kabbos
If there were giants, where did they go?
By : Ayad Attar
I have always been fascinated by the stories of giants, the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk, the giant lantern genie in the tales of the Thousand and One Nights, the giant robots in science fiction films… They are mighty beings, we love to see and hear their stories because they emit in our souls a mixture of strength, vanity and mystery, and who does not love to be strong? And strength is often characterized by vanity, an acceptable vanity when you are the length of a three-story building, because whether you like it or not, you are compelled to look arrogantly at those little ones who run under your feet. And this arrogance, full of mighty power, is also the source of the mystery surrounding these giants, because it makes us wonder how they reached their size? How did they come into existence and how did they live? .. And the most important question is why did they disappear? And did they ever exist, or did they never exist except in the world of myths and legends?
Do we know everything?
Of course, if you asked a historian or biologist about the giant sitting on top of the gigantic beanstalk that grew in Jack’s garden, he would laugh and he would answer you confidently: “There are no giants.”
but how ? .. What about all that folklore and religious heritage about them, how can they not exist? .. You will inevitably ask, and he will answer you, saying: “Ok, if they existed, where are their remains? .. Their traces.. Their cities.. We know that dinosaurs are giant creatures that actually lived on Earth millions of years ago because we have thousands of fossilized skeletons that indicate their existence , while we did not find a single skeleton belonging to a giant.”
Scientific speech is sound, but let us ask innocently: Do scientists know everything? ..
They tell us that modern human appeared and colonized this earth about two hundred thousand years ago, but what do we know about these thousands of years? …almost nothing! .. Most of our knowledge of human history is almost limited to the last five thousand years, and let us be more specific, since man learned to write and left us records of his life, beliefs, kings, wars and cities. Writing is the standard of knowledge, and for this reason, scholars know a lot about aspects of ancient life in the Ancient egypt and Mesopotamia, because the peoples who founded those two civilizations left us millions of hieroglyphic papyrus scrolls and cuneiform clay tablets to the extent that many of them are still in the museums vaults arount the world, waiting to be deciphered and read.. But what do we know in return about Britain’s history before the Roman invasion in 43 AD? ..
almost nothing..
Is this reasonable! Great Britain, “The empire on which the sun never sets”… Its ancient history is unknown? ..
Yes, this is true, and the reason is simply that the ancient “British” were not fond of writing and reading and did not know it at all. They were barbarians, they did not leave us any information about themselves, and for this reason scholars today stand puzzled in front of a great historical monument like Stonehenge without knowing anything about Who built it and why was it built in the first place? All they have are conflicting historical accounts left by medieval historians that scholars refuse to believe, such as that the famous magician Merlin brought a people of giants who inhabited Ireland in ancient times and used them to move the huge rocks and build this majestic edifice.
A legend that’s hard to believe, isn’t it? .. But if these are just myths, how can we explain the construction of great edifices such as Stonehenge and the pyramids by using simple and dilapidated wooden levers and cranes? Doesn’t that seem impossible? .
In Baalbek, Lebanon, there is a great boulder carved out of stone called (The Pregnant Woman). This rock was cut from the stone quarries in the south of the city and carefully polished its sides. It is 21 meters long and weighs about 1500 tons. It is a giant rock in every sense of the word, but its size is not the only cause of mystery in it. Scientists do not know who cut it and how he was able to move it from its place and transport it for a long distance. It is supposed that it was prepared to be part of the luxurious temples built by the Romans throughout the city, but scholars today believe that its age dates back to an era older than that, perhaps in the time of Alexander the Great. The problem here is that they do not know who was living in the city at the time, because Baalbek emerged as a city and became famous after the reign of Alexander, when it became known as Heliopolis, meaning the city of the sun. Before that, its history is surrounded by mystery, but it is known that the area was ancient home to the Phoenicians and Canaanites, and the evidence for this is that its name is of Semitic origin (Baal = Lord or Master), and therefore It is not excluded that the owners of the rock were Canaanites, And the Bible tells us that some of those Canaanites were giants, which leaves us in front of two hypotheses. As for those who cut the rock and moved it had advanced equipment and cranes similar to those we have today, and this is not consistent with the copper chisels and wood levers that the ancients owned. As for those who cut the rock and moved it had enormous physical strength, to be more precise, they were giants, and therefore they did not find much difficulty in moving and lifting this huge rock.
