Hidden in local archives and dusty Smithsonian reports are accounts that are all but forgotten to North American historians and scientists: accounts of giant (7 to 9 feet tall) skeletons discovered all across the country, many buried under earthen mounds. Some photographs still exist, but curiously, the skeletons do not.
On today's episode of the Truth Perspective we interview Jim Viera and Hugh Newman, authors of
Giants on Record: America's Hidden History, Secrets in the Mounds and the Smithsonian Files. We discuss their research: the archaeological finds, the implications for our views on human history, and the nature of the apparent cover-up.
You can find Jim and Hugh's Facebook page
here, and Hugh's website
here.
Running Time: 01:27:55
Download: MP3
Here's the transcript of the show:
Harrison: Welcome back to The Truth Perspective everyone. I'm your host, Harrison Koehli. Joining me, it's been a while, Beau Christensen's joining us.
Beau: Hello.
Harrison: And we've got William Barbé in the studio as well.
William: Hello everyone.
Harrison: Today we are pleased to have joining us Jim Vieira and Hugh Newman. Jim and Hugh are the authors of Giants On Record, America's Hidden History, Secrets in the Mounds, and the Smithsonian Files. This book came out in October 2015 I believe and we're just getting around to it now. As soon as it came out I saw it but I didn't get around to reading it at the time. I put it on my Amazon wish list so finally we got a copy and managed to dig into it. There is some amazing stuff in it.
The reason I was looking out for this book was a couple of years ago Jim did a TedX talk that was going around the internet for a while which was really intriguing. We'll be getting into some of the stuff that he talked about there and that Jim and Hugh both write about in the book.
So, to start out with, welcome to the show Jim and Hugh. It's great to have you on.
Jim: Thanks a lot guys.
Hugh: Yeah, thanks a lot. Appreciate it.
Harrison: To start out with, maybe each of you could tell us just a little bit about how you came to this subject. I know there are a lot of subjects in the book but what led you in this direction, to eventually write this book. Maybe we can start with Jim and then go to Hugh?
Jim: Sure. I'm a stonemason by trade. I studied Native American history and civilizations and tribes around the country here in the U.S. for about 25 years and I was just fascinated with Native American stonework. It isn't very well known about in the eastern half of the country. We know about all the kivas and the cliff dwellings out in the southwest, but there were hillside forts and 55-foot stone mounds in Ohio and just really intriguing stone structures.
I ended up finding a lot of accounts in New England in the documents that talked about stone ruins existing before the colonists showed up and by virtue of that search I started to look through town and county histories and I started to tangentially run into these bizarre giant skeleton accounts all around New England and I found they were often mentioned by professionals of the time, scientists, doctors and antiquarians, giving matter-of-fact descriptions of enormous skeletons often obscurely buried in these documents like town and county history.
So, I would delve into this and I would share my information with different people, with professionals and I'd often get responses like "Those are exaggerations and hoaxes. It was the folklore of the time" or "they were mastodon bones" or whatever. I didn't find that. I found that these were human burials uniquely and well-described human burials, like seating postures and anatomic anomalies like the jaw bone would fit over the face.
So, I just gathered steam and I met Hugh and we got together with Ross Hamilton, Micah Ewers, other researchers, and just compiled essentially a thousand of these accounts in ancient America of 7-foot-tall skeletons and then about 500 more worldwide, especially in Britain, Ireland, Italy and France. The whole thing is fascinating in a stunning alternative history, if you will.
Harrison: Hugh, what about you?
Hugh: Yeah for sure. The giants are something that's been in my childhood really. I was obsessed with Cyclops and things like this, but really it's to do with the megaliths because in Britain many of the megalithic sites, which I've been researching for many, many years, have legends and stories of giants associated with them. Even the founding of Britain has giant stories with Brutus defeating the great giant Gogmagog down on the south coast.
I was kind of aware of this. I felt like it was all just legends and stories for a while but then when I went to America and I actually met Jim, I was actually exploring and researching all the megalithic sites in New England right near where he lived funnily enough. At that time, I went to look at the mound culture sites and I came across the work of Ross Hamilton and to some extent David Hatcher Childress as well.
I was actually staying in David Childress' house when Ross's book kind of fell off the shelf called A Tradition of Giants. That was back in something like 2006, 2007. I'd kind of been researching. I knew about the giants in America but that book really opened the door for me and it made me realize that this was a real phenomenon and it utterly blew my mind. I read the whole thing in one sitting and it really woke me up to the reality of these giants.
Then I investigated some accounts down in El Rancho in California and other places and eventually I met Jim at a conference that I organized back in 2011 in Glastonbury, Connecticut. We did a Megalithomania conference there. We were talking a lot about giants and Ross Hamilton, the legendary author of Tradition of Giants - who by the way we call the godfather of Giantology for good reason - was speaking there by Skype. I met Jim there and from then on we realized we had to get our teeth into this and we decided to put a book together. This was several years ago, about 2012/2013 that we really decided to do it.
But then the History Channel kind of jumped in with Jim and did the Search for Lost Giants TV show. It delayed the book a little bit but it correlated and came together and now, since the book has come out, more accounts have been discovered in North America and it's causing a bit of a sensation. We've even got lots of sceptics really angry at us, which is a good thing. Now one of them is actually quite nice to us apparently.
It really did open the door, that book, and that TV show. It really pushed it into the mainstream. And now we're looking at Britain, we're looking around the world and all these stories in the Bible, the myths and legends, there's a huge reality there. The reason I'm fascinated by it - not just because they're tall people, that isn't particularly interesting in itself - but the fact that this has been erased from the historical record. So why is that? What's that all about? What is the reasoning behind that?
So, this is something we investigate from that angle and also the relationship to these sites because in America you've got all the mound culture sites and the majority of the discoveries of the accounts we looked at are found within these mounds or nearby or sometimes related to some stone site as well as a few connections in New England and other places. But all around the world megaliths are connected with the giants. So, this is something we want to push forward with and see what we come up with.
Harrison: Well to get into some of the specifics for our listeners who haven't read the book or seen any of the videos, can you describe for us what the typical account of these giants is? So, when you say "giant" what do you mean and what kind of remains or evidence have these people found? What do you see in the historical records that you guys have discovered?
William: One thing I'd like to mention before we get into that is what I found really interesting in the way you guys wrote the book; that you looked at a lot of these case histories and you also tried to weed out what were the fake news and stuff and I really appreciated that.
Jim: Thank you. We continue to do that with the fake skull that goes around the internet, the Smithsonian destruction of skeletons report that was obviously false. This is a part of the whole dynamic across the board with human behaviour. I found that agenda makes you stupid and a lot of people have agendas. "We can live in this alternate universe in an echo chamber and whistle past the graveyard and not look at the other side of the argument."
For me personally, I engage sceptics who are reasonable, who aren't A-holes. I spoke at Andy White's anthropology class a couple of months ago. I work with professionals. I work with teams of archaeologists in digs for my shows. We just did a new Roanoke special that's coming out at the end of the month. I have a really good relationship with a lot of professionals and I bring it to the toughest critics and we debate these controversial subjects.
