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naturalplastic
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19 Aug 2014, 7:42 pm

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
Don't discount race and genocide just yet. We all know humans are quite capable of targeting a group and then attempting to wipe them out and this was back when genocide wasn't even coined and if a people had a terrible enemy, it was either us or them and they were much more inclined to destroy them utterly. Look at the Punic Wars where Rome wiped that port pretty much off the map only because they didn't like the competition.

And back then people were much, much more clannish. Even marriage between closely related first cousins was not taboo and the Egyptians were much worse than that, permitting very close relatives to marry and procreate. So, it could be there were a race of large sized humans with specific anomolies linked to their ethnic group, six toes instead of five, for example.

This idea that it is better for distantly related individuals to marry and have children is a relatively new concept to humanity.


That last sentence utter ass-backward balderdash. Primitive societies were MORE hung up about incest than we are. Not less so. They had to be: the whole division of labor in a tribal society is based upon kinship. Today division of labor is based upon contract (money, and wages are types of contract). So a family couldnt survive if the members married within the same group and didnt extend kinship outward. You wouldnt be able to get hands to plant your fields, or hands to kill bison for you. Division of labor is the real reason for the creation of incest taboos (but genetics is a side benifit) .Indians in the amazon force young men to leave the leave the village when they come of age, and they get executed if they return to their native village, to avoid the bad economic and genetic effects of inbreeding.

But what does any of your ramblings about incest taboos and genocide have to do with Giants? We all know that the genocide was not unheard of in ancient times. If some tribe of a few thousand 13 foot tall people had existed there is nothing unbelievable that some neighboring group would have ethnically cleansed them. But so what? Where is the evidence? Evidence that these giants lived in the first place, and evidence that someone wiped them out?


It's been said these large people were wiped out by the Israelites because they were brutish and worshiped idols. As for incest, YES it was common because people didn't want power to leave their family so cousins married quite frequently and it would not surprise me that these sons and daughters of Canaan came from one closely related couple. It's not as pristine as you might think. And it would explain their prevalence of genetic anomalies because if you study any small, clannish group of interrelated folk you will see, eventually, anomalies start to show up and are confined to their little group. It just depends on what kind of recessive genes they have so it varies what these anomalies are.


OK. So the whole land of Canaan was like a remote inbred Appalachian village. And the giantism and the six toes were the genetic result. But thats a pretty big clan: to populate a whole nation with cities. Hard to imagine how that could have happened: a population could stay that isolated, and get that large.



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19 Aug 2014, 8:00 pm

The gene for six toes (polydactyly) is dominant, not recessive. :?


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20 Aug 2014, 10:02 pm

Now here's another interesting though far fetched idea...the liger is a hybrid of lion and tiger. A liger is much bigger than either a lion or tiger because a gene is triggered in the Liger that causes the pituitary gland in the brain to produce more growth hormone that does not cause the same affect when it is just present in the lion or tiger. It seems odd but these two can and do produce offspring that are MUCH larger than either parent.

Lion and tiger are close enough related to produce offspring yet it isn't viable, it cannot produce more ligers, yet still, it can exist.

So let's just say at one time there were humans and another species closely related, kinda like how lions and tigers are, and there were cases when they produced offspring that were much larger for the same reason the ligers are, because of the genetic effect on the pituitary gland causing it to produce more growth hormone and thus giants were the result.



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21 Aug 2014, 12:15 am

So what size are you suggesting these giants to be. BTW I am surprised you have not brought up megafauna yet.


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21 Aug 2014, 12:16 am

DentArthurDent wrote:
So what size are you suggesting these giants to be. BTW I am surprised you have not brought up megafauna yet.


In the Bible they are something like 420 feet tall. Hehe. I doubt that, naturally. They could have been something like eight foot tall and very well built, muscular. That seems like it could happen.



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21 Aug 2014, 12:18 am

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
Now here's another interesting though far fetched idea...the liger is a hybrid of lion and tiger. A liger is much bigger than either a lion or tiger because a gene is triggered in the Liger that causes the pituitary gland in the brain to produce more growth hormone that does not cause the same affect when it is just present in the lion or tiger. It seems odd but these two can and do produce offspring that are MUCH larger than either parent.

