“21 And when he defied Israel, Jonathan the son of Shimeah, the brother of David, slew him.
“22 These four were born to the giant in Gath, and fell by the hand of David, and by the hand of his servants.”
But these were mere pigmies if we can believe M. Henrion, who in 1718 calculated out the heights of divers notable persons—thus he found Adam was 121 ft. 9 in. high, Eve 118 ft. 9 in., Noah 27 ft., Abraham 20 ft., and Moses 13 ft.
Putting aside the mythical classical giants, Pliny says: “The tallest man that has been seen in our times, was one Gabbaras by name, who was brought from Arabia by the Emperor Claudius; his height was nine feet and as many inches. In the reign of Augustus, there were two persons, Posio and Secundilla, by name, who were half a foot taller than him; their bodies have been preserved as objects of curiosity in the Museum of the Sallustian family.”
But it is reserved to Sir John Mandeville to have found the tallest giants of, comparatively speaking, modern times. “And beyond that valey is a great yle, where people as great as giaunts of xxviii fote long, and they have no clothinge but beasts skyns that hang on them, and they eate no bread, but flesh raw, and drink milke, and they have no houses, & they ate
gladlyer fleshe of men, than other, & men saye to us that beyonde that yle is an yle where are greater giaunts as xlv or l fote long, & some said l cubits long (75 feet) but I saw them not, and among those giaunts are great shepe, and they beare great wolle, these shepe have I sene many times.”
Early Men.
On the antiquity of man it is impossible to speculate, because we have no data to go upon. We know that his earliest existence, of which we have any cognisance, must have been at a period when the climate and fauna of the Western continent was totally different to their present state. Then roamed over the land, the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, the Bos-primigenius, the reindeer, the cave bear, the brown and the Arctic bears, the cave hyæna, and many other animals now quite extinct. We know that man then existed, because we find his handiwork in the shape of manufactured flint implements, mixed with the bones of these animals—and, occasionally, with them human remains have been found, but, as yet, no perfect skull has been found. There were two types of man, the Dolicho Cephalous, or long-headed, and the Brachy Cephalous, or round-headed—and, of these, the long-headed were of far greater antiquity.
All we can do is to classify man’s habitation of this earth, as well as we can, under certain well-defined, and known conditions. Thus, that called the Stone Age, must be divided into two parts, that of the roughly chipped flint implements—which is designated the Palæolithic period—and that of the polished and carefully
finished stone arms and implements, which necessarily show a later time, and a higher state of civilisation—which is called the Neolithic period. The next age is that of bronze, when man had learned to smelt metals, and make moulds, showing a great advance—and, finally, the Iron Age, in which man had subdued the sterner metal to his will—and this age immediately precedes History.