But if you don't look at the full breadth of an issue and actively try to debunk things that have no veracity, then you're just kind of a snake oil salesman in my estimation. So Hugh, myself, these people we work with like Ross Hamilton, Andrew Collins, Greg Little, objective, reasonable people, who are looking at a very controversial topic. To address what was reported and found I'll say it's really stunning. Heads of anthropology and archaeology in the '20s, '30s, '40s and '50s along with the Smithsonian ethnologists at the turn of the century, are reporting 7-foot tall skeletons routinely, 7'6", 7'8", over 8-foot tall, giving dimensions in femur measurements, 28" inches, circumferences of skulls like 36" in the Smithsonian ethnology report. 1873 is a really interesting one.
One of the issues is a lot of these crumble to dust. They were in ancient tombs opened up and they talked about the science if we pulled the bones out and they crumble to dust. That was thrown back at me, like I made that up, frankly, so I didn't have to show evidence of giants with my old Ted Talk thing. But the honest truth is, this is from town and county histories and the Smithsonian ethnology reports talk about this. Their own scientists talk about that.
But there are remains that were put on display, the town is abuzz and it just seems like it happened at the wrong time. These burial mounds sat there for thousands and thousands of years, obviously, natives never touched them because they were so revered. And then the Europeans came and they just destroyed and desecrated them. You can't destroy and celebrate a culture at the same time and it wasn't part of evolution. The idea of giants, Native Americans that were sophisticated is something nobody in power wanted to see. They wanted to portray them as savage and disorganized.
The whole thing has ended up being a conundrum and we're trying to piece together the distant echoes of the past with all these records.
Beau: Yeah, that's the one thing that I'd like to hear more about because first of all it's confusing why they were so interested in hiding the true history of things from us. So obviously if all this is true and there certainly seems to be a lot of evidence that it is, it gets into an alternative theory of history that changes a lot of things and makes things very interesting from a factual point of view. Maybe you guys can talk about that some more.
Jim: Yeah, I'll jump in and then I'll let Hugh give his thoughts just because I like to make the point that there are conspiracies in the world. There's no question about it. There's ruthless oil companies and whacked-out politicians and sociopaths running corporations and everything. But in the academic world, it is not a vast conspiracy. It couldn't even be a vast conspiracy. With these independent men and women just doing their job, the problem that I see is the limits of science. What is considered evidence? You get into this realm and we could talk about some things, but I'll get into it with my friends who are anthropologists and archaeologists and I'll just say "Hey, there's evidence mounting that there was a cataclysm, a flood in a previous era and then the mind goes blank. It's like I just told them the earth was 2,000 years old or I just saw a dinosaur. I've got unicorns grazing on the lawn.
So there is no intellectual curiosity to drive beyond that point.
Beau: Yeah.
Jim: Which I understand. It's like the scientific world, I can dig in the ground and analyze. So there is no looking at all the things we're talking about. It's really a matter of what is considered evidence also. Oral traditions all around the planet are telling the same story; the Rosicrucians, Free Masons, the great mystics, religious documents. I'll talk to wisdom keepers all around the planet and they'll tell the same alternative story.
It's funny - I'll try to be succinct here - all the entities I just mentioned, Rosicrucians, Free Masons, oral traditions, all say there was a great flood, a cometary impact. They all fear the broom star. There were giants and little people as part of a lost civilization, Atlantis. Edgar Cayce says it. The rest of them say it. It's just fascinating how they were all saying the same thing, comparative mythologists would say the same thing but then you have this vastly different story, scientific story that tried to wrestle away the throne from religion at the end of the 1800s.
So, it's not Monsanto involved in a conspiracy. It's like an academic filtration that takes place. Human nature is in there and these subjects have been portrayed as ridiculous, religious-based and kooky if you can get near them. I will say that I'm a recovering Catholic. I'm not a Christian. I believe the Bible has a lot of documented truth in it and I believe the epic of Gilgamesh does and the Torah and the Midrash and the mystics. So, I'm not coming from any agenda. I just want to find the truth of the matter.
Harrison: Hugh, did you want to give your two cents on that?
Hugh: Yeah, I think you were asking about why it's been covered up, why it seems to have been sidelined. It seems like there's evidence of a conspiracy to cover up this whole idea of these giant skeletons, these giant people existing in pre-history. That's something we tackle in the book, in the "Smithsonian Files" chapter. Originally before we wrote the book we were thinking like a lot of other people, like there was an organized conspiracy to close it down. When we did the research, we looked through all the old Smithsonian journals, we do find little bits of evidence of that and it's worrying that these high level, influential academic institutions don't mention the giants even though they discovered them in their own annual reports and write about them in their reports and in their mail and other such things.
We've got 17 accounts from the Smithsonian themselves, between 7 and 8 feet tall and then at the end of the book that most of them are in, in the conclusion there's not one mention of them. So, this is something we talked about recently with some other people and it really is glaring. It really does make you question why they don't mention it when it's such an amazing discovery they're finding over and over again.
But when you look at the politics and the history and culture of what was happening during the 1800s in America, especially the late 1800s, Darwin's theory of evolution was taking shape. So, the discovery of giant skulls with a 36-40 inch circumference that were several thousand years old, didn't really fit in with evolution, things like this. Also, there was manifest destiny, so there was this whole movement of sidelining the Native Americans, putting them on reservations and stopping them moving forward with their lives and continuing their lifestyle as they had been for thousands of years.
So, when you're finding Native American giants with skeletons with huge skulls, which means bigger brains, which means they were super intelligent, it does not fit with manifest destiny, with trying to sideline them and steal their land and kill them and give them disease and things like this. So, there were political agendas in place as they started finding these giant skeletons and bones and skulls throughout North America, so it became a problem for them. It was an ongoing giant problem.
So, we withdrew back from sharing conspiracy constantly and actually just put the information together in the order it all happened. And you can see there's something quite dark going on there. Whether it's a big organized conspiracy, I don't think it is that. I think it's just a sequence of events linked with political agendas, also with agendas that actually spread around the world. It was really in the early 1900s when Aleš Hrdlička came into power at the Smithsonian and he was a pre-Nazi eugenicist. He was into claiming anyone who wasn't white was far less superior than them and so on and so forth.
So, it became this racist agenda that came in with it. And that doesn't fit when these so-called Native Americans were actually probably superior to modern humans at the time they were being discovered. So, there's a lot going on there. We tackle it at length and thoroughly in the "Smithsonian Files" chapter. That's the one to read if you want to see the full story of what happened.
One other thing quickly, in 1990 the NAGPRA, the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act came into force and that removed any grave goods, giant skeletons, bones, anything, mummies they found in the southwest, from public display. So all evidence is gone. So, that was another level of removing all the evidence as well. There's more to it than meets the eye, let's just say it like that.
Harrison: To me it sounds like what you guys are saying, during the times when these reports were actually coming in there were historically valid reasons, from one perspective, for why these things would be either ignored or covered up to an extent and then that puts us in a particular situation today where because these things weren't focused on at that time and made into these historical, scientific precedents, today what we're left with are historical anecdotes. You can't go to the Smithsonian and see any of these skeletons still on display so the scientists today don't have the evidence to look at now, so all they hear is "Oh there were giants" and then they think that's ridiculous, like you were saying Jim, like unicorns grazing on the lawn.
So, there's no real incentive to look at it and there's also the fact that even if the people back then weren't thinking of it at the time, today if this were to become big news, where the scientific community actually took it seriously, there are huge implications that, like you said, challenge some very fundamental beliefs about history, the course of humanity, what was actually going on 12,000 years ago. Maybe we can go in that direction, but to get there, I want to ask about the kind of timeline of events here.
