from AndrewCollins Website
As Greg Little ably demonstrates elsewhere in this book, scholars and academics working on behalf of scientific institutions such as the Smithsonian have on many occasions recorded the discovery at mound sites of skeletal remains where the individual is of exceptional height.
They have been found in a great many states, yet by
far the great concentration of oversized human remains comes from a
single region, this being the Kanawha Valley of West Virginia.
What was going on in West Virginia clearly indicates the
presence of quite regular genetic activity in a population where
these physical attributes were, for the most part, normal in the
first place.
Nowhere either in Africa or on the Eurasian continent is there hard archaeological evidence to suggest that entire groups of anatomically modern humans reached over six feet tall. There is occasional evidence of gigantism, yes.
Yet as stated here, this is a genetic disorder, not
a recognized feature of normal human genetics.
Why should this have been, and how did it come about? The
answer to all these mysteries might be determined by examining the
appearance in the archaeological record of abnormal human skeletons,
such as the one found in 1947 at the Blossom Mound site in the
northern San Joaquin Valley of California.
Although only five feet, five inches (170 centimeters) in height, the man's physical appearance marked him out as different from other Native Americans. This is shown by the rich array of grave goods buried with him, including forty-eight beads fashioned from shells of the Olivella sea snail, seven ornaments carved from the shell of the abalone mollusk and an obsidian projectile point.
What is more, his body was laid outstretched and face up, his head to the north, whereas the other 176 internees of the grave mound lay face down, their heads to the west. Some time after interment, Burial 37's skull was removed and placed at over his left ankle, which is where excavators found it when the remains were discovered in 1947.
All this suggests that the individual,
believed to have been in his mid thirties or forties when he died,
had a different journey ahead of him in the spirit world.
Yet unlike gigantism, where the pituitary gland begins to excrete large amounts of growth hormones during childhood, acromegaly is something that does not occur until adulthood, after the body's long bones are fully formed. A tumor connected with the pituitary gland triggers the release of hormones, which stimulate whatever they can, resulting in abnormalities in the hands, face and feet.
For this individual it meant a canine in his upper jaw growing upside down and protruding through the bone of his face immediately beneath the nose.
Moreover, compared against fourteen other skulls examined from the mass grave, that of Burial 37 was taller and wider. The skull also possessed a heavy brow ridge, while the body had unusually thick arms and legs, traits that are unusual in modern humans, but are common in Neanderthal anatomy.
In addition to this, he had an
elongated chin, resulting in a "lantern" jaw, along with a
pronounced nose giving it a beak- like appearance (Bartelink,
Pastino, 2014). On top of this, the bony pocket in the skull that
holds the pituitary gland, which is called the sella turcica as it
looks like a Turkish saddle, was significantly enlarged.
Having said this, two other cases
of acromegaly are known from North America: one in a 600-year- old
male burial found in New Mexico, and another in an unsexed
1,100-year- old skull unearthed in Illinois (Pastino, 2014). As to how, with his "distinctive visage," the man behind Burial 37 might have been perceived by the rest of the Windmiller culture remains unclear, although as Bartelink comments:
This said, there is little
question that the individual would have looked striking in
appearance, and very much in contrast to other Native Americans of
the time.
Although this abnormality can be explained as the effects of acromegaly, the presence of supernumerary teeth in a person is more correctly known in the dental profession as hyperdontism.
This can affect any part
of the dental arch and result in the growth of any number of
so-called supernumerary teeth.
(NOTE: For example, see Bancroft, 1882, IV, 694-5, relating to giant skeletons found in caves on San Rosa Island, California,
Many more stories featuring large skeletons with double rows of teeth exist in old newspapers, but their authenticity cannot be verified).
Supernumerary teeth in the skulls of giant skeletons is actually one of the most compelling pieces of evidence for their existence, as it appears far too often in accounts for it not to have some meaning.
What it also tells us is that there might be a
relationship between endocrine and pituitary disorders and
abnormally sized skeletons in the archaeological record.
Men were around six feet (180.7 centimeters), while the women reached around five and a half feet (170 cm) (Wright, 1995, 257). This was noticeably taller that other indigenous peoples existing in Canada at the time.
What is more, the exceptional height of these hunter-gatherers was actually increasing as time rolled by.
This increase was only by an average of an inch
or so per millennium, yet archaeologists and bone specialists who
have examined the skeletal evidence of the Middle Great Lakes-St.
Lawrence culture have noted this strange fact.
