Of Book of Mormon Stories—and Giants

Abstract: Stories of giants have occurred throughout the ages and in different cultures. These stories contrast to the scientific evidence that there never have been races of giant humans, even though there are some specific cases of unusually tall individuals. If the stories don’t come from true experience, where do they come from?

In January 2018, the Annotated Edition of the Book of Mormon was published, attractively bound in leather. The Amazon listing for the edition, which is still available, has the following sales invitation—an invitation that even implies apostolic endorsement:

This book has seen unprecedented demand. The first printing sold out in a matter of days. The second printing has now finally made it to the publisher and the books are back in circulation. This particular edition seems to have struck a vital nerve among readers. . . . Unlike almost every similar publication over the last 50 years, this one’s “appeal-to-authority” is not that of the scholars, but rather the authority of Prophets and Apostles.¹

The Annotated Edition of the Book of Mormon is explained and illustrated according to concepts promoted by those who espouse the Heartland model of the Book of Mormon. Stephen O. Smoot provided an extensive review of the book and concluded, among other things, that the editors “approach archaeology with enormous carelessness and an overall untrustworthy methodology.” The part of his review that is particularly important for this paper concerns a photograph that [Page 80]the Annotated Edition uses to illustrate Ether 1:34, which refers to “the brother of Jared being a large and mighty man.” Smoot remarks of this photo:

The picture . . . is juxtaposed next to a clipped 1925 newspaper article with the sensational headline: “Mound Giants in Indiana Said to Antedate Indian.” However, the [Annotated Edition of the Book of Mormon] provides no documentation for when and where the photograph was taken, who took the photograph, and what the “giant” skeleton in the photograph really is. The obvious goal here in the [Annotated Edition of the Book of Mormon] is to associate the “giant” skeleton with the newspaper article describing “giants” discovered in a mound in Indiana and thereby link Ether 1:34 with these findings.²

The association of stories of giants with the Book of Mormon in editions of the Book of Mormon marketed to English-speaking Latter-day Saints creates a perception of new importance for some of these old stories. The apparently large number of sales of this edition suggest that these ideas are being presented to a large number of Latter-day Saints and are being accepted and believed.

Giants in the Book of Mormon

The Annotated Edition of the Book of Mormon isn’t the only place where we find Latter-day Saints promoting the claim that there were giants in the Book of Mormon. A website promoting the Heartland model looks at the question of giants in the Book of Mormon:

Were there giants in the Book of Mormon, if so, where?

Jaredites in the Land Northward:

And the brother of Jared being a LARGE and mighty man . . . (Ether 1:34)

And they were LARGE and mighty men as to the strength of men. (Ether 15:26)

[Page 81]Zarahemlaites in the Land Southward:

And they came down again that they might pitch battle against the Nephites. And they were led by a man whose name was Coriantumr; and he was a descendant of Zarahemla; and he was a dissenter from among the Nephites; and he was a LARGE and a mighty man. (Helaman 1:15)

If there are zero giant bones in the land of your model (Mesoamerica, Baja, Malay, etc.), then it’s not Book of Mormon lands.³

In this declaration, giants are not only accepted as real but as crucial evidence for the Book of Mormon, even suggesting that if there are no giants, then a geographic model of the Book of Mormon must be wrong.

These declarations follow the typical early accounts of finding large bones. These reports are suggested to be proof of the Book of Mormon, a proof supported by specific verses from the Book of Mormon. It is perhaps understandable that some Saints might assume the presence of giants in the Book of Mormon. After all, the Bible declares:

• There were giants in the earth in those days. (Genesis 6:4)
• And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight. (Numbers 13:33)
• That also was accounted a land of giants: giants dwelt therein in old time; and the Ammonites call them Zamzummims. (Deuteronomy 2:20)
• The valley of the son of Hinnom, and which is in the valley of the giants on the north. (Joshua 18:16)

Without attempting to understand the biblical references to giants, the presence of the term might encourage some to suspect that the Book of Mormon might also speak of giants. However, there is no mention of giants in the Book of Mormon. Zero. What we have are statements that Jared was a “large and mighty man” (Ether 1:34) and that some of the Jaredites were “large and mighty men as to the strength of men” (Ether 15:26). Those texts undeniably use the word large. Is [Page 82]“large” the same as “giant?” Those promoting websites related to the Heartland model of the Book of Mormon and the Annotated Edition of the Book of Mormon that incorporates their ideas certainly think so.