Lion and tiger are close enough related to produce offspring yet it isn't viable, it cannot produce more ligers, yet still, it can exist.

So let's just say at one time there were humans and another species closely related, kinda like how lions and tigers are, and there were cases when they produced offspring that were much larger for the same reason the ligers are, because of the genetic effect on the pituitary gland causing it to produce more growth hormone and thus giants were the result.


But what related species are we talking about?


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21 Aug 2014, 12:21 am

Kraichgauer wrote:
ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
Now here's another interesting though far fetched idea...the liger is a hybrid of lion and tiger. A liger is much bigger than either a lion or tiger because a gene is triggered in the Liger that causes the pituitary gland in the brain to produce more growth hormone that does not cause the same affect when it is just present in the lion or tiger. It seems odd but these two can and do produce offspring that are MUCH larger than either parent.

Lion and tiger are close enough related to produce offspring yet it isn't viable, it cannot produce more ligers, yet still, it can exist.

So let's just say at one time there were humans and another species closely related, kinda like how lions and tigers are, and there were cases when they produced offspring that were much larger for the same reason the ligers are, because of the genetic effect on the pituitary gland causing it to produce more growth hormone and thus giants were the result.


But what related species are we talking about?


One that most likely suffered a genocide which I suspect happened a lot at the time. That might be why it is so difficult finding evidence. People got angry and burned everything to the ground so nothing was left that was their policy a lot of the time. No telling how many little villages or cities were wiped off the map along with their inhabitants. It is entirely possible considering what we have read about history.



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21 Aug 2014, 12:26 am

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
DentArthurDent wrote:
So what size are you suggesting these giants to be. BTW I am surprised you have not brought up megafauna yet.


In the Bible they are something like 420 feet tall. Hehe. I doubt that, naturally. They could have been something like eight foot tall and very well built, muscular. That seems like it could happen.


Ok so now you should be able to see the wisdom in Bills posts. You do not find the idea that someone who is around six feet tall to be all that fantastic, but someone eight foot wow they are a giant. Can you see that this is relative to your experience. . Imagine you had lived a life where you had only experienced the tallest people to be just over five foot, and all of a sudden you come across a whole society who average 5'7 5'8 with even taller among them. You are familiar with people 7 foot tall, but add 12 inches and you are seeing giants..


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21 Aug 2014, 12:30 am

I just don't buy it. Five feet seven will never be giant to me but if I saw a guy who was between eight and nine feet tall with a lot of muscles and well built. yeah, I might be tempted to describe him as a giant.

Five foot seven is merely tall. To me, giant implies something larger than merely tall.

And on the topic of destruction, another compelling bit of info are cities or dwellings built in such a way they became stone fortresses. That tells you how dangerous an environment it was. People were so desperate for safety, they decided to live in caves and stone dwellings with limited access. Shows that people often burnt other materials to the ground. Stone cannot be easily burned, can it? If you dwell in stone, your life might be a bit longer and your house will be around a greater length of time.



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21 Aug 2014, 4:52 pm

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
I just don't buy it. Five feet seven will never be giant to me but if I saw a guy who was between eight and nine feet tall with a lot of muscles and well built. yeah, I might be tempted to describe him as a giant.

Five foot seven is merely tall. To me, giant implies something larger than merely tall.

And on the topic of destruction, another compelling bit of info are cities or dwellings built in such a way they became stone fortresses. That tells you how dangerous an environment it was. People were so desperate for safety, they decided to live in caves and stone dwellings with limited access. Shows that people often burnt other materials to the ground. Stone cannot be easily burned, can it? If you dwell in stone, your life might be a bit longer and your house will be around a greater length of time.

If you were 8 feet tall I doubt you would care about building fortifications.



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21 Aug 2014, 4:57 pm

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
Now here's another interesting though far fetched idea...the liger is a hybrid of lion and tiger. A liger is much bigger than either a lion or tiger because a gene is triggered in the Liger that causes the pituitary gland in the brain to produce more growth hormone that does not cause the same affect when it is just present in the lion or tiger. It seems odd but these two can and do produce offspring that are MUCH larger than either parent.