Someone might say that this is pure nonsense.. just the legends of the ancients..
Probably ..
But wasn’t Troy just a legend that Homer narrated to us in his poems that he wrote in his famous epic, The Iliad, and scholars used to meet the existence of the city with a sarcastic smile, until suddenly a German merchant fond of antiquities appeared to us ,his name was Heinrich Schliemann, he went with his wife to Turkey and extracted for us the remains of the city of Troy from Under the dirt in 1870, guided by the poems of the Iliad, which everyone has considered for centuries a myth! .
And weren’t the stories of the lost Inca cities also a myth, until an unknown American explorer named Hiram Bingham visited the Andes Mountains in Peru in 1911, there an eleven-year-old Inca child guided him to the ruins of a great city that lies above the clouds, Machu Picchu, the holy lost city that scientists were dumbfounded by its discovery. They used to ridicule its existence and consider talking about it just a myth, while it was for four centuries, towering with its great stone edifices on the mountain and mocking their ignorance and arrogance.
These simple examples clearly show us that scientists do not know everything, and that human history is full of dark gaps and missing links, the ancient egyptians, for example, left us a record of everything, their gods, their priests, their lives, their rituals, their harvest seasons, their floods, their taxes, their wars etc.. They even mentioned the name of the woman who was combing the queen’s hair! but they neglected or deliberately not to mention the most important and greatest achievements of their civilization .. the pyramids.
It is true that there are records of workers who contributed to the construction of the pyramids, as well as the discovery of housing belonging to ancient workers and engineers in Giza, but the confusing thing is that the ancient Egyptians never told us how they built the pyramids, there is no inscription or drawing depicting workers building the pyramid and placing rocks one on top of the other . Doesn’t that seem strange, especially when we know that the ancient Egyptians were fond of engraving and writing everything about the details of their civilization, so how did they forget to tell us about the most important event in the history of the Old Kingdom! .. And why did they leave us wondering about how to lift these great rocks to great heights without modern cranes? ..
Here we are talking about a building with a height of about one hundred and forty meters, a skyscraper of fifty-eight floors, and rocks that weigh an average of three tons, not to mention others, such as those covering the king’s chamber, whose weight reaches between 70-80 tons, so how did they lift it with ropes of hemp and flax and reels of wood!! .
Did the engineers of ancient Egypt have tools and machines that we know nothing about today, what if they had used a people of giants to carry the rocks and put them in their proper place? Doesn’t that seem a logical explanation?! Or is it too.. just nonsense.
Giants of antiquity
The Greeks left us many legends, one of which came from the famous philosopher Plato, in which he talked about a great island with wide plains and high mountains lying in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, its inhabitants are strong and wise who extended their influence on the four sides of the earth. But the gods were angry with this island for some reason, so they sent it with those on it to the bottom of the ocean, and only a few of its people survived.
The story of the lost continent was not inspired by Plato’s imagination, as he heard it quoting from the priests of ancient Egypt, those great philosophers and magicians who told people what was and will be. They said that the people of the island were giants, one of them was twice as tall as the average person, and that they dispersed in the land after the sinking of their continent, becoming kings and gods, teaching people writing and architecture, and laying the foundations of civilization. Perhaps this explains to us how civilization suddenly appeared in the middle of the third millennium BC, after more than two hundred thousand years of cave life, barbarism and darkness!.
Suddenly, in just five thousand years, human civilization has developed to the point of sending spacecraft to the Moon and Mars, while not an inch has evolved in two hundred thousand years!!! . Isn’t that confusing, isn’t it a reason to think that something great happened five thousand years ago that moved man from the cave stage to the stage of civilization, a qualitative leap that changed everything forever, but it did not happen on its own, but was done by great teachers who transferred wisdom to humans and took their hand towards the paths of science and urbanization, and in recognition of their merit, humans painted these wise masters on the walls of their palaces and temples, portrayed them as kings and gods, and made it clear to us that they are not like humans, they are much taller and stronger .. They are the giants of the lost continent who left their traces in every part of the world.
And again some might say – myself included! – That this talk is just nonsense… But if it is, then how do we explain this common heritage about giants among all the nations of the earth? ..
