The notion that early humans might
have been contemporaneous with the giant reptiles has
stoked the creative fires of many a fantasy and science
fiction novelist. In Worlds Before Our Own
(Anomalist Books, 2007), I pose a two-pronged
question: Did a race of early humans exist during the Age
of Reptiles, something like 70 million years ago; or did
a certain number of the giant reptiles survive until a
few thousand years ago?
Early in January, 1970, the
London Express Service carried an item relating the
discovery of a set of cave paintings which had been found
in the Gorozamzi Hills, twenty-five miles from
Salisbury in Rhodesia. According to the news story,
the paintings included an accurate representation of a
brontosaurus, the 67-foot, 30-ton behemoth that
scientists insist became extinct millions of years
before man achieved his earthly advent.
Experts agree that the paintings
were done by bushmen who ruled Rhodesia from about 1500
B.C.E. until a few hundred years ago. The experts also
agree that the bushmen only painted from life. This
belief is borne out by the other Gorozamzi Hills
cave paintings, which represent elephants, hippos,
deer, and giraffe.
The November, 1968, issue of
Science Digest carried the startling thoughts of Mexican
archaeologist-journalist Jose Diaz-Bolio concerning his
discovery of an ancient Mayan relief sculpture of a
peculiar serpent-bird found in the ruins of Tajin,
located in Totonacapan in the northeastern section of
Veracruz, Mexico. Diaz- Bolio suggested that the
serpent-bird was not merely the product of Mayan flights
of fancy, but a realistic representation of an animal
that lived during the period of the ancient Mayans--1,000
to 5,000 years ago.
A startling evolutionary oddity
would have been manifested if such serpent-birds were
contemporary with the ancient Mayan culture, for
creatures with such characteristics are believed to have
disappeared 130 million years ago. The archaeornis
and archaeopteryx, to which the sculpture bears a
resemblance, were flying reptiles that became extinct
during the Mesozoic age.
William Meister, an amateur
rockhound, found what appears to be a fossilized human
sandal print with a trilobite, an extinct marine animal,
imbedded in the impression made by the heel.
Meister discovered the print in July, 1968, while
searching for fossils at Antelope Springs, near Delta,
Utah. Since the impression was made on what once may have
been a sandy beach of the Cambrian period of the
Paelozoic Era, the sandal print would have to be an
incredible 500 million years old.
Dr. Clifford Burdick personally
investigated William Meister's find, and while digging in
the same area where the rockhound had found the
remarkable sandal print, he himself found a human track
similar to the first one Meister discovered, evidently
made by shoes or moccasins. Professors of the geological
department of a leading university conceded that the
tracks definitely looked human, but they could not accept
their biological origins.
Dr. Burdick commented that the
manlike tracks found at Antelope Springs, preserved in
rock hundreds of feet below the present surface of the
ground, may have been covered at or near the beginning of
some great catastrophic, earth-shaking event that buried
many forms of life all together, some marine and some
non-marine.
“If these are verified as
human tracks,” he said, “the discovery will
have far-reaching repercussions throughout the scientific
world, and especially for stratigraphers and
paleontologists. Cambrian fossils such as trilobites, are
placed at the bottom of the Paleozoic, some
estimated 600 million years before man evolved,
according to evolutionary geology. This evidence,
if verified, will practically collapse the geologic
column.”
In addition to the giant footprints
of manlike bipedal creatures discovered throughout
the southwestern United States, other indications that a
much larger race inhabited North America in prehistoric
times came with the discovery in Supai Canyon, Arizona,
of a petroglyph depicting a mammoth attacking a
man. This primitive work of art was found by Harold
T. Wilkins, who determined that the beleagured man must
have been over ten feet tall, according to the
perspective employed by the ancient artist. Amerindians
in the vicinity stated that the drawings had been made by
the "giants of long ago."
The New York Times on December 2,
1930, carried an item that told of the discovery of the
remains of an apparent race of giants who once lived at
Sayopa, Sonora, a mining town 300 miles south of the
Mexican border. A mining engineer, J. E. Coker, said that
laborers clearing ranchland near the Yazui River
"dug into an old cemetery where bodies of men, averaging
eight feet in height, were found buried tier by tier. . .
