Present since ancient myths, the figure of the Giant continues to haunt our stories. They are found in fantasy novels as well as in video games. But what does science say about them?
the giant too heavy for his bones
This question is legitimate knowing all the fake news that claims to prove the existence of the giants. For those who hang around a bit on Twitter, we could for example find this one masterfully mocked by a Design professor.
This would not pass in my design classes. Please clean up with clone stamp. pic.twitter.com/qmB5sYGkns
– Skeletons of giants found by the thousands. But most have been destroyed or thrown into the ocean by the Vatican and the US Smithsonian Research Institute. Otherwise, they should have explained to us how the giants could have existed when we are supposed to descend from the monkey according to the theory of evolution. What we were made to believe. Up to you !
– It would have been directly refused in my design class. Please clean that up with Photoshop’s clone stamp tool.
Unfortunately, with fake news, you never know who is the first to utter it, but that doesn’t excuse all the people who relay the information without verifying it. In this case this tweet shows a photo montage of a giant’s skull, acceptable for the 2000s, but in 2021, we still expect better. And for good reason, these photos come from a 2002 PhotoShop competition, the objective of which was the creation of false archaeological excavations.
3 million years ago, our ancestor Lucy was only 1 meter, today we are 1m79, so is it enough to wait 7 million years for us to reach 3 meters?
Let’s do a simple reasoning as to whether the giants, with bones and muscles equivalent to ours, could survive. When doubling a distance, there is no problem, but when doubling the length of a square, the area is multiplied by 4. This is explained by the fact that we did not increase one length, but four, the length of each side of the square. Now, if we want to double the length of a face of a cube, such as the height of a man for example, we must multiply by 8 its initial volume because a cube has 8 faces.
Suppose that the chemical components of a giant do not differ from those of a man, then the density remains the same. So to get a giant of 3m58, or 3 times the height of a man, you have to multiply his weight by 8, which gives 536 kilos. It’s hard to imagine a man capable of supporting such a weight, even with a little more muscle. Obviously this little calculation does not have the value of a rigorous demonstration, but it gives an order of magnitude.
Sultan Kozen, the tallest man in the world still alive, lives in Turkey and measures 2m51, the gland producing his growth hormones did not stop when he came of age. But his life is far from a fairy tale, the large size of his legs makes him less stable, almost as if he constantly had stilts on his feet, this added to his weight, his falls are frequent and often severe. His heart has a problem too, it has to beat harder to get its blood to all the extremities of his body. So is the quest over, we can never exceed 2m51?
A dragon tooth found in a Hong Kong pharmacy may give us hope. Until the day when an anthropologist entered this pharmacy, these teeth were sold like those of a dragon, but it only takes one glance to the specialist for him to understand that they were those of a monkey. giant. The Giantopithecus is the largest ape recorded in the world, but extinct for 2 million years, it measured 2 to 3 meters and weighed 200 to 500 kilos. Note that our estimates were not so bad, we had evaluated the weight of a giant of 3.38 to 536 kilos. Unfortunately this famous monkey has never walked on its two hind legs, the question becomes, is a man walking on all fours still a man?
Dean Falk, an anthropologist from the University of Florida, explains to us that the major characteristic of hominids, the primate family of man, is its bipedalism, which is what differentiates us from other primates. In order for a human to reach the size of a giant, it would have to undergo radical biological transformations. In order for him to get on his two hind legs without breaking his legs under his weight, they will need to be wider with thicker bones. Elephant ears will have to grow to regulate the temperature, and his heart will need to be stronger for his blood to reach his whole body.. But after all these transformations, even though he walks well on his two legs, can we still call him human?
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