We've got all of these accounts of giant skeletons, 7-8 feet tall many of them, whose remains are found. Now I know that back then they didn't have the technology that we have today to do dating analyses on these samples. Is there any indication of how old these skeletons were? And a second, related part of that question - I know there are some accounts of colonists coming over and actually encountering live giants. I was wondering if you could reconcile these two. When were these giants actually there? Did they ever actually leave? When did they disappear? Maybe you can clear that up for us.
Jim: I would say all of the earlier explorers, the famous ones, Coronado, Magellan, John Smith in Virginia, Vespucci, from Patagonia to Virginia, they all encountered enormous native peoples, described between 7 and 9 feet, if you can believe it. Tuscaloosa in Alabama was almost 8-foot-tall and his son the same size. These trained observers kept encountering giants and tribes of natives that were particularly tall. Thomas Jefferson, we write in the book, he meets Osage warriors six-and-a-half to seven feet tall and they were described as noble and stately, handsome, awe-inspiring and massive. We're not talking skinny NBA players, just huge, robust, kind of beings or people being described.
The remains go back from 1700 to probably 1,000 BC, something like that. We know the Adena people were particularly tall. The royal class elongated their skulls. These are the skeletons we find in the mounds in the eastern part of the country, the oldest mounds being the Adena ones I believe, well over seven feet tall.
And that poses the question, where do these tall ones come from. There are different stories. There's the idea that among the Native Americans there was a royal class of more benevolent giant people, the legend of the tall ones, the great civilizers who showed up after the flood 12,000 years ago. And then they speak of a pre-flood malevolent race of giants all around the world. The native peoples talk about them being cannibalistic and fierce with red hair. We get the Lovelock caves stories and the myths and legends. It's just a wild thing with all these native people.
Now if you look at the history, we keep pushing back the dates in the United States, pre-Clovis, 15,000, 18,000 years, Cactus Hill, Virginia, Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Monteverdi, so the dates continue to go back and there are new theories being proposed, like the Solutrean hypothesis, that they came in boats or whatever. But there's a real mystery here because it doesn't seem like "out of Africa" is meshing with the story of giants. Was there a lost civilization that all these sources talk about? Was there an Atlantis that existed? And that's where everybody pinpoints Edgar Cayce and religious documents and Rosicrucians/Free Masons, that there were giant people, part of the civilization. Are they the ones that landed in the bible lands, did they land in the United States like the Native Americans would probably say?
So once again, what are you listening to as evidence? I understand trying to piece together this view of the past through anthropological study, through skeletal remains study, but at the same time you can't have co-existing realities - uniformitarianism and geology and catastrophism. It's obvious there have been catastrophic events. The two can co-exist and in anthropology we could have another story. Evolution is real I believe, but there's another story. There's genetic intervention, there's a curve ball somewhere.
They just found hobbits in Indonesia in 2002/2003. For me, all throughout history, when are we going to learn our lesson? Galileo was put under house arrest, Velikovsky with Worlds in Collision he was derided, Graham Hancock who I think is brilliant and reasonable and objective is always catching heat. He's being boxed like he's a pseudo-scientist or whatever. Pull your head out of your ass and look at these things objectively! To arrogantly say "We have all the answers" is idiotic. What do we have wrong? What's the 14% of theories that we have wrong? Let's look at them as a society.
Harrison: You mentioned some of the legends about the pre-flood giants being, let's say evil and cannibalistic but then you also mention the more recent giants, post-flood as being revered as the benevolent leaders, kind of a ruling class. Is there anything more to that? What else do the legends say because there seems to be that kind of shift in the thinking and the description of, let's say, the psychological nature of these giants.
Jim: Hugh, do you want to answer?
Hugh: I'll tackle this one. That's a very good point. There's a very jagged timeline really, trying to work out who was around when, especially in North America which we've been focusing on. But even before the so-called flood, in the book we talk about the Younger Dryas impact event. There is evidence in the oral tradition, the Native American folklore - and it's very strong, it's very realistic - of giants existing way back then at the same time as the megafauna.
And then we find mummified remains in America, often with red hair, some of them supposedly very tall. In Lovelock Cave you have the Spirit Cave Man, you have Kennewick Man - not mummified of course. Then you have discoveries that are 7,000 years old, the bog mummies of Florida and so forth.
So there is a timeline there. But interestingly, something that's strangely fascinating is that there's all these stories of cannibalism and it's really quite freaky when you get into it, even the Lovelock Cave mummies which could be several thousand years old. The Paiute tribe at the time - this was written about by Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins back in the 1800s. They talk about the legends of this race of red-haired people, vicious, tall people around the area of Humboldt Lake and Lovelock Cave who used to terrorize them and eat them, actually just eat them for breakfast and lunch and dinner and so forth. Yum-yum.
So you have this kind of problem that they had to deal with. And then you start looking into it and you realize many of the legends talk about this. They often talk about being attacked, being harassed by these man-eating giants all over the country, literally everywhere. Then there's actual evidence being found in Lovelock Cave of marrow being extracted from human bones and eating it, so we know it's a real thing. There are other pieces of archaeological evidence as well to back it up, all the way from Catalina Island to New England, to Maine we find examples.
So you have this thing of there being these benevolent elites who were probably the precursors of the Adena, probably coming down from Canada and the northwest, probably about 6,000 years ago, who were benevolent and they interbred between the elite tribes, the tribal leaders like the royal class who were less smart, intelligent. That they were passing on the knowledge and the sophistication is evident in the mound culture sites and in their world.
But at the same time there are these other groups that weren't like that. They were extremely tall. They were giants, but they were not anything like the Adena. They were cannibalistic. There would be great wars between different tribes. This is strange because you find the same kind of stories in the ancient texts, like the Old Testament, the Book of Enoch, the Book of Giants, even the Dead Sea Scrolls and things like this and other legends and other ancients texts around the world.
So there's a parallel. It's almost like there's two different classes of these giants. Then you look into it further and you find other types of giants. So it's quite confusing, but we try and tackle it, especially in the realm of North America and just beyond the borders, to give an understanding of what we know of now. More discoveries are probably being made as more DNA tests are done. But we know that there were the Patagonian giants that lived up to at least the 1500 or 1600s and they were photographed further south in Patagonia actually near Antarctica in 1901 by Captain Cook at the time.
So there is evidence of giants in different parts of the world living right up to that time. The DNA thing is really interesting. When we wrote the book, we did all the latest research with all the latest data on the DNA and the migrations and it's quite startling when you really think about it. But one of the things that I was very strongly convinced of is that there may have been an origin point within North America itself of these giants. That's what a lot of the legends state but still more research needs to be carried out there.
Harrison: What do you mean by an origin point? What might be the hypothesis on what is the nature of that origin point?
Hugh: This idea is called American Genesis. This is a theory that's been going around for about 15 years but never taken seriously. It was first put forward by Jeffrey Goodman. He's an archaeologist and actually wrote a book called American Genesis. It's been taken on by some other people, even one of the dental anthropologists we actually interview for the TV show and book. She's now talking about the beginning of man, as such, that it's not all out of Africa, 100,000 years ago. There's different points around the world where humans originated. They didn't necessarily come from one place, or from apes or whatever. There's a whole different theory coming forth.
And when you look at North America, there are skulls, modern human, almost Cro-Magnon type skulls that have been found in North America that date back 70,000 years. They date back 45,000 years before Cro-Magnon man emerged in Europe around 44,000 years ago.