This further connection between increased height in Native Americans
and hyperdontism cannot be ignored and affords even more weight to
the existence in the past of whole groups of individuals of
exceptional height, many of them, as stated elsewhere in this work,
over seven and a half feet in height.
Turkish paleoanthropologist Muzaffer Senyürek of Ankara University made a careful study of the skeletal remains of the ancient inhabitants of Anatolia and found a high incidence of a dental disorder known as taurodontism (Senyürek, 1949).
Like hyperdontia,
to which it is related, taurodontism is considered a genetic
abnormality that results in the enlargement of teeth out of
proportion to the roots of the jaw.
However, we know something else about taurodontism, this being that it is often found in the skulls of Neanderthals, our extinct cousins.
They emerged out of Africa as distinct hominin, that is a distinct human species or sub-species, around 200,000 to 300,000 years ago, and quickly spread throughout Europe, going as far north as the Arctic region and as far east as the Altai Mountains of southern-central Siberia.
Following the
appearance in these same territories of anatomically modern humans
some 40,000 to 45,000 years ago, the two different types of hominin - Homo
neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens - shared the world, but eventually,
around 30,000 years ago, the Neanderthals disappear from the
archaeological record, either overrun by us humans and/or absorbed
into the human gene pool.
Denisovan-human hybrid based on all available evidence as envisaged
by artist Russell Hossain
We mated with our more primitive-looking cousins. That's a fact.
Moreover, the discovery of a finger
bone and two human molars of a completely unknown human species in
the Denisova Cave of the Altai Mountains of southern-central
Siberia, and the extraction of its nuclear genome by geneticist
Svante Pääbo and his team at Leipzig's Max Planck Institute of
Evolutionary Anthropology, suggests that Denisovans share genetic
traits with the Neanderthals (Jacobs, 2012).
In Central Asia at least they interbred with their cousins, the Neanderthals, and with anatomically modern humans.
Indeed, current-day human populations, such as the Melanesians, represented by the Pacific islanders of Papua New Guinea, and Aboriginal Australians, all show between four and six percent Denisovan DNA (Jacobs, 2012; Harmon, 2012).
Other human populations, such as the Burmans, Malays, Han Chinese, and Polynesians, also have Denisovan DNA, but in far smaller quantities (Reich, 2010a & 2010b).
Almost no Denisovan DNA has been detected in
the populations of Europe and Southwest Asia, which would have been
key territories of the Neanderthal populations prior to their
disappearance around 30,000 years ago (Reich, 2010b & Jacobs, 2012).
The answer is that interbreeding between these three different sub-species of the human (homo) genus-along with that of a fourth hominin, whose existence is known only from the presence of its DNA in a suspected Neanderthal toe bone discovered in the Denisova Cave that also contained Homo sapiens and Denisovan DNA (Prüfer, 2013; Sanders, 2013)-might well have caused profound changes in modern human DNA.
This might well have included genetic alterations and mutations, which have resulted in changes both to the body's physiognomy and the brain's thinking processes, in other words in the way we perceive and interact with the world around us.
This is a
study in itself that might take decades to disseminate in order to
fully understand its implications to anthropology today.
All of the medical disorders cited above - gigantism, acromegaly, hyperdontism and taurodontism - might easily be connected with hybridization, something that can be seen from the clear Neanderthal traits of Blossom Mound's Burial 37 and the taurodontism present among the earliest peoples of Anatolia.
As we have seen, taurodontism was a
common trait among the Neanderthal population.
Indeed, they were smaller in size than the earliest anatomically modern humans (such as Western Europe's Cro-Magnon man or Central Europe's Brünn population-see Collins, 2014), who rarely rose above six feet in height.
Denisovans on the other hand might have been giants. The size of the two molars recovered from the Denisova Cave are large.
The second one found was larger than the first, with a chewing surface twice the size of that of a typical human molar. Indeed, when first discovered, Max Planck paleoanthropologist Bence Viola is said to have mistaken it for that of a cave bear.
Only when the tooth's DNA was tested was it confirmed to be that of a Denisovan hominin.
Further evidence that Denisovans might have been of exceptional
height comes from another genome analysis, this time of a
400,000-year-old femur from a cave called the
Sima de los Huesos
('pit of bones') in northern Spain.
Yet an examination of the mitochondrial DNA from the Homo heidelbergensis femur found in Spain revealed it to be much closer to that of the Denisovans, who thrived thousands of miles away in the Altai Mountains of Siberia (Callaway, 2013).
This was a complete shock to geneticists and prehistorians alike, especially as no hard evidence of Denisovan DNA has so far been found among present-day European populations.