In Japan they have oni
In India they have the Daitya
In Scandinavia, they have the Jötunn
In the Basque Country, they have the Jentil
In the Philippines, they have Kapre
In Ireland they have Fomorians
In Greece they have the Gigantes
And there are many other names.. The bottom line is that giants are present in the folklore of all nations. Religious books are also not devoid of mentioning them, as the Old Testament of the Bible tells us about the Nephilim, a people of giants who lived on earth before the flood. There are also the Canaanites, it was said that they are giants, or perhaps some of their tribes, and perhaps King Goliath is the most famous of the Canaanites giants. He was two or three meters tall. David killed him after he threw a stone from his slingshot, and the story is well known.
The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus wrote in the first century AD, saying that the Amorites were giants. The Amorites are Semitic peoples who settled in the north of the Arabian Peninsula since the third millennium BC, and the Canaanites mixed with them later. Flavius says that people in his time were finding giant skeletons belonging to this mighty extinct people, which he describes as follows:
“Had bodies so large, and countenances so entirely different from other men, that they were surprising to the sight, and terrible to the hearing. The bones of these men are still shown to this very day, unlike to any credible relations of other men”.
The ancient Arabic texts also tell us that the Canaanites were giants, and attribute them to an ancient people called the Amalekites, from the “Extinct Arabs”, who became extinct as a result of their mixing with other tribes and peoples. It was said that some of them lived in Yathrib, and that several of them were still alive when Prophet Muhammad appeared, and they were described as very tall.
The “Extinct Arabs” are the peoples who inhabited the Arabian Peninsula in the past, and it is known from their names that they became extinct and there was no trace left for them, either because of their migration to other places, or because of a disaster that befell them, or because of their mixing and melting with other tribes.
The most famous of the Extinct Arabs are: Thamud, Aad, Jadis, Tasm, Jurhum, Umim, and Abeel.
Aad and Thamud are mentioned in the Holy Qur’an in more than one place In Surat Al-A’raf, the Prophet Hud addresses his people of ‘Ad, saying:
“And remember when He made you successors after the people of Noah and increased you in stature extensively. So remember the favors of Allah that you might succeed.”
According to most interpretations, the stretch in creation means an increase in bodies and tall, and for this it was said that Aad were among the giants, and they were of great strength, they built great monuments that have no equal, and this was mentioned in Surat Al-Fajr:
“Have you not considered how your Lord dealt with Aad – [With] Iram – who had lofty pillars, the likes of whom had never been created in the lands”
The dwellings of Aad were in the south of the Arabian Peninsula, in an area between Yemen and Oman, perhaps north of Hadhramaut, and they were extremely wealthy as a result of their control of the frankincense and gum arabic trade. They exported their goods to the Levant and Egypt through trade routes passing through the Empty Quarter desert, and they had several Large cities, the most famous of which is Abar, which was also known as Iram the Pillars, meaning the one with a thousand columns. It was mentioned in ancient Yemeni writings and some Greek sources, confirming the validity of its existence, but it is a lost city that was never found by prospectors. It is said that it lies under millions of tons of the sands of the Empty Quarter desert.
As for Thamud, they settled in the north of the Arabian Peninsula, specifically in the Mada’in Saleh area in the Al-Ula governorate in Saudi Arabia. They were mentioned in many ancient historical sources, Assyrian and Greek. Some ancient Arab sources say that the people of Thamud were giants as well.
It is worth noting that our saying that this or that people were giants does not necessarily mean that their heads were touching the clouds, as in the famous legend of Uj ibn Anaq, which was mentioned many times in the ancient Arab sources, who was said to have survived the flood of Noah, and that the water of the flood only reached his knee. And that he used to hold the clouds in the sky and drink from it, and he would take the whale from the sea and raise it with his hand to the sun, roast it and eat it! . Rather what we meant by the giants is that they were taller and larger than other humans in a clear and unambiguous manner, and the most likely in my opinion is that their tall was between two and three meters, and that the matter was genetically inherited between them, meaning they shared special genes that lead to gigantism, a condition that exists even in These days we will come to mention later.
Why didn’t we find bones of a giant?!
Ok, if giants existed in such abundance in ancient times, why did we not find any skeletal remains that indicate them? …a question that presents itself strongly.