So we have to question which way were the migrations going? Was there something going on in North America in deep pre-history and in Central and South America and Canada of course? The Pacific was linking up all these cultures to different parts of the world. There's certainly a lot of evidence for that now. The skulls in Brazil that go back nearly 100,000 years, there are cave paintings that are much older. So it really puts the whole idea of this deep pre-history into a whole different perspective.
Your question was what is this origin point. Well it really is just about where humans really came forth on the planet. Where they came from is a whole different matter because when you look at the legends in North America, crikey, it's like they almost came down from the sky and of course Thunderbirds transforming into humans and things like this. So it's kind of parallel somewhat with the Nephilim and the watchers and all that lot in the Bible. So it's strange but we tackle as much as we can in the final chapter of the book.
Jim: You almost have to concede with this alternative view, an almost supernatural creation of homo sapiens 200,000 years ago. That's what Edgar Cayce says. He said it took place in a continent in the middle of the Atlantic. You have the Australopithecines that turn into the Homo genus and you have Homo erectus in Dmanisi, Georgia that was found a couple of years ago, 1.8 million years old. So you have these theoretical precursors to Homo sapiens.
But there is a school of thought I was just reading about how Frances Crick, who came up with the godfather of the DNA genome, really thought there was some kind of almost alien intervention to create Homo sapiens. I really think that it wouldn't be American Genesis in my eyes. It would be out of Atlantis instead of out of Africa. That sounds bizarre but there's still a lot of questions about where Homo sapiens come from. There seems to be this bizarre acceleration that took place and then boom! You have this species that is far more advanced. It's like the DNA of Homo erectus or some of the cousins of humans might have been used in some genetic engineering experiment, if you will.
When you read the epic of Gilgamesh in the Bible, and the mystics, they're all talking about a supernatural founding of Homo sapiens. I know that's tough to swallow but it's across the board. It's in all the myths and legends and it's really an interesting thing to think about. You have so much stunning similarity around the world that is beyond coincidence. If you read Graham Hancock's stuff and you look at the Quetzalcoatls and the Viracochas and the great civilizers who showed up after the flood, they were all carrying these man bags, all around the world.
The similar iconography is well beyond just one item. They are the re-promulgators of civilization. They all have the same attributes. They're tall and bearded and they have these man bags. It's just astounding. You see six fingers and six toes all around the planet in statutes and petroglyphs and then in the Bible the giant of Gath has six fingers and six toes. It's that level of specificity through myth and legend, petroglyphs, religious documents, historical narratives, the mystics and the secret societies, that just stuns me.
The professional doesn't go around the world looking at these things. They're only looking to debunk. "Put the giant skull on my desk. If not, don't bother me." Whatever. I'm not dissing anyone. I'm just saying the whole breadth of this is so stunning and hidden in plain sight.
Harrison: Some of the things you guys were talking about there reminded me of something. I think I first read about this in a book by Laura Knight-Jadczyk - we've had her on the show a few times - called Comets and the Horns of Moses. She found a report about the Tunguska cometary explosion over Russia in I think 1906. Some scientists found that there were actually some genetic mutations that happened to the life forms around that area. In the book, it sparks this idea that cometary bombardments can induce these genetic changes and for me that raises the question because you guys mentioned all these flood myths and the idea of the cometary bombardment around 12,000 years ago that caused this massive destruction over North America. I know Graham Hancock wrote about it in his latest book and Firestone and West wrote about it in their book from several years ago.
So we've got these ideas of cometary bombardments that have been largely ignored in the academic world, but there is a small group of scientists who are working on this, doing very serious and very good work on it. Then we've got this idea of evolution. If you look at the historical evolutionary record, there are these punctuations in the record where there are periods of extremely rapid development. So, I'm wondering if there might be a connection with this catastrophism, possibly with these comets because if you think about it, a new species comes from the air - well there may be a supernatural element to that but that might be inextricably intertwined with a physical aspect being this chaotic introduction of these cometary bombardments, which come repeatedly, cyclically throughout history; that introduce this whole level of mutation in the species existing on the planet. That might be the kind of mechanism for this rapid growth, rapid development of new and more complex species. I just wanted to throw that out there and see if you had any thoughts on it.
Jim: I'll just give my quick take on it. It's very good to remain sober and scientific. There's no question about it. I often say I wish this mystery wasn't so seemingly supernatural, if you will because I'm the kind of guy that'll go to Pumapunku and I'll look at a stone and think "Let's give a piece of grey andesite to ten master sculptors with the tools of the time and I don't think they'll be able to do that." Or "Let's take this site" or "Let's look at how Saksaywaman was built." I can show you examples that are just outrageous that I don't think the people of the time could have pulled off. Or let's see why there are elongated skulls all around the planet.
But the honest truth is, Edgar Cayce, the Bible, the Rosicrucians, the Free Masons, Plato, Madam Blavatsky and all these religious documents talk about the original Homo sapiens or the Adam if you will, being an androgynous being. Every culture has the myths and legends. Quetzalcoatl was the son of an androgynous being. They essentially talk about the birthing of the human race of Homo sapiens being this supernatural event from an androgynous being. It sounds so strange to say it, but if you spent 486 hours researching it like I have, you just see all around the world the hermaphrodite statutes, the representations of this supernatural, androgynous god, you wonder why you have two versions of history. One is the one that we're all taught, that flies in the face of every religious document, every myth and legend, every conceivable alternative piece of information that has come from the past. It's just stunning how different they are.
Then the honest truth is, what we're talking about here, this alternate view of history that has some supernatural elements to it, I honestly and firmly believe it's mostly accurate. And in 50 years we're going to look at that model as much more accurate. Just think of how precise and important these oral traditions are all around the planet that is saying the same thing; how accurate they are, how science keeps proving through tsunami frequency, understanding and all this stuff. There are two models and I just find that one is much more stunningly accurate and lines up with all the oral traditions. And I know that sounds weird.
Harrison: No, that's alright.
Jim: It's funny. I appreciate Graham Hancock. He's really being objective and being scientific, and Randall Carson. I went down and talked with Al Goodyear down in South Carolina at the Topper site, the 55,000-year-old pre-Clovis site that he believes he found. I'm walking in both worlds. I have to say, as an investigator and a detective, my gut is leading me in a different direction. It's stunning. The similar iconography, the myths and legends. It just draws me in that direction, without agenda quite frankly.
Harrison: Yeah, and when you look at it, it is a massive mystery and it's one that's been totally ignored by the scientific community. At this point in time we really only have a limited toolkit of ideas, of different possible causes and how this happened. One isn't very satisfying and that's the largely uniformitarian, evolutionary story, which just doesn't mesh with a lot of the facts. And then you've got this supernatural version. It's a good explanation for what it is because you look at it and you say "Well what else could it be?" There may be that mysterious, unknown third explanation but as it is, we've got these stories and they do tend to account for the facts as we see them. So I think that's at least a starting point from which we have to go. And like you said, in 50 years I think if people are at least giving, not necessarily the benefit of the doubt, but just acknowledging these stories and looking at them, I think they will make a lot more progress in understanding the real history of humanity, than by ignoring it.