Despite this clear link between Homo heidelbergensis
and the Denisovans anthropologists such as Chris Stringer, head of
Human Origins at London's Natural History Museum, still hold that
Neanderthals are more closely related to Homo heidelbergensis than
the current mitochondrial evidence implies.
Lee R. Burger of the University of Witwatersrand has examined numerous fossil bones belonging to Homo heidelbergensis populations that inhabited South Africa between 500,000 and 300,000 years ago and has discovered that these "giants" were routinely over seven feet (2.13 meters) in height (Burger, 2007).
This opens the door to the closely related Denisovans being
of equal height, and seeing as how their teeth are almost twice the
size of our own, this has be a strong likelihood indeed.
Those accounts that are authentic
most likely refer to human or hominin hybrids who carry strong
Denisovan-human or Denisovan- Neanderthal-human genetic markers. It
is even possible the giants of North America contain DNA belonging
to the fourth type of hominin identified from DNA evidence alone,
and who is now believed to have bred with all three other
sub-species-Denisovans, Neanderthals and archaic humans (Prüfer,
2013; Sanders, 2013).
Species-x, as we shall call them, could be survivors of a Homo heidelbergenis population, or they might be an even more ancient hominin sub-species known as Homo erectus (Waddell, 2013; Timmer, 2013).
Although Homo erectus entered the scene as much as 1.9 million years ago, and stayed around until around 150,000 years ago, it is thought they may have survived in small pockets in Indonesia until around 50,000 years ago, and arguably even as late as 27,000 years ago.
It
is a conclusion based on anatomical remains of Homo erectus
recovered from an important hominin settlement site at Ngandong on
the Indonesian island of Java (Grün and Thorne, 1997; Rose, 1997).
Although the Mixe and Karitiana tribes are not noted for their extreme height, the fact remains that Denisovan and Neanderthal DNA exists among the Native Americans of today.
So there is every chance that human hybrid populations that inhabited the American continent both before and after the drowning of the Beringia land bridge would have preserved at least some of their Denisovan, Neanderthal and species-x traits across the generations.
These would have included not only an increased height (inherited from the Denisovans), but also, like Blossom Mound's Burial 37, prominent brow ridges, thick arms and legs, and other so- called "archaic" features (inherited from Neanderthals, and possibly even from Denisovans and species-x, whoever they turn out to be), as well as skulls with "archaic" features derived from early forms of Homo sapiens.
More important is the fact that these human hybrids
would also have been prone to genetic disorders including extreme
growth and various other physical abnormalities caused by diseases
such as acromegaly, hyperdontism, taurodontism, with hyperdontism
being the most likely cause of the double rows of teeth so often
reported in connection with the skulls of giant skeletons, a fact
that almost certainly confirms their origin as human hybrids.
What is more, the nuclear and mitochondrial DNA of skeletal remains found both on the American continent, and elsewhere in the world, which display clear evidence of a genetic disorder of the type described here, should be compared against the known genetic markers of our hominin cousins.
We believe this will
prove to be a fruitful exercise that will change the way we perceive
the evolution of humankind on this planet.
Almost certainly
they are human hybrids that have resulted from interbreeding between
three, and possibly even four, different human sub-species.
The coming together of all these different
peoples-whose descendents existed in and around the Altai Mountains
of southern-central Siberia around 40,000 to 50,000 years ago-no
matter how brief or how intimate, almost certainly changed human
evolution in ways we cannot even begin to understand at this time
(and see Collins, 2014, in which the current author explores the
impact Neanderthal-human hybrids had on the rise of civilization).
What is more, if there were whole groups of them, as would appear to have been the case in the Kanawha Valley of West Virginia, the chances are they would indeed have formed the ruling elites.
As such they would have seen themselves as responsible for the dissemination of their pre-existing belief systems, which derived originally from archaic populations that thrived on the Eurasian landmass many thousands of years before the submergence of the Beringia land bridge in around 8500 BC. These age-old beliefs might well have included the idea that humankind's own origins and destiny lay among the stars, with a particular emphasis on those stars existing in the constellation of Cygnus, the great sky bird.
Here the Milky Way as the Path of Souls forks to highlight the entrance to a world existing beyond our own.
Maybe it was for this reason that we came to believe that the giants, the human hybrids, were of the stars themselves, simply because they were the ones who provided us with the knowledge of how we as a species could, quite literally, return to the stars.
Not in a physical manner, but through the profound journey of the soul.
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