Nephilim giants: History or hoax?
Our family looks forward to “History Corner” on Sundays by Journalist Syd Albright! Syd loves history and has the ability to make history fun and interesting for the reader.
Syd picked a controversial subject with “Nephilim Giants” (Oct. 30), but did an excellent job. Certainly there have been some hoaxes perpetrated in the studies of the Nephilim; furthermore, there has been opposition by evolutionists such as anthropologist Ales Hrdlicka (1869-1943), associated with the Smithsonian Institution. But there is a wealth of documentation and scholarly studies of these giant beings, who once lived world-wide, including America.
"Allegewi" is the Native American name for a giant race of men that once inhabited the extent of the Ohio River. Drawings going back to at least 1809 show mounds and earthworks — sometimes up to 1250 feet in diameter. Early Native American Peoples were often buried in these mounds, but with the lowest levels containing the bones of giants.
There are hundreds of newspaper articles starting from about 1870, that mention giant human skeletons found in America. Scientific American (1880) notes that an Ohio mound that was opened up had skeletons that ranged from 8-feet to 10-feet long. A giant ax head was found in Swan Lake, Manitoba. The axe head was 16-inches long and weighed 27-1/2 lbs. It is now in a museum in Winnipeg.
Abraham Lincoln was quoted (1848) as making this comment of the Ohio Valley mound builders: “The eyes of that species of extinct giants, whose bones fill the mounds of America, have gazed upon the Niagara, as ours do now.”
The Greeks and Romans had myths of demigods, half god and half human. Roman Historian Flavius Josephus (37-100AD) mentions giants. Ancient Sumer city states (now Iraq) were ruled by kings who were demigods. Archeologist Leonard Woolley, who did excavations of Ur in the 1920s and 1930s, found unusual royal tombs and “death pits.”
Numbers 13:33 says, “And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak…and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight (1450 B.C.).”
Often characteristic of these giant skeletons are double rows of teeth, 6 fingers on each hand, 6 toes on each foot, reddish hair, and occasionally horn-like projections on the skull. Early Native Americans said these giants were cannibals and did not believe in the Great Spirit.
Studies on the Nephilim can start with recent authors such as Fritz Zimmerman, "The Nephilim Chronicles: A Travel Guide to the Ancient Ruins in the Ohio Valley" (2010); L.A. Marzulli, "On the Trail of the Nephilim: Giant Skeletons & Ancient Megalithic Structures" (2013); and Stephen Quayle, "Genesis 6 Giants: Master Builders of Prehistoric and Ancient Civilizations" (2015).
• • •
Jim Pearl, geologist, is a resident of Hayden Lake.