Why Believe that There Might be Giants?

The idea that there were giants in the Book of Mormon might be supported by many reports of giants in North American history. Stories of giants have occurred throughout the ages and in different cultures. These stories contrast to the scientific evidence that there never have been races of giant humans, even though there are some specific cases of unusually tall individuals. If the stories don’t come from true experience, where do they come from?

Humans are a story-telling people. Ancient peoples told stories, some of which have been written down. We still tell stories. Some of those also end up being written—increasingly on social media. Many have no known author. Stories are the way we understand our world and our place in it.

We cannot help but create stories. It is built into the way our brains work. V. S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee provide an overview of how our brains work to make sense of the world:

At any given moment in our waking lives, our brains are flooded with a bewildering array of sensory inputs, all of which must be incorporated into a coherent perspective that’s based on what stored memories already tell us is true about ourselves and the world. In order to generate coherent actions, the brain must have some way of sifting through this superabundance of detail and of ordering it into a stable and internally consistent “belief system”—a story that makes sense of the available evidence. Each time a new item of information comes in we fold it seamlessly into our preexisting worldview.⁴

The brain wants to make understandable stories. The power of the brain to create those stories is highlighted in an experiment performed with a young man whose corpus callosum (the connector between the two hemispheres) had been cut. This meant that the two halves of his brain worked just fine, but they could not communicate with each [Page 83]other. That typically did not create a difficulty, but when information was presented that required the inter-brain-hemisphere communication, it produced an interesting result.

In one experiment by Michael Gazzaniga and Joseph LeDoux, [the young man with the severed corpus collosum] was presented with a picture of a chicken claw on the right side of the screen (left hemisphere) and a picture of a snow scene with a snowman and a car stuck in the snow on the left side of the screen (right hemisphere), and he was asked to choose from a series of picture cards the card most obviously linked to the scene presented on the screen. The correct answer was a picture of a chicken for the chicken claw, and a picture of a shovel for the snow scene. PS [the young man] pointed to the chicken with his right hand and to the shovel with his left. When asked what he had seen, he answered (presumably from his left hemisphere), “I saw a claw and I picked the chicken, and you have to clean out the chicken shed with a shovel.” Gazzaniga and LeDoux’s interpretation of this “creative fabrication” is that PS’s speaking left hemisphere had to explain why PS’s left hand was pointing to the shovel. It was unaware of the snow scene, because of the cut corpus callosum, and had to supply the best theory it could give the limited information it had to work with.⁵

Few of us have the problem that the young man had, but all of us have the problem of understanding the world around us and incorporating the limited information available to us into a cohesive story. That need to create stories leads directly to the stories of ancient giants.

When English-speaking settlers arrived in the New World, they likely brought their own stories of giants, perhaps supported by the biblical mentions of giants. It didn’t take them long to discover that the Native Americans they encountered also had stories of ancient giants: “Many sources on southeast American Indian literature mention post-contact Indians and describe them as tall in stature. Indeed, explorers and travelers throughout the Americas reported these newly discovered people as being of great height.”⁶ Though they were seen as [Page 84]tall in comparison to the newly arrived Europeans, there are Native American tales of even taller ancestors. The stories declare that there were giants.

In 1970–73, Charles Betts recorded some of the native Pawnee ideas, noting that they refused to pick up fossilized bones, believing them to be the remains of ancient giant humans.⁷ A Pawnee story teaches that “the first men who lived on earth were very large Indians. . . . [They were] very big and very strong [and] used to hunt the buffalo on foot. They were so swift and strong that a man could run down a buffalo.”⁸ The combination of stories of very tall Native Americans, and their own legends of giants raises the question of whether those stories might be true or, if not, what triggered them.

