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Whether it was Greek priest or Chinese ancient pharmacist; many had financial rewards for perpetuating myths.
Also, premodern societies also had a radically different way of looking at humanity's place in the cosmos. We tend to read texts like the Old Testament through a modern lens. Mircea Eliade pointed out that for archaic societies, their place in the cosmos was what was important; for our post enlightenment societies, it's our place in history that defines what was important. For the ancients, there was "this time" and "those times" (illo tempore - the time of myth). They didn't share our modern understanding of geology or evolution, so a dinosaur fossil was either a representative of a creature that may still exist somewhere -- or a remnant of illo tempore.
You have the same thing happening in the Old Testament texts: "there were giants in the earth in those days". Also, we see enormously long lifespans in the Bible's illo tempore: Adam living to 936, Noah 950. After the flood, you don't see claims of this length of life - so the flood was a kind of dividing line between "those times" and "this time". Illlo tempore was a golden age in these cultures, when people were bigger and more powerful and lived longer, than they do in our times.
Also, premodern societies also had a radically different way of looking at humanity's place in the cosmos. We tend to read texts like the Old Testament through a modern lens. Mircea Eliade pointed out that for archaic societies, their place in the cosmos was what was important; for our post enlightenment societies, it's our place in history that defines what was important. For the ancients, there was "this time" and "those times" (illo tempore - the time of myth). They didn't share our modern understanding of geology or evolution, so a dinosaur fossil was either a representative of a creature that may still exist somewhere -- or a remnant of illo tempore.
You have the same thing happening in the Old Testament texts: "there were giants in the earth in those days". Also, we see enormously long lifespans in the Bible's illo tempore: Adam living to 936, Noah 950. After the flood, you don't see claims of this length of life - so the flood was a kind of dividing line between "those times" and "this time". Illlo tempore was a golden age in these cultures, when people were bigger and more powerful and lived longer, than they do in our times.
In my 72 years I have seen many changes. Today the world is not the same as when I grew up. I shot on my HS rifle team and carried my gun to school in my own home made mahogany gun case that I also kept my shooting jacket, glove, sling and extra sights in. The small kids on my school bus used to use my gun case as a foot stool!
In the 1950's you could go to the grocery store and buy cyanide to exterminate bees. Young adults rode, sometimes standing up, in the back of pickup trucks. Seat belts were not introduced until 1958.
Thirty years before that time people could go to the hardware store or even the grocery store and buy dynamite!
How we look at this today is totally different than how we looked at it back then. It is impossible for contemporary young adults to understand how those days represented 'normal' in the lives of their parents and grandparents.
Ive never understood why there is so much controversy and debate on whether these giants existed or not...the way I look it...big deal, giants existed at one time...so what?!
Because it challenges the theory of Evolution & there has been a plethora of litigation, even in the Supreme Courts; regarding the teaching of Creationism vs Evolution.
There was a debunked Giant skeleton discovery, known as the Cardiff Giant hoax in 1869 in N.Y. The guy made it out of plaster or something weird like that. There was some Saudi Arabia photoshopped excavation site hoax as well.
But there are many more verifiable accounts. A hoax does not mean the Giant skeletons have been debunked. I use the Newspaper Archives website through my local public library a lot to find unadulterated, local news. Unfortunately, if I were to provide a link to the results, it would be paywalled but here are just a few of the reports I’ve found, posted here on a different thread last year:
Quote:
Originally Posted by coschristi
Monmouth Daily Atlas, Friday, May 6, 1921, Monmouth, Illinois
“SKELETON OF GIANT FOUND ...skeleton of a prehistoric giant found in a gravel bed of a farm near here” (Arm bones were reported as being twice as large as those of an average man.)
Rhineland New North, Thursday, July 23, 1908, Rhinelander, Wisconsin
“The skeleton was nearly eight feet in height and the arms extended several inches below the hips.”(Near Pelican Lake).
Sandusky Evening Star, Wednesday, April 6, 1904, Sandusky, Ohio
“GIANT SKELETON FOUND A giant skeleton has been unearthed at the VVoolerton farm, ...skeleton measures eight feet from the top of the head to the ankles, the feet being missing. The skull is huge...skeleton was one of several found buried in the form of a wheel under a mound, with the feet toward the hub.”
Many articles state that landowners have elected to involve the Smithsonian & that the Smithsonian took over the sites but the Smithsonian denies any knowledge or involvement.
I have to wonder at this website because of the other articles in the right hand column. So, the article linked below may/may not be correct. It sounds like it might be OK.
During the court case, new elements were brought to light as several Smithsonian whistleblowers admitted to the existence of documents that allegedly proved the destruction of tens of thousands of human skeletons reaching between 6 feet and 12 feet in height, a reality mainstream archeology cannot admit to for different reasons, claims AIAA spokesman, James Churchward.
...
A turning point of the court case was when a 1.3-meter long human femur bone was shown as evidence in court of the existence of such giant human bones.
