The Williamson County Giant (aka A Pleistocene Mega-Human) (original) (raw)
Related papers
More on the Franklin Giant and Misinterpreted Mastodons
In an earlier article, I presented the story of the " Williamson County Giant " as I then knew it – an enormous skeleton discovered near Franklin, Tennessee that was interpreted, reconstructed, and mounted as an 18-19 foot tall member of the genus Homo and placed on display in Nashville and later New Orleans only to be revealed as a misinterpreted and mis-presented mastodon skeleton (Smith 2013). Further research has revealed some additional information pertinent to this remarkable story.
SSRN Archaeology, 2023
For many years, a poster has, in various forms, appeared frequently on websites and within material that discuss a global conspiracy to hide an “ancient race of giants” from the public, presenting several giant human skeletons that are claimed to have been found all over the world between at least 1400 BCE and the mid-1950s CE. The poster was created by the late young earth creationist Joe Taylor for his Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum located in Lubbock, Texas. Despite the fantastical dimensions provided, these claims are taken seriously by those who are making them and are advocated for with complete sincerity. The Abilene Discovery Center, another creation museum located in Abilene, Texas, features Taylor’s poster and claims as a central exhibit. (Moore, 2017) This paper consolidates prior research in addressing the claims made in the poster, and provides a thorough analysis of each of them, along with a review of their origin.
Fossil Proboscidians and Myths of Giant Men
The early history of paleontology is replete with examples of misil;l~ntifications of fossils. Teeth and bones of mastodons and mammoths II ere especially apt to be identified as the remains of antediluvian giants. These fallacies were entertained not only by the uninformed, b,!t also by the intellectual elite. Even today misidentified fossils are sometimes used as "evidence" for the former existence of giants. t t t Nebraska is famous for its fossils. Today research and education assure that even preschoolers understand the nature of these relics of past life. But such enlightenment has not always prevailed. Sixteenth and seventeenth century divines variously considered fossils to be formed by "plastic forces" in the rocks, inventions of the Devil designed to deceive and terrify the faithful, "irradiations" from stars and planets, "sports" or "jokes" of nature, and sacred portents of future events. Some even supposed that fossils were the discarded remains of organisms from an early but unsuccessful creation attempt by God (Adams, 1960:250-254).
Tennessee Archaeology, 2011
The Coats-Hines archaeological site (40WM31) consists of a Paleoindian butchering site and Pleistocene bone bed located in northern Williamson County, Tennessee. Archaeological examinations since 1977 have documented the presence of various Pleistocene species, and recovered Paleoindian artifacts in direct association with those remains. The authors directed excavations in October 2010 designed to evaluate archaeological integrity and assess the eligibility of the site for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places. These investigations resulted in the recovery of Pleistocene faunal material, Paleoindian stone tools, and radiocarbon samples. As a result of the excavations, the Coats-Hines site was added to the National Register in July 2011. This article provides a summary of work conducted at the site to date, presents previously unreported Paleoindian artifacts and radiocarbon dates from earlier excavations, and discusses the significance of the Coats-Hines site. ****Following an excellent and comprehensive review by Tune et al., the Coats-Hines site is now considered a paleontological locality rather than an archaeological site. The authors of the 2010 paper in Tennessee Archaeology support the findings of this assessment and the resulting site reclassification. Please see: Tune et al. (2018) Assessing the proposed pre-last glacial maximum human occupation of North America at Coats-Hines-Litchy, Tennessee, and other sites. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2018.02.018
Giant Humans in the Historical Record
Making a case from Historical Records that Giant Humans survived the Last Great Cataclysm - 7,000 years ago and co-existed in declining stature and decreasing population along side Modern Humans up into the post Columbian (or modern) era.