Native Legends of Giants and Their Sources

Native North American stories of giants originated not in direct experience with living giants but with their bones found by later peoples. Adrienne Mayor reports one of the Pawnee origin stories:

At last Tirawa got angry and made the waters rise. The ground became soppy mud. “These great people sank down in the mud and were drowned. The great bones found on the prairie are the bones of these people.” We have been in deep canyons and have seen big bones underground, the elders told Grinnell, and they “convince us that these [giants] did sink into the soft ground.” “After the destruction of the race of giants, Tirawa created a new race of men, small, like those of today.”⁹

Mayor has made a study of the ways ancient peoples interacted with, and formed stories about, their discoveries of the bones of ancient animals. She began her studies of historical peoples’ interactions with fossilized bones with the Greeks and Romans. She discovered the very plausible origin of the gold-guarding griffin, which is a mythical animal with the beak and wings of a bird and the body of a lion. She found that along an important gold trade route were fossilized dinosaurs with beaks on the heads and claws on the feet. The later people [Page 85]took that information and created a fantastical beast around the confusing information of those bones.¹⁰ She writes, “In Medieval Europe, the stupendous bones of prehistoric animals were believed to belong to giants, saints, and celebrities from antiquity. The big bones were placed in coffins and reburied by the hundreds in medieval churches as saints’ relics.”¹¹

Mayor reports the clear connection between legends of giants and the discoveries of fossils:

This spectacle of enormous bones and teeth eroding out of the banks of the Hudson at Claverack (south of Albany, New York) in 1705–6 drew curious crowds from miles around. Two groups in particular—the Indians of the Hudson Valley and Dutch and English farmers—debated the identity of the remarkable remains, and word of the New World “giants” electrified intellectual circles in the Colonies and Europe. . . . Taylor himself had heard local Indians describe a “Gyant of incredible Magnitude,” but he had “disbelieved it till he saw the Teeth” of the Claverack skeleton in 1705. According to the Indians (probably Iroquoian-speaking Mohawks, Algonquian Mohicans, Abenakis, and Pequots, among others), the Claverack remains belonged to a giant called Weetucks or Maushops, who lived about eight or ten generations ago (some said it had died out “centuries ago”).¹²

Remembering what was quoted from Dr. Ramachandran above, the Native Americans and early Dutch and English settlers all had to find ways to create an understandable story out of the discoveries of the large fossil bones and teeth. They lived at a time prior to our more scientific understanding of extinct animals. Nevertheless, we should be cautious about too quickly concluding that these people were naïve. Mayor also reports:

According to forensic anthropologist Douglas Ubelaker, nonhuman bones, especially femurs, can fool even the most experienced medical experts. In his study of modern FBI files, he found that about 15 percent of “human” bones thought to be those of murder victims turn out to be animal [Page 86]bones. Ubelaker points out that similarities of mammal anatomy, the finder’s expectations, and the context of discovery encourage the misidentification as human. Those same factors figured in antiquity.¹³

The widespread stories of ancient giants shared enough similarities that they are reasonably connected to the stories told to explain the large, fossilized bones, especially femurs that might appear human except for their large size. With the combination of the finder’s expectations, and perhaps knowledge of other stories of giants, the task of clothing these fossilized animal bones in a giant human “skin” is understandable—understandable, but not historically accurate.

Very Tall Native Americans

The stories of the post-contact encounters with tall Indians are very different from the legends based on the fossilized bones. These stories are not told of an ancient and extinct population but rather one that was living at the time of the reports. One of those more modern stories is discussed in the story of the redhaired giants of Northern Piute lore, discussed below. Fortunately, even though those encounters were hundreds of years in the past, modern archaeologists have access to the bones of many of those peoples, and modern methods can be used to determine living height from the discovered bones, even when the full skeleton has not been found.¹⁴

A basic question about giants would be to define just how tall one must be to qualify as a giant. There is no absolute answer, and certainly it is one that can change over time and for specific populations. There are many professional basketball players who do not look particularly giant when they are seen on the court, but standing next to someone of either average or less than average height, they would certainly count as giants. The question of how tall is tall has a generalized definition, at least when examining the bones of past populations.