."
On February 14, 1936" The New York
Times ran a piece datelined Managua, Nicaragua, which
stated that the skeleton of a gigantic man, with the head
missing, had been unearthed at El Boquin, on the Mico
River, in the Chontales district. "The ribs are a yard
long and four inches wide and the shin bone is too heavy
for one man to carry. 'Chontales' is an Indian
word, meaning 'wild man.'
In its June 9, 1936 issue, The New
York Times published an article item with a Miami,
Florida dateline that old of human skeletons eight feet
long imbedded in the sand of an uninhabited little island
off Southern Florida. E. M. Miller, zoologist at the
University of Miami, commented that the skulls were
unusually thick, the jaws protruded, and the eye
sockets were high in the head.
In his book Forbidden Land,
Robert R. Lyman wrote of an unknown tribe of American
giants who had the added distinction of having horns
growing from their heads:
“At Tioga Point ... a short
distance from Sayre, in Bradford County
(Pennsylvania]…they uncovered an Indian
mound [and] found the bones of 68 men which were
believed to have been buried about the year 1200. The
average height of these men was seven feet, while
many were much taller. On some of the skulls, two inches
above the perfectly formed forehead, were
protuberances of bone, evidently horns that had been
there since birth. Some of the specimens were sent to the
American Investigating Museum .
“. . . In December 1886, W. H.
Scoville of Andrews Settlement discovered an Indian
mound at Ellisburg. When opened, the skeleton of a man
was found. It was close to eight feet in
length.”
According to their oral tradition,
the Delaware tribe once lived in the western United
States. At some point in their history, they migrated
eastward as far as the Mississippi River, where they were
joined by the Iroquois Confederacy. Both groups of people
were seeking land better suited to their rather cultured
way of life, and they continued together on their
eastward trek.
Scouts sent ahead learned of a
nation that inhabited the land east of the Mississippi
and who had built strong, walled cities. These people
were known as the Talligewi or Allegewi, after whom the
Allegheny River and Mountains are named. The Allegewi
were considered taller than either the Iroquois or the
Delaware, and the scouts saw a good many giants
walking among them.
When the two migrating tribes asked
permission to pass through the land of the Allegewi, it
was denied. Bitter fighting broke out, which continued
for a number of years. EventualIy, the superior
numbers and the determination of the allies prevailed,
and the Allegewi fled to the west.
The Allegewi next appear in the
legends of the Sioux, whose tradition tells of a
confrontation with a race of great stature. The Sioux,
who were surely among the ablest of warriors,
exterminated the Allegewi when the giants sought to
settle in what is now Minnesota.
Is there any archaeological
evidence to support these tribal legends and
traditions?
Rising out of the earth in Ohio,
Minnesota, Iowa, and other states are the huge Earthworks
of the mysterious "moundbuilders." The mounds
scattered throughout the Midwest were apparently raised
by the same unknown people, and the earthworks are
extremely large.
Do giant mounds indicate giant
people?
Enormous weapons, including a
copper ax weighing 38 pounds, have been found in these
mounds. It is difficult to imagine the
average-sized Amerindian, as we first know him at the
time of the European invasion, casually wielding a
38pound ax.
However, outsized weapons and
implements alone are not proof of a giant race, and
neither are huge monuments. The former can be works of
art, the latter could be objects of religious
commitment. The best proof of a race of giants in North
America--or anywhere else--would be the discovery of the
skeletons of these people.
Two brothers living in Dresbach,
Minnesota, in the process of enlarging their brick
business, were forced to remove a number of large Indian
mounds. In one of the huge earthenworks they discovered
the bones of "men over eight feet tall."
In La Crescent, Minnesota, not far
from Dresbach, mounddiggers reportedly found large
skillets and "bones of men of huge stature."
Over in Chatfield, mounds were
excavated, revealing six skeletons of enormous
size.
Unusually large skeletons of
seven people buried head down were discovered in
Clearwater. The skulls in the latter find were said to
have had receding foreheads, and teeth that were double
all the way around.