Lion and tiger are close enough related to produce offspring yet it isn't viable, it cannot produce more ligers, yet still, it can exist.

So let's just say at one time there were humans and another species closely related, kinda like how lions and tigers are, and there were cases when they produced offspring that were much larger for the same reason the ligers are, because of the genetic effect on the pituitary gland causing it to produce more growth hormone and thus giants were the result.


I already posted about ligers and tigons in this thread. Tigons get a double dose of growth inhibition (become dwarves smaller than either adult lions, or adult tigers), and ligers get the opposite-giantism.

As a put-on I suggested that the Nephilim (the hybrid human-angels) were hominid ligers.

But if you're not a believer in angels then what humanlike species existed in the last five thousand years for humans to hybrdize with? The Neanderthals died out 35 thousand years ago (and they probably were close enough to produce fertile offspring with us anyway) which was long before anything in the Bible happened.

Besides one ruined city with big rocks (which oversized humans would have the same amount of trouble moving as normal sized humans) what evidence do you have?

And you're forgetting about the word of mouth time lag between the actual experience and the writing down of the experience. Your five foot tall tribe encounters six foot tall warriors. Then ten generations later when the story actually gets written down the six foot tall guys have morphed into 60 foot tall guys.

The word "dragon" comes from the greek word "draco" which means simply "snake". The knowledge that some snakes have a poisonous bite got exaggerated over time into the meme of "dragons" whose very breath was "fire". Fear of poisonous snakes also took a different mythical path and evolved into the "baselisk" - a mythical snake whose very gaze would turn you into stone (Harry Potter had to escape one of those).



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21 Aug 2014, 6:18 pm

How to move giant stones without giants (not that they would be any help) or modern technology. Use technology of the time and good old human ingenuity.

http://gilgamesh42.wordpress.com/2013/0 ... gineering/

Basically, rollers underneath the stone and capstans (a sort of leverage system that can be made with wood and rope) for force. Plus manpower. But the thing about manpower is you don't need to be gigantic to wield it. You do need to be strong but mostly what you need is coordinated teams working with rope-and-pulley systems.

If there really was a race of giants, skeletal remains would have been found. No genocide is so overwhelming as to be able to destroy all skeletal evidence.



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21 Aug 2014, 6:33 pm

In later ancient history, the Romans - who averaged just over five feet tall - spoke of the ancient Germans, who they had both peaceful and warlike relations with, as - not giants - but as the tallest people they had ever encountered. In fact, the average Germanic tribesman stood around five seven, five eight. That difference in height might not seem extreme to us modern people, but in the ancient world where poorer nutrition and low abundance of food was not conducive to modern standards of body mass and height, those extra inches would have seemed positively gigantic.
As a side note, the elderly Lutheran minister who had confirmed me had once recounted how, in his younger years, he had attended a Harlem Globe Trotters basket ball game where the tallest players stood at six feet - and that was pretty tall in the earlier half of the 20th century. And that was in the modern era!


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21 Aug 2014, 6:52 pm

Janissy wrote:
How to move giant stones without giants (not that they would be any help) or modern technology. Use technology of the time and good old human ingenuity.

http://gilgamesh42.wordpress.com/2013/0 ... gineering/

Basically, rollers underneath the stone and capstans (a sort of leverage system that can be made with wood and rope) for force. Plus manpower. But the thing about manpower is you don't need to be gigantic to wield it. You do need to be strong but mostly what you need is coordinated teams working with rope-and-pulley systems.

If there really was a race of giants, skeletal remains would have been found. No genocide is so overwhelming as to be able to destroy all skeletal evidence.


That's not necessarily true, about the skeletal remains. for instance what if there was one small group that routinely cremated their dead? Would you say skeletal remains are a 100% certainty. Are you telling me that you are 100% you can produce skeletal remains for every creature that ever existed in the history of the world?

People always want to say, "if it existed there MUST be skeletal remains otherwise impossible!" Well, don't count on that.