Classification of stature into “tall” and “short” is subjective [Page 87]and absolute values are not written in stone. However, some authors sort these groupings as:

< 130.0 cm [4 ft 3 in] – dwarf
< 150.0 cm [4 ft 11 in] – very short
< 160.0 cm [5 ft 3 in] – short
> 170.0 cm [5 ft 7 in] – tall
> 180.0 cm [5 ft 11 in] – very tall
> 199.9 cm [6 ft 7 in] – giant¹⁵

Iscan and Kessel examined the remains of Native Americans in Florida and found that they ranged from 158.2 cm [5 ft 2 in] to 174.7 cm [5 ft 9 in] in height.¹⁶ In a different study, Paul W. Sciulli, Kim N. Schneider, and Michael C. Mahaney examined the remains of 64 Native Americans (35 male and 29 female). Their article focuses on creating equations for determining stature, but they do report averages of 154.1 cm [5 ft 0 in] for the females and 164.3 cm [5 ft 5 in] for the males.¹⁷

In the conclusion to their paper, Iscan and Kessel note:

The osteologic data presented in this paper clearly contradict the historical writings and artistic representations. Indeed, Sciulli and Giesen (1993), commenting on Ohio and Eastern Woodland Native Americans, point out that statures calculated from East Asian regression tables used by osteologists will, if anything, produce overestimation of stature. With the exception of one individual, there is no record of osteometric data in which the average measurements exceeded 179.9 cm [5 ft 11 in].¹⁸

As with modern populations, there are individuals who are extremely tall, but they are the exceptions to an average member of that population. Thus, even with some rare exceptions, according to the best information available to archaeology, the discovered remains of Native North Americans fall into the “tall” category, but just below “very tall” and far short of “giant.”

Of course, it is possible that there was some example of a much larger person. Robert Wadlow (1918–1940) was truly giant, standing [Page 88]at 8 ft 11 in. He is widely considered the tallest human in history.¹⁹ The exceptional height of certain individuals is behind the photograph that was published in the Annotated Edition of the Book of Mormon. Stephen Smoot notes, “The skeleton in the photo is not that of an ancient Native American from Indiana. It’s actually the skeleton of Charles Byrne, an Irishman who suffered from gigantism and died in 1783. His skeleton (the one in the photo used in the AEBOM) is housed at the Royal College of Surgeons in London.”²⁰

These men were exceptional, and such tall individuals represent an extremely small percentage of the populations in which they lived. Similarly, one can find exceptionally short humans. Nevertheless, we have physical data sufficient to understand the typical populations both of our time and in the past. Regardless of possible exceptional individuals, no race of giants, dead or living, has yet been discovered. Anywhere.

What About the Many Reports of Giants?

Before the availability of modern archaeological methods and the science of osteology, there were stories of giants in the press, which was the Internet of the day:

In the 1800s, reports began to surface of the discovery of very large skeletal remains in the burial mounds of North America. These skeletons were described as reaching seven to eight feet (2.4 meters) in length, with a lower frequency of discoveries spanning nine to 11 feet (3.3 meters) in length, and having very large skulls and gigantic lower jawbones. Historians often detailed these remains in early local historical records, such as the following from Cass County, Michigan:

“It was a mound about thirteen feet high. . . . the diameter of its base was about fifty feet . . . Portions of the skeletons were in a good state of preservation. The femur, or thigh bone, of one of the males, which Dr Bonine has now in his possession, is of great size and indicates that its owner must have been at least [Page 89]seven feet in height.” —Alfred Matthews, History of Cass County, Michigan 1882²¹

In the two examples listed here, both refer to the large size of specific bones, not a full skeleton. Those reports parallel those we have seen that misinterpreted fossil bones as human. We must remember, as Dr. Ubelaker noted, that many animal bones so resemble human bones that mistakes can easily be made.

