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The Remains of Large Vertebrates Inspired Legends About Human Giants, Mythical Monsters, and Terrifying Animals

Perhaps as long as five thousand years ago, probably while exploring a cave at the foot of Mount Etna in Sicily, Achaean sailors from ancient Greece discovered some remains that looked like human bones, only huge. How frightened they must have been!

They also found a skull, then another-just as big, just as forbidding-with a single ominous socket in the middle of the forehead. No question but that the bones belonged to gigantic humans, appalling one-eyed monsters that probably dwelled on the island and whose burial place the sailors had unwittingly desecrated. Best to clear out posthaste and move on! When these sailors spun their tales to friends and families back home, conjuring up visions of fearsome creatures, their listeners took heart from the knowledge that the discoveries were so far away.

Years, centuries went by, and the stories were passed along from generation to generation. In the 5th century BC Greek historian Thucydides asserted that Cyclopia, the mythical land of the giant Cyclopes-where the hapless Odysseus looked on as Poseidon's son, the Cyclops Polyphemus, devoured several of his shipmates-lay on the slopes of Mount Etna.

This view was corroborated by his contemporary, the philosopher Empedocles of Agrigentum. But they were both off the mark. Cyclopia-that is the land of the giants described by Homer-more likely lay farther north near Naples. More importantly however their assertions perpetuated a widely held belief. The idea that there really were such things as Cyclopes went unchallenged for centuries and they were joined by many other giants.

In Pliny we read that the skeleton of the mythological hunter Orion, 26 cubits (about 35 feet) long, was discovered on the island of Crete. The remains of Trojan War hero Ajax were said to have been discovered at Salamis, an ancient city on the east coast of Cyprus. The Arabs too acknowledged belief in the existance of human giants.

During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the hold of myths about giants was stronger than ever. From a catalogue compiled in 1558, we know that between the 14th and 16th.centuries quite a few "giants" bones were still turnmg up m Sicily.

The creatures people used to call Cyclopes really did exist, only hundreds of thousands of years earlier than had been thought; so did the closely related giants whose bones had been unearthed at various other sites. Contrary to legend-- and their huge molars notwithstanding-- they had never tasted the tiniest morsel of human flesh. In fact, they were vegetarians! And they all had small, round, peaceful eyes-- not one, but two of them. The baffling forehead socket turned out to be a large median nasal opening that boasted a trunk when the creatures were alive. The creatures were in reality harmless dwarf elephants that roamed the shores and islands of the Mediterranean early in the Quaternary period, over 1.5 million years ago.

By the time humans stumbled upon their remains, these elephants had all died out, as had their cousins throughout Europe. The bones were real enough; the human giants they supposedly belonged to, however, were figments of the imagination.

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