Jim: Yeah. Totally. I don't want to hog all the time, but that's a great point. And "satisfying" is exactly it. It's like one version answers every possible inquiry and mystery in human history, the alternative/almost supernatural-ish one. It's like "Okay, I understand what the Greeks were talking about, about gods and demigods and titans and a lost continent in the Atlantic that Plato was talking about. I understand what the natives are talking about now, about little people and giants. It's not all fanciful nonsense. I understand what the Wisdom Keepers are talking about, the ancient ones who built these sites with lost technology.
And then you have the official one that is so unsatisfying. Your gut tells you. It's funny, it's like you get into an orientation when you're a professional. I've travelled in those realms and I understand. It deadens your intellectual curiosity or your love of mythology. Why do people love Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones? They intuitively know, they tap into the collective mind, that understands there's a different view of history that is true, that's been wiped from the map with a PTSD-ridden cataclysmic event. So we're piecing it together and guys like Hugh and I are doing it for the love of it. I get paid two cents an hour for my giant research. We sell a couple of books here and there, but I don't give a rat's ass. I think it's fascinating and I really believe the version of history we're talking about will be found to be true in the coming decades. It's only a matter of time where they find a site much older than Göbekli Tepe. I must say that.
Beau: Well one of the things I also wanted to ask you guys about that's brought up in the book is the idea that these giants who were building the megalithic sites, specifically the mounds in the eastern US mostly and even in henges in the UK, you brought up a lost technology and these mounds are very fascinating in their astronomical alignments and just the amount of work that's involved in building these mounds, just the giant size of them. So I'd just like to ask, what's going on there with all these mounds?
Hugh: I'll answer that one. Basically, there's over 100,000 recorded earthworks in North America. There's at least 10,000 huge mounds, certainly in different shapes, just in the Ohio Valley. Many of them have been destroyed. Many are on private land. Many have been flattened and things like this. You've got to look at it from a different perspective. There's different timelines here again. If you go much further south right down to Louisiana and almost on the Gulf Coast, you've got Poverty Point, you've got Watson Break. There's one other site. I forget the name of it. I actually visited this recently about a year ago and they go back to about 3,000-3,800 B.C. and they're the oldest known mound sites in America.
There are shell mounds on the California coast. There's one bit of carbon dating that goes back 20,000 years. I can't quite get my head around that one but I'm not sure if it was bad technology at the time that they did it. I'm not sure, but it's there and it's in the record and we mention it very briefly in the book I think.
But mainly you've got the Adena mounds which date officially from around no more than really 1,000-1,300 B.C. Please correct me here Jim if I make any mistakes. Then we have the Hopewell mounds, probably from something like 400 A.D. onwards then the later cultures, come in and change them. But the Adena ones are the most interesting. This is where the real research is happening. We've got a good friend Greg Little and Andrew Collins are working on this and a few other people. This is really the relationship with the giants and this is what they've found. They're literally found inside, very deep, often below ground level, deep below in the ground. So often they're not above ground level. People don't realize this.
And there are stone chambers. Some of the mounds like Miamisburg have stone facing on it as well, so it's more like a pyramid. And there's other such sites which are just so large, like Newark and ones around Chillicothe, which are massive, complex geometric earthwork systems covering many, many acres which encode geometry, metrology, astronomical alignments, geodesy, linking up with other sites around the country. We have similar ones down in Florida. You get them way up north as well along the whole northern Canadian border, going up to the Great Lakes. Mainly they grip around the Mississippi but they spread out from there. But you do find them in different parts of the country. And there's so many of them and they're quite sophisticated. They've got stone enclosed within them and the giants are involved. So we have to question why is this overlooked as a reality that these giants may have been involved in the construction of these mounds.
You get remarkably similar earthworks much further south, even going into the Olmec world in Central America, the other side of the Gulf Coast. They have mounds there. They have earthworks. They have huge cities made of earth with stone facing and stone chambers within them. It's very similar in fact when you really look into it.
And in Britain and Europe you've got obviously a very similar thing which is probably a bit older. So you have to question, did the influence come from Europe or which way round was it because the very earliest ones in North America are kind of on par with some of the oldest ones here. So there's a big question mark about who was doing what and when. But again, with many of these sites in Britain, there's legends and stories, and we found accounts of giants as well, not to the same extent as we found in North America, most notably the Ohio Valley, but most certainly there are co-relations with the metrology, the geometry, the design, the style spec, the legends, the stories, the astronomy and so forth. It just fits the theory that there was a great culture in prehistory that influenced all cultures all over the world.
Beau: The reason why I think there is some sort of Atlantean connection here is because if you read about Plato's description of Atlantis - I believe Andrew Collins wrote a book about that - many of the Atlantean cities, at least that Plato described, are similar, and the earthworks and the moats and the raised, terraced areas where the people would live. It really reminded me of that and how it supports the idea of an Atlantean dispersal of people throughout at least the United States.
Jim: Good point. Greg Little's book about Edgar Cayce's legacy of the mound builders. Edgar Cayce gave 68 readings on the mound building people. It's so odd that Cayce basically gave readings. If people don't know about Edgar Cayce, he had an 8th grade education and he would go into a trance state from Hopkins, Kentucky I think, and he gave all these health readings. But then he started to talk about lost civilizations and past lives out of nowhere and they recorded this. It's at the ARE library in Virginia Beach.
So anyway, Cayce talked about the mound builders in 68 different readings. He talked about the mound builders in Florida being of a much larger stature than the current people of today and they were proportionally large, which is interesting because the skeletal accounts we find always talk about proportion. But anyway, he talked about the influence of essentially the early mound builders, around 3,000 B.C. came up to avoid the sacrifice cults that were going on and were more benevolently oriented.
A lot of the earthworks, like at Portsmith, Ohio, you see the exact duplicate representation of Plato's central city of Atlantis. It's in Greg Little's book. It's in our book too. We got permission from Greg. But it's this ringed earthwork that Squire and Davis surveyed and catalogued before it was destroyed. It's just stunning how similar it is, and Cayce saying this thing and then bam! Right here you have this freak show similarity going on. And archaeologists have never been able to describe why there's moats there.
It's the oddest thing. All around the planet we have pyramids everywhere. We have the most enigmatic and crazy things, the creator gods are rocking, handbags and similar iconography, right? You would think if history were this boring version that we're getting, we would have this mundane landscape. It's like we were dropped on a freaking alien world and it makes no sense because we're looking at it the wrong way and we're not looking at it through the eyes of myths and legends and oral traditions.
Beau: I'm reading Greg Little's Mound Builders book right now and it talks about Cayce's readings and it really is fascinating, how Cayce is talking about things that only came to light much later because of archaeological findings and the idea that the lost tribes of Israel populated the US and then went down to Mexico City and the Adena cultures and even coming down from Canada as well. If anyone looks at the building of the serpent mounds, it's really quite fascinating to me.
Jim: Absolutely. Hugh can jump in there, but I'm glad you're reading that book. It's awesome. I'm writing a book on the search for Edgar Cayce's lost world right now and when we travelled in Peru and Bolivia, every outrageous megalithic site we encountered, Cayce's talking about it essentially being an Atlantean colony. I understand that impulse. It's like you're talking about it being so whacky and crazy you're out of your mind, but it's like "Wow! Shit! Is this how they did it?!" You can't get a micron - forget about a hair or razorblade between so much stonework. For me as a stonemason, you can't express to people how F'ed up the stonework is.
