Tall Tales: The Dark Truth Behind Our Fascination With Giants

A recurring fantasy

Over the last two centuries, many versions of this tall tale have emerged, and they typically involve similar themes. Invariably, the stories involve some unusual archaeological evidence and eventual conspiratorial cover-ups.

In many modern versions of the story, excavations uncover the remains of a hitherto unknown race of enormous humanoids. We’re not talking about the remains of an above-average individual; we’re talking about colossal creatures that are often dozens of meters tall. The discovery, if made public, would shake the foundations of our understanding of the world, its history, and our place in it. However, before such revelations can be shared, a shadowy branch of some institution (usually the military, but not always) intervenes to spirit them away.

However, despite the hasty cover-up efforts, someone involved in the initial discovery has typically managed to photograph and circulate images of the giant on the internet. They merely await someone to “do their own research” to find them and figure out the suppressed truth.

Stories about giants have been shared across Facebook, Twitter (now X), and YouTube for years. More recently, they have begun to appear in various TikTok videos while also being the subject of discussion on numerous Reddit pages.

The stories also appear to have a wide readership or disjointed network of believers. They include American white nationalists, believers in aliens, flat Earth conspiracy theorists, theistic religious groups, or proponents of pseudoarchaeology and long-lost superhuman civilizations. Giant hoaxes, it seems, are big enough to go around, even for fringe beliefs that do not usually stack together. But why are these mythical monstrosities so frequently the source of hoaxes?

The answer is not straightforward at all. In fact, it is completely multifaceted and blends factors related to historical myth, misinterpretation, psychological factors, cultural narratives, religious (especially theistic) interpretations of history, and the influence of fringe beliefs and pseudoscience. Although there is no credible evidence that giants have ever existed, and despite scientific reasons for why they are impossible, the belief nevertheless continues.   

The long history of hoaxes 

 The Cardiff Giant and 19^th century hoaxes

Let’s start with an early example. On October 16, 1869, two men made archaeological history. Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols were digging a well on the farm of William Newell in Cardiff, New York. As the story goes, during their work they discovered what appeared to be a stone a few feet below the surface. Upon closer inspection, however, the stone was actually a huge foot attached to an enormous 3-meter (10-foot) long petrified humanoid something.

Of course, the supposed giant was fake. It had been buried a few days before by Newell, the landowner, and his cousin, George Hull, and was being sold as a spectacle for paying visitors (initially 25c per person, but then 50c per person).  

According to the first president of Cornell University, Andrew White, who managed to see the “discovery”, its fakery was instantly recognizable. However, hundreds of people had apparently traveled great distances to see it and were less discerning about its authenticity. White claimed that he even overheard “a very excellent doctor of divinity, pastor of one of the largest churches in Syracuse” explain that, “is it not strange that any human being, after seeing this wonderfully preserved figure, can deny the evidence of his senses, and refuse to believe, what is so evidently the fact, that we have here a fossilized human being, perhaps one of the giants mentioned in Scripture?”

You may think the ruse was quickly revealed, but you’d be wrong. The “Cardiff Giant”, as it was known, became a spectacle across America. It was so entertaining that it even became the subject of its own hoax when a famous showman, P. T. Barnum, had a secret copy of it made, which he then displayed in New York and accused the original of being the fake.  

The Cardiff Giant inspired several alternative giant hoaxes during the 19^th century, but additional “giants” continued to appear throughout the 20^th century and up to today. For instance, in 1895, there was the San Diego Giant, which was claimed to be the petrified remains of a large Native American man, but was actually a poorly made papier-mâché or gelatine model.

Twentieth century “giants”

Then there was the lesser-known collection of supposedly esoteric artifacts belonging to Father Crespi, a controversial priest in Ecuador. According to the story, Crespi was a well-respected religious figure, anthropologist, and philanthropist in the local community who was often given objects as gifts from those he helped. Over the years, he amassed thousands of objects, most of which had no special significance beyond being generous offerings. However, some of these objects were strange, ornate, and decorated with images and symbols that resembled ancient Babylonian artifacts.

Then, in 1973, a Swiss author called Erich von Däniken published a book called Gold of the Gods that claimed an Argentinian-Hungarian entrepreneur had discovered secret tunnels in the Tayos Caves of Ecuador. These tunnels contained a “Metal Library” which, you guessed it, was built by extremely large humanoid figures. The artifacts in Crespi’s collection, including supposedly elaborate metal books made of gold, were therefore, Däniken argued, taken from this library but were originally made by a hitherto unknown lost advanced civilization that was instructed by extraterrestrial visitors before the time of the Biblical flood.

Däniken’s book, and wider beliefs, drew heavily on other sources that proposed the existence of giants, despite the prevailing scientific arguments that denied their existence. For instance, he cited the discredited work of Denis Saurat, an Anglo-French scholar who, while respected in many circles, held onto the belief in a lost ancient civilization of giant humans who came from Atlantis and had managed to travel the planet before they were wiped out by a flood (more on this later).

Crespi’s collection was obviously of distinct and unique historical importance – why then have few of us heard about it? Well, according to Däniken, the old priest’s artifacts were actively ignored by the established academic community (something we will hear more about later). Then, in 1962, there was a fire at Crespi’s church that destroyed much of his collection. After his death, the remaining artifacts were purchased by the Central Bank of Ecuador, rather than being smuggled away by the Vatican, as many people have since claimed.