The evidence came as a blow to the Smithsonian’s lawyers as the bone had been stolen from the Smithsonian by one of their high-level curators in the mid-1930’s who had kept the bone all his life and which had admitted on his deathbed in writing of the undercover operations of the Smithsonian
How we look at this today is totally different than how we looked at it back then. It is impossible for contemporary young adults to understand how those days represented 'normal' in the lives of their parents and grandparents.
I turned 72 in January. They had an X-ray machine in shoe stores in the early 1950s to check the fit, and I had a toy containing radium paint that you could look into and see the flashes as the products of radioactive decay hit the cells of your retina. Parents kept kids indoors during summer polio season, and some wouldn't allow their kids to eat ice cream because there was a rumor going around that polio was caused by ice cream. The specters of atomic war and the iron lung filled our nightmares.
We're haunted by different specters today. It's a lot harder to believe there are monsters or giants beyond the range of mountains we see in the distance, or undiscovered lands beyond the western sea where strange tribes of dog-headed men live. Yet we continue to look for mysteries and speculate about them. In spite of our supposed sophistication and knowledge of the world, we remain a myth-making species -- and I suspect we always will be. We need our tales of monsters and giants, in some strange way it's part of what makes us human.
And by telling the young folks around the fire how it was way back in the 1950s, we're planting the seeds of new myths. Assuming any of them are actually listening. One might say the 1950s are the illo tempore of our generation.
I turned 72 in January. They had an X-ray machine in shoe stores in the early 1950s to check the fit, and I had a toy containing radium paint that you could look into and see the flashes as the products of radioactive decay hit the cells of your retina. Parents kept kids indoors during summer polio season, and some wouldn't allow their kids to eat ice cream because there was a rumor going around that polio was caused by ice cream. The specters of atomic war and the iron lung filled our nightmares.
We're haunted by different specters today. It's a lot harder to believe there are monsters or giants beyond the range of mountains we see in the distance, or undiscovered lands beyond the western sea where strange tribes of dog-headed men live. Yet we continue to look for mysteries and speculate about them. In spite of our supposed sophistication and knowledge of the world, we remain a myth-making species -- and I suspect we always will be. We need our tales of monsters and giants, in some strange way it's part of what makes us human.
And by telling the young folks around the fire how it was way back in the 1950s, we're planting the seeds of new myths. Assuming any of them are actually listening. One might say the 1950s are the illo tempore of our generation.
I also turned 72 in January!
What amazes me is that we, as humans, cannot agree on what we just saw minutes ago and we expect that there is 'truth' in what people orally passed down thousands of years ago. Of course our technology is changing all that; we are storing images of everything as well as sounds and voice. Our world gets smaller by the minute as we sacrifice privacy for information. If we continue down the current path our offspring will never have to rely on campfire stories. They will know exactly what happened or what did not happen.
During our 72 years we have witnessed many of the changes. Knowledge replaced myths.
What amazes me is that we, as humans, cannot agree on what we just saw minutes ago and we expect that there is 'truth' in what people orally passed down thousands of years ago. Of course our technology is changing all that; we are storing images of everything as well as sounds and voice. Our world gets smaller by the minute as we sacrifice privacy for information. If we continue down the current path our offspring will never have to rely on campfire stories. They will know exactly what happened or what did not happen.
During our 72 years we have witnessed many of the changes. Knowledge replaced myths.
I have to wonder at this website because of the other articles in the right hand column. So, the article linked below may/may not be correct. It sounds like it might be OK.
It is actually satire but there is an interesting story behind it. It was published not long after the “Search for the Lost Giants “ TV show that aired on History Channel. The group that provided the evidence for the show was clearly not amused by the non-coincidental appearance of the article:
Quote:
Smithsonian Institution is continually linked to giant skeletons, or at least the lack of them. Most of the reports end in something like this: “The bones were shipped to the Smithsonian Institution for further study.” This ongoing problem of the “missing bones” has become a matter of legend, as there are dozens of reports of the Smithsonian receiving artifacts and giant skeletons. Today, however, they deny their existence. We investigate this thoroughly in our book, and conclude that a cover-up may have been instigated in the late 1800s because it did not fit in with their new ideologies of ‘Manifest Destiny’ and ‘Evolution.
... Now is the time for academia to take a look at this data, and to expose what really happened at the Smithsonian; for an important chapter in human history is on the verge of being lost forever.
I can attest to this. I wish it wasn’t paywalled so I could link directly but it’s stated over & over & over in the newspapers; “Forwarded to the Smithsonian...”, “Smithsonian team arrives ...” From the 1840s to the 1930s; there are hundreds of instances.
An interesting find is; “American Antiquities & Discoveries In The West” written in 1834 by a Josiah Priest.
He was a writer, who researched the Native American mound burial sites & then conclluded that these mounds could be traced back to a lost race that had inhabited America even before the Native Americans & possibly from just after the Great Flood.
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