Beau: In one of the videos you have you're showing these dolmans and they're just so huge. How did they ever get there? The weight of these stones, just like at Stonehenge, I'm befuddled.
Hugh: Giants did it.
Beau: How did they do it? Did they just lift these things up?
Hugh: Yeah.
Beau: Did they have amazing technological abilities? Did they have things that we're not aware of?
Jim: I'll jump in and answer. Cayce says specifically they used gases, lasers, vibration/sound, that they had this technology that helped them build places like Saksaywaman. At the same time, I'll say let's not underestimate human capability because we know the Romans built incredible stuff, hundreds of tons.
Beau: Yes.
Jim: So you just can't look at everything and say "That's impossible". There's a lot that humans did that is whacked out. But then there are things that are off the hook that ironically Cayce identifies in his readings. So, I'll throw it to Hugh. He probably has his own thoughts.
Hugh: Yeah, just looking at the stories and legends and even discoveries in mounds near Stonehenge, they found extremely tall skeletons. The earliest legend of Stonehenge talks about Merlin employing giants to move the stones for him. And also, talking about technology, they had thousands of soldiers. When I was at Ireland to collect the so-called stones from Killaroo to bring them to Stonehenge, King Aurelius and all this kind of stuff, but this is all in the history of The Kings of Britain, this classic book by Geoffrey of Monmouth written in the 1100s.
They couldn't move the stones. They couldn't deconstruct the site. They couldn't get it over to England, so they got giants involved and Merlin used something called gears, or used a gear to move it. And he did it easily with his gear or gears. So what is that? Is it some kind of technology that he was using? Other stories say that he levitated the stones, that he was able to manipulate the stones and move them. So just at Stonehenge, the most famous megalithic site on the planet, you have these stories.
And you find that in other places as well. You find these stories of sound technology, being able to levitate stones. You have Coral Castle obviously in Florida which I visited a few years ago, which is where Edward Leedskalnin built a massive megalithic site in the 1950s. So there's something going on. The technology is there if one five-foot Latvian guy can build Coral Castle then 100 normal-sized people who are smart can build a megalithic site. How they did it is a whole other question, but the clues are there. It's just a case of reconstructing that and hopefully with this new TV show Jim's going to build an equivalent of the Great Pyramid, aren't you Jim?
Harrison: Full-size?
Jim: Yeah. Hugh, you talked about Stonehenge. The earliest representation of Stonehenge is on a tapestry from the 12th century and Merlin's hanging with a giant who's putting up a stone, right?
Hugh: That's correct. The giant is kind of lifting the lintel into place under the direction of Merlin. This is the earliest picture ever of Stonehenge, that's known about. It's in all the Stonehenge books but no one mentions the elephant in the room, that there's a giant lifting the stone up, so is that reality? And then as you'll see in one of our forthcoming books, we're going to be looking at Stonehenge. We're going to be looking at Britain. I live right near Stonehenge so I've been doing research in this area and it's amazing what I've come up with already. Jim has collected a few accounts a couple of years ago and we've been researching those, going into more detail and just in the local town here a 9'4" giant was dug up. There's a giant effigy used to be paraded through the local town for hundreds of years. It links with St. Christopher who was a Canaanite giant from the Bible, who apparently came to the area around Stonehenge.
So there's some weird stuff going on that lot of people don't have a clue about. This is why we're pushing the research in different parts of the world now because it's not really being researched. It's not really being published and we feel it's important to find these links and get them out there in a book format. I think it's really essential in fact.
Harrison: I wanted to ask you about one other type of human remains or human-looking remains that have been found but before I get to that question, you just mentioned that you guys are working on another book. I wanted to ask first of all what you've discovered in the time since you published this book that is relevant and then if you can just describe some of the projects you're working on now and when we might be able to see them in the future.
Hugh: Jim's coming over here. We're keeping it under wraps a little bit because we haven't fully decided on the exact kind of format yet but basically I'm harassing Jim that we do a book on giants in Britain because we want to do a worldwide book. We want to do that kind of thing, but there's so much going on here. I've been digging into the records. Jim has done a tonne of research already and there's so much here and there's only one or two books that have been written about it, back in the 1970s, a brilliant book called Sowers of Thunder by Anthony Roberts. I do recommend that if people are interested in ancient British giants and the giant lore and folklore. It's brilliant, absolutely inspirational. He was a big influence on me actually. He was a contemporary with another of my mentors John Michell.
And then we're going to be looking around the world. We've got ideas for other things. We want to put our heads together over a lot of megalithic research, things like this. So there's a lot of potential. We've got some TV shows we're hoping to get moving in the next year or two and we're just going to keep working and pushing forward. Discoveries are being made. There's a very recent discovery Jim can talk to you about in Malaysia. He actually investigated this, a very tall skeleton that was uncovered. There's more accounts from America that we're getting sent to us, giant artefacts in North America.
I've located some giant bones in England that Jim and I are going to go and look at when he comes here. We're hoping to look at the ones in Castelnau in France. We're going to investigate that. So it's like a constant quest to try and find out the truth of these mysteries.
Harrison: Jim, did you want to talk about that Malaysia case a bit?
Jim: Yeah. There's a historian who reported finding bones of enormous dimensions and then there were gravesites in Malaysia too, on this island that are enormously long. I talked to the Malaysian Tourist Bureau. I've thrown out a bunch of emails. What I got back was a feeling that he has claimed to have handled bones of 9-foot tall humans or something like that, which is well out of normal range. I even got in touch with the historian. I feel like it might smack of something like click-bating. There was a story a couple of years ago in the Kolar region of Northern Iraq. It says "Bones of 10-foot Men Found". AK news put it out which was a legitimate Kurdish television network.
So I hunted down the story because AK News went out of business. I got in touch with Dalal Zuma Dilshad, professor of Assyrian studies in Leiden, the Netherlands. He's from the Kolar region in Northern Iraq. Those douche bags from ISIS are destroying the place right now. But one of his students found three skeletons, one was 7'7" with a 12-inch skull. One was badly damaged and one was a child's skeleton.
So the story got it all wrong reporting 10-foot men. But what I did find out was there was a 7'7" skeleton with a 12-inch skull. I don't know how studied it has been because obviously, there's a ton of conflict right there. But these are the stories you've got to look into. You just can't sit back. That's one of the problems. There's so much BS on the internet. I could be a debunker quite frankly. I could sit back and pick and choose and be a big hero and pretend I'm smarter than everyone but if I'm going to look into the tough cases I've got to look into the weak-assed cases too and debunk them. Hugh does it. Andrew does it. Hancock does it. I really appreciate that. Brien Foerster does it. These are all authors you should read if you're interested in these studies.
On January 23, I think it is, here in the United States, my brother and I did a second two-hour documentary on the lost colony of Roanoke and the Dare Stone and if I will say so myself, it came out pretty slick. We fought to raise the IQ of the shows we do, create a different model. We work with a dozen different professionals in a sense of camaraderie to figure out these problems. Search for the Lost Giants ran a couple of years ago and I've been travelling, researching and conceiving the last couple of years, of a broader show that I want to do with Hugh and my brother, basically looking into a wide range of anthropological and archaeological mysteries with native voices, independent research voices and sceptical professional voices, all working together on different investigations around the world.