The answer can be summarized in two parts. The first is who said that we did not find bone remains? .. The second is a conspiracy theory! .
And let’s get acquainted with the first part of the answer. From time to time, websites on the Internet come to us with news and photos claiming that the excavators have found skeletons belonging to giant humans, and it is known with evidence that most of these images are fake, edited and integrated by image-editing programs such as Photoshop and others. . But among the hundreds of stories and fake pictures that talk about the discovery of giants remains, there are two or three stories that are realistic and deserve to be stopped at, and I will mention them to you in detail because of their importance in understanding the second part of the answer.
The first story from France
In the winter of 1890, Professor Georges de Lapouge was excavating an ancient Bronze Age cemetery in Castelnau in southern France. The cemetery soil had several layers, which indicates that the area has been inhabited by humans for a long time. At the bottom of these layers, in soil dating back to the late Stone Age, the professor found something that puzzled and amazed him. He extracted from the ground three bones, it was clear that they belonged to one person, and they are parts of the shin bone, the thigh bone, and the humerus. It was so big that it is difficult to imagine that it belonged to a human being of normal size.
After careful study, Professor de Lapouge concluded that the person to whom these bones belonged was incredibly huge and tall, up to 3.5 meters tall, and weighing hundreds of kilograms.
To make sure, the bones were shown to a number of professors in the field of medicine and anthropology, and all of them reached a conclusion similar to that reached by Professor de Lapouge , they confirmed that they are real bones belonging to a giant human.+
The French Nature magazine wrote a complete research on these bones in one of its issues issued at the time, and published its photos. In 1894 the bones were sent to the University of Paris for an extensive study of them, and here something confusing happened, as the bones disappeared and no one saw them after that! .
The Géant de Castelnau case is one of the rare cases whose credibility can be accepted, since all those who dealt with it were academics and distinguished scientists. But the question that arises is whether these bones belong to an individual case as a result of a genetic defect, or do they belong to a giant tribe or race of humans who inhabited France in that ancient era.
Professor de Lapouge later wrote that he had found in the same layer the cranium of a giant boy, and estimated that the boy was more than two meters tall! . Several months later, in an area about three miles west of the de Castelnau cemetery, excavators found a giant skull belonging to a human being estimated by scientists that his height was probably about 4 meters.
Once again, they sent the cranium and skull to the University of Paris.. Once again, these important evidences were lost!.
Our second story from America
In the American Wild West there is a dry area known as the Great Basin, there the Paiute Indians lived for thousands of years and told an ancient tale about an extinct tribe that competed with them for control of the region in ancient times, that tribe was called “Si-Te-Cah”, and its members lived in a large cave. They were giants, with huge bodies and tall stature, and they were distinguished by fiery red hair.
The most frightening thing about the men of that tribe is that they were cannibals, they did not hesitate to devour any of the Paiute who fell into their hands, and the war was intense and long between the two tribes until the Paiute decided to put an end to this mighty, brutal enemy, so they allied with other tribes and fought a decisive battle with the giants, in which the majority and number prevailed at the expense of strength and enormity. Only a few giants escaped from that bloody battle. They withdrew to their cave and hid there, but the Paiute and their allies did not leave them. They were determined to completely eradicate their enemy, so they chased the giants to their dark cave and shouted at them asking them to get out, but the giants refused to come out and fortified themself in their cave, so the Paiute collected firewood and put it at the entrance of the cave and set it on fire, the smoke quickly spread into the cave. Some giants tried to escape death by suffocation, so they came out of the cave to be received by the deadly arrows of Paiutes, while the rest preferred to suffocate with smoke rather than face the deadly arrows. Thus, all members of the Giants tribe were eliminated.. and forever.
For many centuries, the tale of the cannibal giants was nothing but a terrifying story that people enjoyed telling, even though the Paiute Indians insisted it was true. In a book on the history of the tribe, the daughter of one of the Paiute leaders claimed that she had a red lock of hair belonging to one of those giant enemies. She said that they inherited it from their ancestors as evidence of the fact of their historical victory over their giant enemies.
The cave of the giants still exists to this day, known as Lovelock Cave in Nevada, scientists say that it was inhabited by humans since the Stone Age until a thousand years ago. After that, the cave remained deserted, with only swarms of bats entering it, which had taken their residence at its roof. Over the centuries, the excrement of these bats accumulated until it covered the floor of the cave and rose for several meters.
In 1911, a fertilizer company decided to make use of bat excrement in the cave. It is known that bat excrement is one of the best types of fertilizer, so two men were hired to collect excrement from the cave and then send it to the company’s factory. For several months, the two men collected hundreds of tons of excrement, and with each ton that came out they were getting closer to the bottom of the cave, and one day, while they were working, they found a body buried under the excrement, and then they found a second, third and fourth body… It is amazing that these bodies were gigantic sizes with red hair. The same Paiute descriptions of their giant enemies.
Unfortunately, the two men were not very interested in the corpses, they wanted to find valuable things, so the corpses were thrown away without care, soon they decomposed and were lost, but news of the discovery spread quickly, and in 1912 the Museum of Anthropology at the University of California sent one of its employees to save what he could save from those remains and corpses that were found in the cave, but this employee’s work was so shoddy he couldn’t save anything.
Years later another expedition was sent, followed by expeditions, and thousands of ancient pieces, some dating back to 2000 BC, were discovered, and among the things found were giant skulls, which were later sent to the Humboldt Museum in the town of Ynemucca, Nevada, where they were placed in the basement of the museum. It was only shown to some visitors.
Pictures of these skulls are available on the net, and some say that their size is evidence that their owners were three meters tall and more. While the museum, on its official site on the Internet, says that the size of the skulls is normal, but it is characterized by strong and prominent features.
Regardless of what the museum says, with the increased interest in these skulls, the museum administration took a suspicious and puzzling step in 2014 as it removed the skulls from display and prevented them from being seen completely. Rumors say that the removal of the skulls from the display was preceded by the arrival of mysterious men in black shaded cars, and it is said that they pressured the museum’s administration to remove the skulls from the display. As for the museum’s administration, it says on its official website that it hid the skulls at the request of the indigenous people, who considered displaying the skulls a desecration of the sanctity of their ancestors.
Conspiracy theory
The loss of evidence and its disappearance in the stories we mentioned above prompted some to put forward the conspiracy theory. According to the proponents of this theory, there is much historical evidence that proves the existence of a race of giants who lived on Earth in different historical eras. And that scientists discover more evidence around the world every year. But on the other hand, there are secret agencies and organizations with great influence that seek to conceal and cover up these discoveries by every available means, and some of these means may reach the assassination of scientists and the destruction of their archaeological discoveries, and if they fail to do so, they instead start a fierce campaign to question the credibility of these discoveries and spreading rumors as being fake.
But why do they do that? ..what is the purpose? ..
According to conspiracy theorists, these powerful secret organizations have worked for centuries to falsify history and hide facts from people in order to be able to spread their ideas and agenda and implement their plans, especially with regard to spiritual and ideological matters.
They have always questioned people’s beliefs and pushed them to accept the view that religions are just myths and lies, and that everything mentioned in the Holy Books about miracles, floods, previous nations, etc… are just myths that have no basis in truth.
In sum, their goal was to strengthen and protect the global system based on materialism, secularism and capitalism and to ensure its continuity in order to preserve the influence and wealth of a minority of human beings who control the world from behind the scenes.
But the conspiracy theory is not accepted by everyone. On the other hand, there are scientific parties that try to give convincing explanations for all the folk and religious heritage about the giants, and some of these explanations are:
1 – As for people talking about finding the remains and great skeletons belonging to a giant, the main problem is that most of them cannot differentiate between human and animal bones. Someone might find a very huge thigh bone, which leads him to believe that it belongs to a giant when it is just the thigh of a cow! Even prospectors and academic researchers may fall into this error, which is why a sample of the bone is sent to the laboratory to confirm that it is human. This error in estimation applies perfectly to most of what is mentioned in ancient historical manuscripts. The ancients, for example, used to find dinosaur bones and think that they are the remains of some giant human beings.
2 – Giants were inevitably present in the ancient era as they exist in the modern era, and what is meant by giants here are humans whose height ranges between two and three meters, and these cases may occur due to problems in the secretions of glands that control the growth of the body. Sometimes when exhuming ancient tombs or deserted caves, skeletal remains of these tall people are found, and people start think that they belong to a race of giants that lived on Earth in the ancient past.
Tallness or shortness can also be hereditary. There are entire tribes of pygmies living in Africa, Asia and the Amazon forest. There are also tribes of tall stature, in America, for example, the Karankawa tribe shocked European explorers because the men of this tribe were distinguished by a stature of more than two meters, they were fierce fighters, and cannibals, and their tallness was inherited among them. It is also known that during the era of the Gravettian culture in prehistoric Europe, humans were astonishingly tall even by the standards of our time.
Based on this, it is certain that during history there were very short humans so that they are called dwarves and humans so tall that they are called giants, and these giants were between two and three meters tall, but taller than that, and the claim that there are people with a tall of four, five and ten meters… It seems closer to a fantasy than to the truth, because any person with a stature exceeding three meters will find it very difficult to walk and overcome the problems of gravity, as the tallness is often synonymous with many diseases, and often ends with paralysis and early death.
Giants of modern times
If we have opened this article by talking about the giants of antiquity, it is better to end it by addressing the giants of modern times, and because of the large number of giants that appeared in the modern era, we will only take a small sample of them that includes the most tall and famous.
The Gentle Giant
In movies and fiction the giant is often the epitome of meanness and arrogance, but the giant Robert Wadlow was such an example of kindness and humility that they called him the “gentle giant.” Robert was born in 1918 in Alton, Illinois, the eldest son of his father. His height was normal at birth, but soon his family noticed that he was growing at a rapid pace until he became a meter tall and weighed 20 kg at the age of 11 months and began to walk.
At the age of eight he became taller than his father (1.82 metres), and he became so powerful that he lifted his father, sitting on his chair, carrying him from the ground floor to the top floor of their house.
Soon Robert began to draw everyone’s attention, wherever he appeared, the eyes were directed towards him, however, he tried to live a normal life, so he studied and worked hard and completed his high school and entered the university to study law, and he had simple hobbies such as collecting stamps and participating in scout camps. But Robert’s continued growth gradually caused him great problems and forced him to give up his dreams and hopes. He had become (2.54 meters) tall at the age of seventeen, and this height had special requirements for clothes, shoes, a bed and a chair to match his size, and he also needed iron supports to help his legs bear his heavy weight.. And because these things cost a lot of money, he started to Appearing in advertisements for companies in exchange for providing these requirements. For example, he appeared in an advertisement for a shoe company in exchange for them making special shoes for his very large feet. Later Robert began appearing in circuses and festivals, and went on two tours with his father around the United States, wandering through cities and towns, and his father had raised the front passenger seat in his car to allow Robert to sit comfortably in the back seat and extend his legs. What is impressive is that during all these performances and festivals, Robert never lost his elegance and well-groomed.
In 1939 Robert officially became the tallest man in the world. As his growth continued, he began to face great difficulties in walking, which forced him to use a cane.
During his appearance at a festival in 1940, Robert sustained an injury to his leg due to the wrong installation of the iron brace. Unfortunately, the wound became contaminated and led to a serious infection. Doctors tried to save Robert by exchanging his blood, but his temperature continued to rise until he passed away in his sleep on July 15. July 1940, at the age of 22.
Robert was loved by all, and his short life inspired many with his relentless attempts to adapt to his situation and live like a normal human being. When he died, all the shops closed their doors in the city of Alton out of respect for him, and his funeral was attended by 40,000 people, and his coffin was so large that it required about twenty people to lift it. Today, there are many statues scattered throughout the United States in honor of his memory.
Before his death, Robert was 2.72 meters tall and weighed 199 kilograms. He still holds the world record for the tallest man in the world. It is worth noting that the abnormal and continuous growth of Robert is caused by a defect in the secretions of the pituitary gland, and this condition can be treated and stopped today, but in the twenties of the last century there was no cure.
Robert had two sisters and two brothers, all of whom were of normal stature. His mother was also a short lady and he was very attached to her.
The Russian giant
In a remote Belarusian village, Feodor Machnow was born in 1878. His mother died during his birth, so he lived as an orphan with his grandparents, while his father married another woman.