Other discoveries in Minnesota
included "men of more than ordinary size" in Moose Island
Lake; several skeletons, one of "gigantic size" in Pine
City; ten skeletons "of both sexes and of gigantic size"
in Warren (buried with these particular specimens
were horses, badgers, and dogs).
Could these huge skeletons of
gigantic "indians" be all that remains of the last of a
proud prehistoric race who defied the monster
reptiles and built an extensive empire of walled
cities throughout the Americas?
Dr. Clifford Burdick first began
investigating "footprints in stone" in the early 1950s
when the Natural Science Foundation of Los Angeles
assigned him to go with four other members to examine the
reported man-tracks found in strata contemporaneous
with dinosaur prints in and around Glen Rose, Texas. The
committee soon learned that men had been cutting
dinosaur and human tracks out of the limestone of
the Paluxy River bed near Glen Rose since at least
1938. A Mr. A. Berry gave them an affidavit which stated
that in September of that year, he and other men found
"many dinosaur tracks, several sabre-tooth tiger tracks,
and three human tracks" in the river bed.
Dr. Burdick learned that Dr. Roland
Bird, field explorer for the American Museum of Natural
History of New York City, had also examined the Berry
tracks. Describing them in the May 1939 edition of
Natural History magazine, Bird admitted that he had never
seen anything like the tracks, and assessed them as
"perfect in every detail." But since the manlike tracks
measured 16 inches from toe to heel, Bird declared that
they were too large to be human, although the barefoot
tracks did show all the toes, insteps, and heels in the
proper proportions. When Dr. Bird made a
special field trip to the Paluxy River to examine
the tracks in situ, he became less enthusiastic about the
prints in association with dinosaur tracks, because "man
did not live in the age of dinosaurs."
Whatever species of creature made
these tracks, it was definitely bipedal. The footprints
all have about the same length of stride, which would be
consistent with a man with a 16-inch foot. The shapes of
the prints are more manlike than any other animal known
to science.
If the tracks are accepted as being
human, then scientists will be forced either to place man
back in time to the Cretaceous period or to bring
the dinosaur forward to the Pleistocene or Recent
period.
In referring to the evidence of the
Glen Rose tracks, Dr. Burdick states that the generally
accepted theory of evolution would be dealt a lethal
blow, because the geologic record of human footprints
contemporaneous with dinosaur tracks "suggests that
simple and complex types of life were coexistent in time
past or during geologic ages. . . . This does not
harmonize with the hypothesis that complex types of life
evolved from lower or more simple forms. Evolution
implies that through the geologic ages life has not only
become more complex, but has increased in size. If
evidence from the man-tracks can be used as a criterion,
ancient man was much larger than modern man as an
average. This harmonized with most fossil life which was
larger than its modern counterpart. . . . On the whole,
biological life has had to contend with unfavorable
environment which has been a factor in its degeneration,
rather than its evolution."
For years, Frank X. Tolbert wrote
about the alleged mantracks in the Paluxy River in
his "Tolbert's Texas" column in the Dallas Morning News.
Consistently skeptical that the prints were made by
humans, Tolbert maintained that the tracks had been made
by giant sloths. But in his January 6, 1973 column,
Tolbert reported "what may be the clearest of the
so-called 'giant men tracks’ yet discovered"--a
footprint of "a huge humanoid" measuring 21 1/2 inches in
length, 8 inches in width across the front of the foot,
and 5 1/2 inches across the instep.
Dr. C. N. Dougherty of Glen Rose
stated that near the footprint are also the deeply
engraved prints of three-toed dinosaurs. "These
men-tracks belong to the Mesozoic Era because the
clearest man-track is exactly eight inches from a
trachodon track and on the same layer of rock," said Dr.
Dougherty. "The trachodon tracks are as clear and
distinct as the mantrack. "
According to Dr. Dougherty: "When I
discovered this trail of a giant man under the waterfall,
I had a feeling that it was one of the most important
discoveries since the Dead Sea Scrolls.”
The thing that most intrigued
Tolbert is that the prints are each 21 1/2 inches in
length, "And they indicate that these men who were
contemporaries of the brontosaurus, if men they
were, walked with a stride of seven feet."
Some might conjecture that such
giant humans might have been able to band together and
put up a pretty good fight against any giant
reptile.
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