So, that's what I'm conceiving of and I think that will be to formulate and put out the show in the next year or so and I hope sooner rather than later, and I'm very confident. I'm speaking at the ARE conference in Virginia Beach in October. Erich von Däniken, Hugh Collins will be there. I'm working on a book with Hugh and I'm working on a book on Edgar Cayce's lost world right now. I'll say to any listener right now who's tuning in, what we're talking about - I won't speak for myself - but the rest of you are intelligent and thoughtful people who are trying to piece together the story of humanity. Everybody seems to be a voracious reader. Nobody's like a manic weirdo who corners you in the street and talks your head off.
We're presenting reasonable evidence to try to figure out myths and legends and things like that. So don't engage trolls and debunkers. Just make your case and let it rest and the right people will find it eventually. It's gaining steam. People are catching onto this idea of a lost world. It's really gaining steam. I'll just say that I thoroughly believe, without agenda, that what we're talking about today will be viewed as fairly more accurate than what the present model is. I guess I'll end with that.
Harrison: You mentioned Brien Foerster. That's actually what I wanted to ask you guys about because in the book you've got some of the photos of these elongated skulls. I'll just give a little bit of a background. When I first encountered the elongated skulls, it seemed like an anomaly. Not a lot of people were talking about it and it seemed like "Well here's a few photos of these elongated skulls" and that was it.
So for a while I was thinking "That's really cool, kind of weird", but it's only been in the last several years I think that so many more photographs and actual specimens have come forward and Brien Foerster has done a lot of that work. He's got a great YouTube channel where he goes to obscure little museums and looks at these skulls. The thing about them is that they are actually larger skulls than normal because there is this phenomenon of binding the skulls to shape them in that cone head shape, but these are actually skulls that have a bigger cranial volume than a normal skull so there's actually more matter than a normal skull. They're really strange looking skulls.
I was wondering if you could just tell us a bit about these skulls and what, if any, connection they have to the things we've been discussing like giants, the mounds or anything like that; also, the fact that a lot of these skulls have been found in South America but I think you guys mentioned some that have been found in, was it Florida? Can you guys talk about that?
Jim: Yeah, Hugh can go because I just ran my mouth, but absolutely in the Malta Pumapunku, we just saw all the skulls in the museum on the tour. But I would like to throw in my two cents after Hugh talks please.
Hugh: Sure. I'm actually elongating my skull as we speak. With cranial deformation hats. I'm only joking. But basically, they're all over the world, these skulls. They're not just in South America. I spent time with Brien. We're on tours every November. We go to Peru together. Jim came with us just in November previously and we had a good look at some of these and they're utterly amazing. Some of them are so large, a different amount of sutures. They've got red hair. They're like this elite culture along the whole west coast of South and Central America. I've seen them in Olmec land all over Mexico. I've seen some in North America, quite a few mound sites in North America have these skulls. Some of them are related to giants we know. We feature in the book in the "Anatomic Anomalies" chapter we have a whole area about cranial deformation, elongated skulls.
So there is a relationship. The elite were doing this to their skulls. There is a strange theory coming forth based on DNA evidence actually, that indeed some of them are natural because there's been babies and foetuses found that have elongation of their skulls, so it's a natural thing that can occur as well. This is where it gets weird and there's almost like a different DNA thing going on. They've been found across Europe and the Middle East, South Pacific, Japan, almost every country, Russia, around the world, Africa and Egypt. The list goes on. So it was something that people liked to do in prehistory.
Now why they did that I have no idea. A lot of people say it was to do with the elite or royal class. It could be to enhance the pineal gland. It could be to emulate the gods who were around thousands of years ago. It could be to enhance faculties of the brain. So you could then maybe enhance certain glands so your telekinetic or psychic abilities would be increased or your intelligence even. So you could get that.
I think there's a connection. There's one area that we write a whole chapter about in the book actually, about Sonora and Mexico. Jim can talk about this maybe in a bit more detail, but there, there's an area where in the 1930s a whole lot of mummified giant remains with red hair were found up to eight feet tall I believe. This was all forgotten about, it was all covered up, the Smithsonian were involved in it. Then more recently in 2012, within 20 miles of there at another site, a little bit more modern, I believe about 1,000 or 2,000 years old or something, a whole bunch of elongated skull skeletons were found with extreme elongation. And that's just raised so many questions.
Were these two different elite cultures? Did they know about each other? Were they around at the same time? And again, this is one aspect of prehistory which is very neatly covered up and we have to question why that is.
Jim: I'd say it's another example of cultures separated by thousands of miles and thousands of years, all doing the most extreme and bizarre unthinkable thing that couldn't just have been conjured up by some hundred-monkey syndrome. Brien, independent researcher, brought this all to light, mostly himself. I know he worked with David and other people and other people have studied this mystery, but his consistent effort brought this to light. Now it's just like people looking, like "What the hell is going on?!" Hugh and I did it with the idea of giants. We've brought this idea to life, where people were like "Giant?! What the hell?!" And Graham Hancock has done stuff. Richard Cassaro with all this "God Self" icon around the planet. There are a lot of independent researchers who study similar iconography and stuff. It shows if you put your effort into one of these mysteries, you can push it forward.
But like I said, it's the most bizarre activity. When I was talking to Todd Disotell, the molecular anthropologist who I had on our show, who I loved, he's a great guy, I said "Egh! You're kidding me. All around the planet there are elongated skulls?!" And there was no intellectual curiosity to go beyond that point. I understand he studies physical remains, but it's like "Study these dude! Come up with a reasonable theory!" Once again, the reasonable theory is it's a shared mother culture or diffusionism or something else.
Something else is going on. How the hell can you just do the most bizarre thing to your friggin' kids all around the world, head binding? Once again it's like the 50th thing that strongly indicates that there was a shared mother culture, in my eyes. And Brien is a brilliant guy. I want to talk his game up for a minute. If you go for a tour, definitely go with Brien and Hugh down there. I found Brien to be objective, intelligent and reasonable and he's often portrayed as some nut by certain sceptics who I'd like to run their head through a wall. They like to run their mouth and hide behind their computer and take shots at people. But it's not like they want to find the truth. They just want to feel better by belittling people, which I should be more forgiving, but there are certain trolls that get under my skin, that run their mouth. They're POS's, they just can't get a hit so they get a dopamine hit by deriding people who really care. Brien cares! He's a wonderful guy. He's working hard. He cares about human history and he's going to be proven right at some point. Totally! And then this weasel hiding behind his computer is going to be crying in his mother's basement. Sorry.
Beau: That's okay. That's fine.
Harrison: We feel the same way.
Beau: Yeah. Speaking of anatomical anomalies, I'd also like to touch on another area that you guys covered in the book, which is the double rows of teeth found on these skeletons that are really strange. I don't know if they're connected to any kind of advanced intellectual capacity or amazing mathematical abilities or anything like that, but I'd just like to get you guys to talk a little bit about that.
Hugh: Shall I give my view on this first, Jim?
Jim: Sure. We have different views on it, but yes.
Hugh: This is very controversial now. This is very, very controversial. There's been a lot of sceptics harassing us about this but when we were putting the book together, the TV show, there are quite a lot of reports of double rows of teeth, extra teeth, supernumerary teeth. There are accounts in the Smithsonian, actual annual reports. There's one account from Florida where even a third row of teeth was coming through. It's very specific. Some of them are very specific, some of them very clearly explain that there's two rows of teeth but the parlance of the time is what has caused problems here. We do mention this in the book but at the time we didn't go into it because we needed a bit more time with it, really.
