suggest that AB genes provide internal links among humanoids from the beginning.

During the sapiens sapiens diaspora described above and 11,500 BP (the date of the biblical flood, a global cataclysm), self-described, AB-assisted human communities arose on various parts of the planet. Legends of Lemuria, Atlantis, and other sites noted for highly developed civilizations fit into that time frame.

This is the first period of apparent miscegenation (not genetic manipulation) between “the gods” and sapiens, resulting in AB-human hybrids. A variety of AB-human genotypes were produced, a result of different kinds of ABs having intercourse with humans. These hybrids may include some of the “giants of old” discussed in this book among the subspecies of the general category we call Homo sapiens.

At the same time, aboriginal sapiens sapiens kept to themselves in Africa and several more isolated locations. Their offspring, who did not interbreed with descendants of independent erectus-sapiens types, generally had a smaller body type. These include various groups of pygmies, like the so-called “hobbits” discovered in Indonesia in 2003, dated to at least 18,000 BP.

These aboriginals who escaped the later widespread miscegenation between ABs and Homo sapiens sapiens were able to maintain cultures that produced more objective views of the AB gods. Their legends of “the gods” were formed at a distance, in contrast to biblical and other texts describing intimate, ongoing AB-human relations.

Readers must keep in mind that the evidence for the above dates is sparse. This means that these descriptions of human history from 250,000 to 12,000 years ago are based on inferences from many different sources. Fortunately, recent fossil and genetic analyses support the idea of AB intervention during that period.

As you progress through the pages of this book, you will find references to the “sky people” or extraterrestrials, in many of the accounts. Keep the ideas of my foreword in mind as you read these myths and stories, and you may begin to see how credible the idea of AB intervention really is.

PARTIAL FOSSIL RECORD

The fossil record as we currently know it shows that our hominid ancestors slowly evolved over six million years. They coped with harsh conditions with little genetic mutation. Yet, between three hundred thousand and two hundred thousand years ago, a nimble and intelligent new species, Homo sapiens, appeared in Africa outside the erectus pace of genetic mutation.

After about one hundred thousand years or so, another anomalous gap occurred in the genetic evolution of the Homo genus. From that period Homo sapiens sapiens fossils can be found in Africa and beyond. With complex language and tools, these modern humans demonstrated greater mental skills with no increase in brain capacity.

Multiple sites illustrate this rapid divergence. Erectus-type stone hand axes and other tools that date to 700,000 BP were found in South Africa and on Crete (an island separated from Africa for millions of years). Similar simple tools were still in use 130,000 years ago, while Homo sapiens sapiens had advanced to building ships and sailing them along far-ranging seafaring routes.

This fossil record is consistent with Sumern and Hebrew texts that describe AB upgrades of humans. The rabbinical scribes at the time of the Babylonian exile (the sixth century BCE) still accepted the historical claims that the Elohim (ABs) had raised humans above the other animals on Earth. Genesis 1:26 “let them have dominion over (all animals and the earth).”

INDIRECT DNA CORROBORATION

The genetic changes producing Homo sapiens occurred in a very short period rather than over hundreds of thousands or millions of years. This gap in human evolution requires an extraordinary explanation. External genetic manipulation could have created a new species such as Homo sapiens. Genesis 1:26 offers evidence of just that: “the Elohim said, Let us make man in our Image.”

No male Y-chromosome analysis to date places an Adam coexistent with Eve. The Genesis texts suggest the Adam event occurred prior to Eve. If male AB colonists provided Y chromosomes that morphed erectus types into Homo sapiens, this order makes sense. The so-called Eve creation event could have been after the Adam event if its AB-human genes were then spliced, either in vivo or in vitro, into host cells of only a few female Homo sapiens.

From the analysis of mitochondrial DNA, researchers now believe that Homo sapiens sapiens came from only a few females in Africa between one hundred thousand and two hundred thousand years ago. This dating of the Eve event is consistent with the fossil record and the Annunaki/human time line first publicized by Sitchin. It also precedes the date (between 100,000 and 50,000 BP) that has been validated for Homo sapiens sapiens’ arrival in Europe and Central Asia.

