The Giant of Castelnau

Legends of giants permeate folklore of cultures around the world. The ancient Greeks had Gigantes who were born of Gaia (Earth) when blood from the castrated Uranus (Sky) fell on earth. The Gigantes clashed frequently with the Olympian gods, and those who were vanquished were said to be buried under volcanoes. In Norse mythology, the giants stormed Asgard in the battle of Ragnarök and fought the gods until the world was destroyed. Arguably, the most famous of the giants was Goliath, who was slain by David with a single blow from his slingshot.

Goliath and David.

Many ancient alien propagandist believe that giants existed for real and built many of the large stone monuments of the past such as the Stonehenge and the Pyramids. Even natural geologic features such as the massive basalt columns of the Giant's Causeway on the coast of Northern Ireland were attributed to construction by giants. However, there is no archeological evidence that would suggest that hominins ever grew any taller than we are today. Imagine the surprise, then, when anthropologist Georges Vacher de Lapouge discovered three apparently human bones of gigantic size during an excavation of a Bronze Age cemetery at Castelnau, near Montpellier, France in 1890.

As depicted above, one the left is a fragment of a femur, or thigh bone, of enormous girth. It was 14 cm in length and the circumference of the bone was 16 cm. One the right, is the upper part of a tibia, or shin bone. In the middle is a normal-sized humerus, or bone of the upper arm, found from the same cemetery, and positioned between the two finds to illustrate how big the two adjoining pieces are. At the bottom is a fragment that may belong to either a femur or a humerus. Judging from the size of the fragments, Lapouge estimated that the person whose these bones belonged must have stood some 11.5 feet tall. For comparison, the tallest recorded human is Robert Wadlow (1918 – 1940) who stood 8 feet 11 inches.

“I think it unnecessary to note that these bones are undeniably human, despite their enormous size,” wrote Lapouge in La Nature. “The volumes of the bones were more than double the normal pieces to which they correspond. Judging by the usual intervals of anatomical points, they also involve lengths almost double.”

The bones of the giant were examined by zoologists and paleontologist at the University of Montpellier, and later by Dr. Paul Louis André Kiener, professor of pathological anatomy at Montpellier School of Medicine, who admitted that they represented a “very tall race”, but nevertheless found them abnormal in dimensions and apparently of “morbid growth”.

Were the bones unearthed at Castelnau indicate a case of hypertrophy of the pituitary gland resulting in excessive levels of human growth hormone, or something else?

“The giant of Castlenau must have been a source of wonder, if not terror, to the savage men of those times, and was doubtless treated with all the honor which in these modern days is bestowed upon a successful prize-fighter,” the Boston Journal of Chemistry and Pharmacy reported.

Incidentally, these has been an old tradition among peasants of the vicinity that a cavern in the valley was, in olden times, occupied by a giant. Could it be possible that the old tale was founded on fact?

Interestingly, more bones of giants were reported to have turned up near the same location a few years later. Workers excavating a water works reservoir allegedly found skulls up to 32 inches in circumference (for comparison, the average adult head measures about 22 inches). Other bones of gigantic proportions were also recovered indicating they belonged to a race of men “between 10 and 15 feet in height.”

The bones were reportedly sent to the French Academy of Sciences for further study. This is where the trail runs cold. No mention of the alleged giant bone fragments of Castelnau ever appeared in a science journal again.