Scriptures, and fragments of philosophical and scientific works—in short, almost every record that has come down to us from antiquity—contain references to Giants. No one can fail to recognize the Atlanteans of the Secret Doctrine in the Râkshasas of Lankâ—the opponents conquered by Râma. Are these accounts no better than the production of empty fancy? Let us give the subject a few moments' attention.
Are Giants A Fiction?
Here, again, we come into collision with Science, which so far denies that man has ever been much larger than the average of tall and powerful men now met with occasionally. Dr. Henry Gregor denounces the traditions of Giants as resting upon ill-digested facts, and instances of mistaken judgments are brought forward as disproof of such traditions. Thus, in 1613, in a locality, called from time immemorial the “Field of Giants,” in Lower Dauphiné, France, four miles from St. Romans, enormous bones were found deeply buried in the sandy soil. They were attributed to human remains, and even to Teutobodus, the Teuton chief slain by Marius. But Cuvier's later research proved them to be the fossil remains of the Dinotherium Giganteum, 18 feet long. Ancient buildings are pointed to as an [pg 290] evidence that our earliest ancestors were not much larger than we are, the entrance doors being of no larger size then than now. The tallest man of antiquity known to us, we are told, was the Roman Emperor Maximus, whose height was only seven and a half feet. Nevertheless, in our modern day, every year we see men taller than this. The Hungarian who exhibited himself in the London Pavilion was nearly 9 feet high. In America a giant was shown 9 feet 6 inches tall; the Montenegrin Danilo was 8 feet 7 inches. In Russia and Germany one often sees men in the lower classes above 7 feet. Now, as the ape-theorists are told by Mr. Darwin that the species of animals which result from cross breeding always betray “a tendency to revert to the original type,” they ought to apply the same law to men. Had there been no giants as a type in ancient days, there would be none now.
All this applies only to the historic period. And if the skeletons of the prehistoric ages have failed so far to prove undeniably in the opinion of Science the claim here advanced, it is but a question of time. We, however, positively deny the reality of the failure. Moreover, as already stated, human stature is little changed since the last Racial Cycle. The giants of old are all buried under the oceans, and hundreds of thousands of years of constant friction by water would reduce to dust a brazen, much more a human skeleton. And whence the testimony of well-known classical writers, of philosophers and men who, otherwise, never had the reputation for lying? Let us bear in mind, furthermore, that before the year 1847, when Boucher de Perthes forced it upon the attention of Science, hardly anything was known of fossil man, for Archæology complacently ignored his existence. Of giants who were “in the earth in those days” of old, the Bible alone had spoken to the wise men of the West; the Zodiac being the solitary witness called upon to corroborate the statement in the persons of Orion or Atlas, whose mighty shoulders were said to support the world.
Nevertheless, even the giants have not been left without their witnesses, and one may as well examine both sides of the question. The three Sciences—geological, sidereal and scriptural, the latter in its universal character—may furnish us with the needed proofs. To begin with Geology: it has already confessed that the older the excavated skeletons, the larger, taller and the more powerful their structure. This is already a certain proof in hand. Frédéric de Rougemont, who, [pg 291] though believing too piously in the Bible and Noah's Ark, is none the less a scientific witness, writes:
All those bones, found in the Departments of the Gard, in Austria, Liège, etc., those skulls which all remind one of the negro type ... and which by reason of their type might be mistaken for animals, have all belonged to men of high stature.[633]
The same is repeated by Lartet, an authority, who attributes a “tall stature” to those who were submerged in the Deluge—not necessarily “Noah's”—and a smaller stature to the races which lived subsequently.
As for the evidence furnished by ancient writers, we need not trouble ourselves with that of Tertullian, who assures us that in his day a number of giants were found at Carthage—for, before his testimony can be accepted, his own identity,[634] if not actual existence, would have to be proven. We may, however, turn to the papers of 1858, which speak of a “sarcophagus of giants” found that year on the site of this same city. As to the ancient Pagan writers, we have the evidence of Philostratus, who speaks of a giant skeleton twenty-two cubits long, as well as of another of twelve cubits, seen by himself on the promontory of Sigæum. This skeleton may perhaps not have belonged, as believed by Protesilas, to the giant killed by Apollo at the siege of Troy; nevertheless, it was that of a giant, as was that of the other discovered by Messecrates of Stira, in Lemnos—“horrible to behold,” according to Philostratus.[635] Is it possible that prejudice would carry Science so far as to class all these men as either fools or liars?
Pliny speaks of a giant in whom he thought he recognized Orion, or Otus, the brother of Ephialtes.[636] Plutarch declares that Sertorius saw the tomb of Antæus, the Giant; and Pausanias vouches for the actual existence of the tombs of Asterius and of Geryon, or of Hillus, son of Hercules—all Giants, Titans and mighty men. Finally the Abbé Pegues, affirms in his curious work, Les Volcans de la Grèce, that: