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A researcher appearing at the annual Contact in the Desert conference in Indian Wells discusses the prevalence of deadly giants in ancient times.

Did 14-foot giants exist? Did they differ from humans? Author explores these ancient beingsBruce Fessier | Palm Springs Desert SunEveryone knows the first line of the English fairy tale, “Fee Fi Fo Fum.”But how many know the rest of the verse, which gets a little dark:“I smell the blood of an Englishman/ Be he alive, or be he dead/ I'll grind his bones to make my bread.”What the hell kind of bedtime story is that?Actually, it derives from the early 18th century tale of Jack and a cannibalistic giant called “Jack the Giant Killer.” The origins of that can be traced through oral histories to prehistoric England, when giants may have roamed not just the UK, but the Earth.The 16th century scribe, Raphael Holinshed, wrote in “Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland,” that Britain’s oldest acknowledged name was taken from a prehistoric king named Albion, who ruled a race of giants that dominated the UK for hundreds, possibly thousands of years B.C.More: Looking back at the 2018 Contact in the DesertMore: The late publisher, Art Kunkin, studied alchemyMore: Liberace fans celebrate what would have been his 100th birthdayThe Bible is filled with stories of Middle Eastern giants, including the Nephilim tribe that spawned the Amorites, Emim and Anakim, who the Sumerians called the Annunaki.Marco Polo wrote of encountering giants in Zanzibar who were “so strong they can carry as many as four ordinary men.” Mid-20th century journalist Glenn D. Kittler said of the Watusi tribe east of the Congo, “Men towering 7 or 8 feet are a common sight.”Reputable accounts of giants come from all over the world, says Hugh Newman, co-author with Jim Vieira of “Giants On Record: America’s Hidden History, Secrets in the Mounds and the Smithsonian Files." An extinct, genetically distinct subspecies of Homo sapiens was discovered just a decade ago in a Denisova Cave in Siberia. Called the Denisovans, they lived from 50,000 to 300,000 years ago and “are known to be very, very tall,” says Newman. And their descendants could have wandered as far west as North America.Newman, who is described on ancient-origins.net as a world explorer, megalithomaniac and author, will talk about the Nephilim, the Denisovans and giants in general Friday in a lecture titled “Giantology: Scientific Evidence For A Worldwide Culture Of Giants in Prehistory” at the annual Contact in the Desert conference in Indian Wells.The conference runs May 30-June 3 with field trips, talks and workshops on UFOs, ancient aliens, forbidden archaeology and more.He gave the long and short of giantology in a recent telephone interview from England.THE DESERT SUN: So, when did giants roam the earth?NEWMAN: We’re looking at different eras, really. In North America, we’ve got dating that goes back around 10,000 years, right up to the 1900s when giants have been witnessed. It’s quite a large range, but generally, it’s anywhere from around 1000 B.C. to around 900 A.D.How tall are we talking?Anywhere between 7-foot – that’s the lower limit of what we call a giant. We have one account of up to 18 feet, but we don’t think that’s for real. Probably about 14 foot.Would you call the giants a different species of Homo sapiens? In other words, if you did a 23 and Me test of DNA, could you find evidence of giants that could distinguish them from other ancestors?Not really, no. There is one (piece of evidence) we get. We have elements of up to 3 or 4 percent of Denisovan DNA within some tribes in the northern areas of North America, some of the Algonquin-speaking tribes. So, it’s thought that maybe these tall ancestors came into the Americas a very long time ago.So, you’re saying the giants weren’t different from ancient humans, just taller?I believe so, yeah. But we don’t really know because we can’t get access to (many) bones or DNA because of the NAGPRA Act – the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act (requiring institutions that receive federal funding to return Native American cultural items to their descendants). Since 1990, it’s been almost impossible to gain access to anything to do tests. It’s one of the reasons we call the book, “Giants On Record” because we had to use the records as the evidence rather than the bones, even though we have many, many academics who actually dug them up and reported them. I personally don’t think they’re alien-human hybrids or anything like that, but, if you look into the legends and oral traditions of the Native Americans, you’ll find accounts of them interbreeding with the star people – people from the sky. There are stories within some of the same tribes that ended up being giants. So, it is quite strange.Where did most of the giants roam this continent?Most of the accounts in North America have to do with the mound culture (in which North American communities over a 5,000-year period built earthen mounds for ceremonial and elite residential purposes), based around the Ohio Valley, down the Mississippi (River) and splitting into differe...