Unfortunately, subsequent examinations of his treasures reveal nothing extraordinary at all. The gold-plated books from the metal library actually turned out to be made of aluminum and were clearly fake and pretty shoddy. Crespi himself was said to have been horrified by Däniken’s claims when he heard about them.

Giants in the social media age

With the rise of the internet and social media, it is now far easier for spurious ideas and claims to spread, often with insufficient challenge. For instance, since 2004, giant hoaxers have circulated a recurring story claiming that archaeologists had found a giant’s skeleton, complete with a digital photo of the enormous specimen.

The image itself was created in 2002 as part of a digital art competition that asked contestants to create a fake archaeological discovery. Soon, however, it was being spread on blogs and news channels as a real find at an excavation run by the National Geographic Society in collaboration with the Indian Army. Of course, National Geographic have refuted this bogus claim, but the image continues to appear on social media and similar stories have emerged since.

In 2016, a Youtube video was posted allegedly showing an interview with a former US military contractor who claimed to have witnessed the killing of the so-called Kandahar Giant in Afghanistan. The individual, simply known as Mr K, explained that in 2002, while US forces were fighting the Taliban in Kandahar Province, they came across a 4-meter (13-foot) tall humanoid being with fiery red hair, six fingers on each hand, and two sets of teeth.

In this confrontation between humans and the monstrous, the beast apparently killed a Special Forces soldier with a spear before being shot to pieces by the rest of the unit. Once it was dead, the US army supposedly collected the body and flew it away, never to be seen again. The survivors were forced to sign non-disclosure orders so that the “truth” could never be known, of course.

Subsequent efforts to debunk the story of the Kandahar Giant have merely fanned the flames of interest among conspiracy websites, especially those who believe government denials are automatically proof of cover-ups. But like the earlier giant hoaxes, this latter-day version contains all those vital elements for a giant story: a discovery of a living/dead giant, a military or institutional cover-up, and a truth-teller who wants to get the word out there. So why does this keep happening?

More than a myth, they are necessary 

To be sure, stories of giants are more than just big tales. They are essential components of a wider set of beliefs about the nature of the world as well as the destinies of specific groups of people. Although giants appear in the mythologies of numerous cultures (which some see as enough evidence of their existence), they are especially important to some Christian and Muslim believers. This is because both religions make numerous references to enormous beings in their sacred texts and associated religious materials.

To literalist believers, any potential archaeological evidence of giants would therefore validate other doctrinal claims as well as challenge ideas about evolution. This latter point has even given birth to a recurring hoax that the Smithsonian Museum destroyed numerous giant skeletons in the 1900s. This, the hoax claims, was an effort to protect the “mainstream” narrative of evolution.

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Equally, the absence of actual giants in the archaeological record undermines these theistic worldviews, which is why some believers are doggedly attached to giant hoaxes (our inboxes are filled with messages on this score).

But aside from theistic concerns, the existence of giants is also important to several nationalist movements, and this is where Atlantis and aliens enter the story again.

During the 19^th and even the 20^th centuries, many Americans believed in what is known as the Lost Race of the Mound Builders. The idea centered on the belief that Indigenous people in the US were not capable of building the various prehistoric earthworks scattered across the country. As such, another race of precursor peoples must have been responsible for their construction. Of course, these long-lost peoples were giants, but they were also, more importantly, “white” Indo-European giants.

It is worth stating that this was not a fringe belief. Stories about excavated giant skeletons appeared in high-profile sources such as the New York Times on at least a few occasions, and even Abraham Lincoln referred to the giants who lay below the mysterious mounds. But while it may be tempting to dismiss this as another odd moment in history, there is a sinister dimension to it.

For those who believed, the Moundbuilders were eventually killed by the tribes we would recognize as the Indigenous Americans. As such, this form of “white” genocide, as the members of the far-right see it today, was justification for the extermination of Indigenous peoples during the 19^th century. Even now, members of the Alt-right refer to this idea when they imagine the processes of “white genocide” allegedly taking place today in America and Europe.

Despite being thoroughly discredited at the time, the idea that an Aryan race of giants founded America has stuck around and transmuted through its association with occult beliefs and ideas about the lost civilizations of Atlantis. Within the melting pot of modern right-wing conspiracy theories, the ancient precursor peoples of America were Atlanteans who traveled to America thousands of years ago and settled there – the same beliefs that underpinned Däniken’s outlandish claims regarding Father Crespi’s collection.

But Däniken’s ideas have also shifted the story in a new direction too – for other believers, the giants were not from this world. Instead, the Aryan colossi were ancient astronauts who visited the planet and transmitted technologies to humans while also building many of the ancient monuments we see today, including the pyramids.

These ideas have significant currency among conspiracy circles on the internet and the History Channel. Graham Hancock has re-popularised them with his Fingerprints of the Gods book and his ongoing pseudoarchaeology claims. Although he does not credit the alien angle, his work has inspired a revival in the belief in prehistoric civilizations that built the ancient monuments – because, by his reasoning, ancient non-European peoples could not have been skilled or knowledgeable enough to do it themselves.  

This is why giant hoaxes continue to appear online. Like the Greek Titan, Atlas, the giants in modern religious groups and conspiracy circles have a heavy burden: they hold up the world views of those who believe in them. If they do not exist, then that sky comes falling down.