Other genetic events also have links with our hypothetical story line. The advent of various blood-type genes also coincides with periods of AB involvement in human history since the Cataclysm. Survivors of Noah’s Ark in the Turkic-Mesopotamian region have a higher-than-average type B percentage than the people living in adjacent areas, who are mainly type O. Other blood types’ appearances coincide with reported AB interventions.

The first phase in AB intervention in hominid development was impersonal, technical gene-splicing. But, as Homo sapiens quickly evolved physically and mentally, their interactions with ABs became more personal, leading to Homo sapiens sapiens.

Cohabitation between AB colonizers and humans occurred during both the pre- and post-Cataclysm eras. Humans who labored for the ABs or became members of their households obviously learned a lot from them. But, the phase known as Exile from Eden is a turning point. Humans lost direct access to AB knowledge and technologies.

AFTER THE GLOBAL CATACLYSM

After 11,500 BP, we move from fragmented evidence of our early history to a fairly good sample of documentation that still exists. These sources need only be looked at through a new set of lenses (ancient astronaut and AB intervention theories). By 11,500 BP, advanced civilizations around the globe had been destroyed, leaving only small groups of survivors who had lost their technologies, habitats, and social cohesion.

Accounts from around the world describe how ABs landed back on Earth after the volcanic explosions, nuclear-winter-type darkness, earthquakes, regional floods, mountain upheavals, loss of species, and devastation of human cultures. Hebrew, Babylonian, and other regional texts describe assistance from ABs following a great flood or deluge, including advice on crops and animal husbandry.

Lucky human survivors received technical assistance in several key locations around the globe, including Mesopotamia, western China, India, the Andes, and possibly others. In less than two thousand years, sophisticated cultures blossomed with AB technical assistance at several locations. Pre-Cataclysm human memories that survived were fragmented and often vague but included recollections of pre-Cataclysm AB involvement with humans. Some of these memories hint of high civilizations such as Lemuria or Atlantis, or special places like Eden or Shambhala.

The reader will note that this history is inconsistent with what we are taught in school. Academics assume that ten thousand years ago (after the abrupt, cataclysmic ending of the Ice Age), humans had evolved only to the “caveman” stage. But for decades now, each year brings increasing discoveries of unexpectedly sophisticated human activities quickly after the Cataclysm. Fortunately, we also still have bits of the Atlantean and complementing memories that can be verified with research, as discussed in this book.

HOW DOES ATLANTIS FIT?

Does the story of Atlantis fit into the time line described above? Some writers using extradimensional sources have proposed the Atlantean civilization enjoyed a long history, perhaps almost extending one hundred thousand years. As squishy as such a claim may be, it is interesting that the above evidence points to Homo sapiens sapiens about that time. If correct, it would also correlate with other so-called Atlantean “memories.”

One belief is that the “gods” at the beginning of Atlantean history were super beings who directly ruled humans. The founder of Atlantis, Poseidon, was alleged to be one of them. Thus, his ten direct offspring (the oldest being Atlas) with the human Cleito were hybrids who were later known as the rulers of Atlantis. These ideas are consistent with AB interventions in the fossil and DNA record described earlier, including evidence of giants.

Other subjective material suggests these AB-hybrid rulers made possible the ascent of the first utopian civilization among humans. While initially ruled by these demigods, the human citizens were largely independent and involved in self-government. Immigrants from Atlantis may have taken this ideal to other humans before the sinking of its final remnants during the Cataclysm. Indian, European, Middle Eastern, and American legends still carry accounts of such utopian practices.

However, fragmented accounts also include descriptions of conflict among Poseidon’s siblings and cohorts. Their internecine AB wars are also consistent with worldwide origin myths, including those depicted in the Hebrew Bible.