In his childhood Feodor was a child of normal stature, but at the age of eight he began to grow abnormally, and began to sleep all day for many days. When he was ten, his father, the farmer, took him to help him in farming, and the father had given birth to other children, all of whom were of normal stature.
At the age of ten Feodor became two meters tall, he was giant with the mind of a young boy, he loved playing with children and had a good spirit, but the owner of the land where his father worked saw him and admired his height and strength and asked his father to send him to work for him, his job was to remove the rocks that obstruct a stream that operator a water mill. It was a hard work that badly affected Feodor’s health for the rest of his life , the stream water was very cold and Fedor had to work long hours every day.
At the age of sixteen, Feodor was 2.54 meters tall, so his father had to raise the level of the roof of his hut, and asked the village blacksmith to make a special bed for his son, but when the blacksmith finished making the bed, Feodor had exceeded the length of the bed.
The event that changed Feodor’s life was seeing him by a German circus owner. The man was stunned by the boy’s height and large body, so he offered his father to take him to work for him in the circus, and the father, who was fed up with his son’s expenses because of his special requirements, agreed.
The owner of the circus took Feodor to Germany, put private tutors for him to teach him to read and write, and signed a contract with him to work in the circus for a rewarding salary. For nine years, Feodor moved between festivals and circus shows. His performances excite and astonish the audience. Within a few years, he accumulated a good fortune from his work.
After his contract with the circus expired, Feodor returned to his homeland. He was now a young man in his mid-twenties, about 2.70 meters tall. And upon his return, he bought land and built a large house to suit his needs as a giant, then he searched relentlessly for a bride who would marry a giant like him, and after a long search he found what he was looking for in a teacher working in a remote town. The bride was tall for a woman, but she was nonetheless about a meter shorter than her groom, and their marriage resulted in a daughter and three sons, all of whom were of normal stature.
Whenever Feodor needed money, he would go on tours throughout the Russian Empire, showing off his tall stature at festivals, circuses, and private parties for the nobility, and had now reached such a degree of fame that Russian and foreign newspapers began writing about him, they called him the “The Russian Giant.” He received offers to tour around the world , he visited England , Germany , France , Belgium , Holland , Italy and the United States .
In Germany, Feodor dined with the German chancellor. In Italy, the Pope met him personally and gave his daughter a gold cross. In America, President Roosevelt met him personally.
Among the oddities of what the newspapers of those days published about Feodor were the details about his diet. Every morning his breakfast consisted of 20 eggs, eight large loaves of bread and two liters of tea. Lunch consisted of 2.5 kg of meat with 1 kg of potatoes and three liters of beer. While dinner consisted of a large bowl of fruits with 2.5 kg of meat, three large loaves of bread and two liters of tea, before he went to bed he would eat 15 eggs with a large loaf of bread and one liter of tea or milk.
The long and continuous travel gradually began to affect Feodor’s health. He was suffering a lot from long sitting in narrow seats and small beds inside trains, cars, ships and hotels, and this affected his movement, so he had difficulty walking and started using a stick to stand.
At the end of his life, he fell into a psychological state as he became afraid for his life, many museums and scientific institutions had contacted him and asked him to donate his body to them after his death, and this terrified him, he became suspicious that he might be killed.
In 1912, Feodor Machnow died at the age of thirty-four. The official cause of his death was tuberculosis, but there are rumors that he was poisoned for the purpose of stealing his body, or by rival circus owners.
At his death, Feodor was 2.82 meters tall. That is, he is ten centimeters taller than the American Robert Waldo, but because his height is not officially documented, and because he used to wear long hats, so there is a lot of doubt about his true height. It is likely that he was shorter than Robert Waldo.
Finally…
After writing this article, the name of the giant is no longer synonymous with strength and arrogance in my opinion, but rather has become a source of sympathy and compassion. It seems, from what I have read, that the lives of these giants have never been happy
The places were narrow for them, they could not sleep or sit down
Their feet are so tired, they cannot walk or stand easily
Their hearts are lonely, it is difficult for them to find a partner or a lover
Their bodies are exhausted, they get sick quickly and die early.
I think that a person does not need to be tall in order to be a giant, all of us can become giants, with our actions, behaviors and morals.. and I think that there are short people from leaders, scholars and heroes, whose thier heads reach the clouds in our eyes for their great deeds and they rise above all giants.