There are some accounts around the world of people getting two rows of teeth. There are people with extra teeth. I've had people contact me who said they had freakishly tall people in their family who had two rows of teeth and they had to get them removed. So it is a genuine phenomenon, whatever the sceptics say. But when you're looking at the 1800s, you've got a bit of a problem there because often you could be describing literally two rows of teeth could be the upper jaw and the lower jaw.
So there's a bit of a debate going on about that and Andy White was one of the people who really, really became quite angry and abusive towards Jim and me about this. He did, and it's still on his website in fact. So Jim has been in contact with him and talking with him about it. So I think there's something going on there, but not all of the accounts can be absolutely 100% sure about it. We did say that in the book. We never claimed every single one of these accounts is true, but there are just some accounts which are so descriptive and clear in what they're saying that it's really hard to ignore it as a thing.
We spoke to a dental anthropologist from New York University and she was intrigued by it because she showed us evidence of extra teeth occurring in prehistory. She showed us some actual examples which we looked at and we featured in the TV show and in the book. So it is a thing. She suggested maybe it's because of the size of the person that it was a genetic trigger that more teeth would grow. We know from the Canadian lakes area there were tribes who were, on average, increasing in height by about an inch every hundred years (or was it a thousand years?) and they also had extra teeth. Some had double rows of teeth and this was clearly stated in the academic records. So there is a thing going on with that.
Some of them have to do with the problem of the parlance of the time, the way people used to speak back then. Over to you Jim.
Jim: Yeah, Andy White, anthropologist from South Carolina, I talked to him. He had written about double rows of teeth around the time we were doing our show so I spoke with his anthropology class a couple of times and we hung out for a couple of days and talked about all these things. He was saying that when he was doing reports in the '80s he started to find all these accounts of giants with double rows of teeth working as an anthropologist. He came up with this idea that he thought it was the parlance of the time - a double row of teeth meant perfect teeth up and down. These colonists obviously had far worse teeth than the native skulls that often had perfect teeth.
I believe he's on to something. I believe that the accounts we find in England and France, they never mention double rows of teeth. They do mention jawbone over the face however and I came to the conclusion that I think some are legitimate, like the Smithsonian reports of even a third row of teeth, the supernumerary teeth, but I don't think every account of double rows of teeth is so because you would find more in the anthropological record. You would find more evidence of this, professionals. There are graveyards of skeletons in New York that were all portrayed as having double rows of teeth. If there were 300 skeletons with double rows of teeth, then we're going to see more of this in the record.
So I believe that Andy is probably correct, to a certain extent, and then Hugh is correct in saying that some of these are weird anatomic anomalies or supernumerary teeth or something else is going on. But what I was telling Andy was that this strengthens my case even further that these are real human skeletons that were documented, right? This is another layer of it. Yeah, you're analyzing a skull and you're looking at the teeth and if they're not double, you're commenting on how perfect they are or how the jaw fits over the face because this whole thing is dismissed as hoaxes or mastodon bones. I'm like, "No, these are human skeletons. They are stationary objects. They are not getting up and moving around." And they are being measured by professionals of their time, giving specific measurements. So it kind of strengthens the argument that there's more to look at in this mystery. So that's my take.
Beau: Well one of the things that you guys brought up in the book that I thought made a lot of sense in relation to these rows of teeth...
Jim: It was probably my chapter.
Beau: I think even the anthropological dentist that you guys were dealing with was the one who said that the giants' jaws were so big that the mouth maybe had naturally grown a second row of teeth.
Harrison: If you're that big, you've got to eat a lot of food. Maybe you need a few more teeth to chew it with.
Hugh: But what were they eating? That's the question. Cannibals and all that. You need extra teeth to get to...
Harrison: To get to that marrow.
Hugh: Yeah.
Jim: It could be a weird thing like six fingers and six toes too. It could be some literal anatomic anomaly associated with enormous people of the past. Once again, who's rocking six fingers and six toes? It's the weirdest thing. I know people have it. It's funny because it's a genetic condition but it's clearly associated with giants. Edgar Cayce talks about it. Petroglyphs and statues in the South Pacific, on all these isolated islands, why do the creator gods have six fingers and toes? I saw a 15th century painting of Adam, the dude from Adam and Eve and he had six fingers. It's like, what the hell's going on man? When you view this world from the lens of what we're talking about, it's like a David Lynch movie. It is such a freak show.
Beau: Yeah.
Harrison: Yeah, Twin Peaks. Giants. Dwarves. How are you guys doing for time? Do we have any more questions that we wanted to ask the guys?
William: Well I thought it was pretty fascinating how a lot of scientists are really just super-focused on their speciality, like geologists. Then you have archaeologists and anthropologists and astrologists. I like how you guys try and bring these sciences together to come up with some sort of ideas or conclusion instead of being so hyper-focused in their one field. I really appreciate that.
Jim: Thank you! That's a great point. Hyper-specialization of the fields in academia is a problem, just like it happens with physicians. Do no harm is thrown out the window. You go to the doctor, right? Prescription, prescription, prescription, especially if you're older. Where's the holistic approach to this? It's clearly wrong and we know that! We know that Pfizer is a bunch of sociopaths just pushing drugs off label. They know the side effects and it's like Ford with the Pinto blowing up. "We'll pay out the death money because we know blank equals blank." It happens in the pharmaceutical industry and in academia. It's over-specialization. There was no holistic look at it.
A comparative mythologist would look at this whole thing differently and say "Wow! Look at the stunning connections!" But if I'm entirely focused in one direction and one mode of inquiry, of course I'm not going to see that! So I don't blame or look at it like there's a conspiracy. I see it as an aspect of an inefficient, inaccurate way to view history.
Harrison: Alright! Any final thoughts Hugh?
Hugh: Yeah. I say this with every radio thing we do, people in America and around the world, please check your local records. Check your local archives. Even check your garden and see if there's any giant skulls. Because this is how we find things. This is how the research really comes together, local journals, people you know. It's an important aspect of it because relying on the internet isn't all where it's at. A lot of our research was not on the internet. We had to go into the old records, the old books, libraries and things like this. This is where the new discoveries come from. Obviously, it's old stuff, and we encourage people to do that, all around the world, anything you hear about. Even if you've got a local legend, that can often lead to a discovery. It can lead to something else. This is what I've been doing locally here and I've been finding more and more.
So that side of things is intriguing and we encourage people to get in touch with us. They can contact us through Giants On Record or Search for The Lost Giants Facebook page. Both Jim and I, Hugh Newman and Jim Vieira - we're both on Facebook or they can contact me through Megalithomania.co.uk. We'd love to hear from people if they've got anything they can share.
Harrison: Great. Thanks so much for being on the show guys. Listeners, we've been talking to Jim Vieira and Hugh Newman, authors of Giants On Record. I recommend you check it out. You can get it on Amazon and probably order it from your local book shop. So thanks again guys. It's been great talking to you. We learned a lot and it's just so many fascinating topics. So keep up the good work and we look forward to what you bring out in the future.
Jim: Nice. Thanks a lot guys. Good questions. I really enjoyed it.
Hugh: Yeah, thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Cheers!
Beau: Jim and Hugh thanks a lot.
William: Thank you.
Harrison: Alright, thanks everyone. We'll see you next week so everyone take care.
Can't wait to read the book. These guys are amazing, great guests and very open minded researchers. Thank you guys for another great show.