Of course, pre-Cataclysm cultures were decimated when civilizations everywhere suffered almost a total loss of their populations, structures, and technologies. However, images of Atlantis survived in the minds of survivors, and were passed on to the Egyptians, and then to the Greeks. They included tales of the giants described later in this book.

With the loss of most of the Atlantean civilization, except for a few escapees who scattered across India, Europe, North Africa, and parts of the Americas, the human story becomes one of new AB efforts to revive human communities. But those efforts were a double-edged sword—not unlike the results of advanced European nations colonizing indigenous cultures around the world over the past five hundred years.

POST-ATLANTEAN CIVILIZATION

The post-Cataclysm stories, as in Noah’s tale, describe AB assistance that helped humans rebuild. The downside was a return of AB colonial rule, as hinted at in the Garden of Eden story. Just as in modern European colonies, the revival of human culture did not escape the “subjugation/self-deprecation syndrome” imposed by the ABs.

Several survival accounts (Sumerian, Hebrew, Sanskrit, and African) describe conflicts among the “gods” affecting their human tribes. This off-planet discord caused the AB colonizers to quit their overt Earth rule before 4000 BP. They left humans to their own devices or under kings or queens with direct AB bloodlines. Lists of Egyptian rulers track this shift: ABs gave way to fifth-millennium hybrid kings, followed by the pharaohs, who imitated and claimed to be descendants of AB gods.

The first semi-AB kings and priests turned their regencies into sects to manipulate people into continuing worship of their absentee AB godparents. These cults stifled intellectual and social progress, and drove modern human civilization into its first Dark Ages. Squabbling kings and priests perpetuated religious wars humans fought under the flags of their AB overlords for millennia.

Pyramids or ziggurats were built (or rebuilt) after the Cataclysm, when ABs rendered technical assistance to human survivors. During that period, the AB custom of intercourse with humans resumed. Biblical accounts note that AB-human mating created a bloodline of hybrid giants active as late as King David’s rule, three thousand years ago.

The AB domestic structures described in the previous paragraph deteriorated after the overt withdrawal of ABs from human societies. By the fifth century BCE (ABs had been absent for a millennium or more), Greek historian Herodotus, describing the cradle of Western Civilization, reported the ziggurats had fallen into ruin.

As centuries passed without a return of the ABs, the weakening bloodlines began to lose their spell over their subjects. To continue control over new generations, loyal priests began to reshape the historical facts about ABs into supernatural terms. Inventing the idea of a supernatural heaven accessible only through them gave the priests an advantage over the masses. Cult leaders, including Roman popes, declared only they had a divine channel to receive messages from the departed AB gods.

In this manner, “supernatural religions” were created to replace the AB-based cults. This sleight-of-hand, shifting the human focus from real ABs to unreal gods, kept humans under the psychological sway of authoritarian leaders with their own political agendas. The result was centuries of sectarian warfare, crusades, torture, inquisitions, and mind-control techniques developed by supernaturalistic theocrats.

For the last two millennia humans have struggled between this supernatural-based hypnotic state and our natural, biological impulse to realize our own potential. With humans mired in emotional stagnation largely of human creation, many of us are now (with input from enlightened ABs) trying to reveal the real story behind the cover-up.

In conclusion, I believe evidence compels us to accept being a hybrid species. As described above, this was well known by humans at the dawn of modern history. The knowledge was then distorted by kings and priests who took advantage of less aware humans, psychologically manipulating them to serve their economic and political agendas.

Chouinard’s valuable research into AB-human interbreeding, resulting in different types of humanoids, will fill in significant gaps in human history.

An interdisciplinary cosmologist and independent scholar, Paul Von Ward is internationally known for the hypothesis of advanced being intervention in human development; his theory of natural spirituality in an evolving, self-learning universe; and research on the survival of a personal soul genome. His current books on these topics are We’ve Never Been Alone, Our Solarian Legacy, and The Soul Genome. Paul’s academic background (Florida State, Harvard, and the University of Southern California, among others); his military, diplomatic, and international executive career; and his research on five continents keep his provocative publications grounded in emerging science and credible human experience.