As for the system of moving enormous stones, I figured there would be such a way unless these men really were 420 feet tall. Even a man who is between eight and nine feet would need a way to move such stones. They couldn't hoist them on their backs and carry them. Being eight to nine foot tall could be why they chose such large stones in the first place. Giant stones for giant men.



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21 Aug 2014, 7:11 pm

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
Janissy wrote:
How to move giant stones without giants (not that they would be any help) or modern technology. Use technology of the time and good old human ingenuity.

http://gilgamesh42.wordpress.com/2013/0 ... gineering/

Basically, rollers underneath the stone and capstans (a sort of leverage system that can be made with wood and rope) for force. Plus manpower. But the thing about manpower is you don't need to be gigantic to wield it. You do need to be strong but mostly what you need is coordinated teams working with rope-and-pulley systems.

If there really was a race of giants, skeletal remains would have been found. No genocide is so overwhelming as to be able to destroy all skeletal evidence.


That's not necessarily true, about the skeletal remains. for instance what if there was one small group that routinely cremated their dead? Would you say skeletal remains are a 100% certainty. Are you telling me that you are 100% you can produce skeletal remains for every creature that ever existed in the history of the world?

People always want to say, "if it existed there MUST be skeletal remains otherwise impossible!" Well, don't count on that.

As for the system of moving enormous stones, I figured there would be such a way unless these men really were 420 feet tall. Even a man who is between eight and nine feet would need a way to move such stones. They couldn't hoist them on their backs and carry them. Being eight to nine foot tall could be why they chose such large stones in the first place. Giant stones for giant men.


Even in ancient cultures that had practiced cremation, the occasional skeletal remains are discovered. Most common of these are bog bodies in northern Europe, who had either been human sacrifices or condemned criminals, both of which after execution had been thrown into ancient lakes or ponds, that in later times turned into bogs. In other cases, people just died away from home due to accidents or in battles, and their bodies were never cremated.


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21 Aug 2014, 7:34 pm

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
Janissy wrote:
How to move giant stones without giants (not that they would be any help) or modern technology. Use technology of the time and good old human ingenuity.

http://gilgamesh42.wordpress.com/2013/0 ... gineering/

Basically, rollers underneath the stone and capstans (a sort of leverage system that can be made with wood and rope) for force. Plus manpower. But the thing about manpower is you don't need to be gigantic to wield it. You do need to be strong but mostly what you need is coordinated teams working with rope-and-pulley systems.

If there really was a race of giants, skeletal remains would have been found. No genocide is so overwhelming as to be able to destroy all skeletal evidence.


That's not necessarily true, about the skeletal remains. for instance what if there was one small group that routinely cremated their dead? Would you say skeletal remains are a 100% certainty. Are you telling me that you are 100% you can produce skeletal remains for every creature that ever existed in the history of the world?

People always want to say, "if it existed there MUST be skeletal remains otherwise impossible!" Well, don't count on that.

As for the system of moving enormous stones, I figured there would be such a way unless these men really were 420 feet tall. Even a man who is between eight and nine feet would need a way to move such stones. They couldn't hoist them on their backs and carry them. Being eight to nine foot tall could be why they chose such large stones in the first place. Giant stones for giant men.


Thats like saying "there's a little green man walking around who follows you around, but disappears everytime you turn to look at him". Its up to you to find evidence for this. Not for us to disprove it.

Second- if there were a culture of people in some small country (like what was Canaan, which is now Isreal-Palestine) who were both giants, and cremated their dead- the giant part would have predated the particular culture's particular mortuary practices. A race or subspecies of giants would have existed thousands of years prior to one tribe of giants adopting one particular set of mortuary practices- and we would see skeletal evidence of it this race going back into the stone age.

Also if these folks were- you dont specify how big they were supposed to be- say 10 feet tall then they would have to be more than just taller than us. They would have to be different in other ways to function as walking upright creatures. They would need thicker legs with leg bones wider in cross section to support the extra wieght. Their clothing and tools would look very different from those of regular humans. Where are the artifacts?