Still, other reports at least appear more substantial:

One of the specific reports I knew about from the beginning was a report from Indiana in the 1920s. In 1925, several amateurs digging in an Indian mound at Walkerton, Indiana, uncovered the skeletons of eight very ancient humans measuring in height from eight to almost nine feet. All eight giants had been buried in “substantial copper armor.”²²

Good hoaxes usually have good stories, and part of the story is some attempt to show that the fantastic information can be trusted. In this case, we are asked to trust “several amateurs digging in an Indian mound.” Also important is that this is a report of amateurs that was never corroborated. As with many stories on the Internet, there is no evidence—only the report. No actual skeletons have been made available for study. The “substantial copper armor” has never been presented for examination.

Another long-lived story concerns the red-haired giants of Lovelock cave. One Internet site reported:

In 1911, the Sunset Guano Mining Company was formed specifically to mine the guano. During the mining process, several artifacts were discovered, including bones, baskets and weapons indicating early settlers to the area. In 1924, interestingly more than ten years after they were found, archaeologists were notified of these artifacts. And even though several of them had either been lost or destroyed, more than 10,000 were successfully recovered. Two of the successfully recovered artifacts included a male and female [Page 90]mummified red-haired giant. The male giant measured 8-feet tall, and the female giant measured 6.5-feet tall.²³

It certainly has some sound of validity. The illusion of validity falls before actual examination of the remains. Sheilagh Brooks, Carolyn Stark, and Richard H. Brooks examined John Reid’s redheaded giants, Reid being the one who initially examined the remains from the Lovelock cave. They note that a biography of Reid specifically notes a body that was 7 ft 7 in tall.²⁴

They provide some interesting background on the stories:

Stories about the Redheaded Giants have many variations, and they are found among several Great Basin peoples, such as the Northern Paiute and the Shoshone. Those which Reid may have heard involved a race of extremely tall redhaired people, referred to as Tule Eaters, who lived in the Humboldt Sink area. These people frequently were described as cruel, wicked, and possibly cannibalistic. Supposedly the Northern Paiutes feared and hated them. According to one version of the story, fighting broke out between the Giants and the Northern Paiutes. The Northern Paiutes chased the Giants into Lovelock Cave and covered the entrance with brush, which they fired to suffocate the Giants.²⁵

There were indeed skeletal remains of at least thirty-two individuals, according to an archaeological excavation of Lovelock Cave in 1912 (hardly the 10,000 from the Internet article).²⁶ This expedition is the source of the confirmation of the redhaired giants stories. As Brooks, Stark, and Brooks describe that early excavation:

Reid conducted the first analysis of the skeletal materials he had recovered by measuring the thigh bones or femora. The results of his measurements ranged from 14 ½” to 18 ½”. By estimating this length in relation to the presumed length [Page 91]of his own thigh bone, he calculated that these individuals during their life had been 7’7” (for the 16 1/23” femur) and even 9’6” (for the 18 ½” femur). Hair is preserved on some of the skulls, which still have soft tissues adhering. The hair is a brownish red in color, confirming the description in the Redheaded Giant stories of these people being red haired. Because of his size estimates and the hair color, Reid was certain that he had found and identified the Redheaded Giants described in the Northern Paiute stories he had heard in his youth.²⁷

The authors did their own examination of the remains, using more modern techniques. They provided a chart of the estimated stature of the skeletal remains. Most were from 5 ft 6 in to 5 ft 9 in tall. The tallest was 6 ft 1 in, plus or minus 2 inches.²⁸

Adrienne Mayor provides a detailed analysis of why remaining hair would appear red:

Depending on variable factors (temperature, light, humidity, acidity, chemical reactions, and minerals in the matrix), dark hair of extreme age often turns rusty red or orange. That is why many Egyptian mummies have red-blond hair, and the hair of well-preserved bodies of extinct mammoths and sloths is reddish, even though they may have been black or brown in life.²⁹

As with misinterpreting fossilized bones, some of the reported stories can be attributed to misinterpretations of the more recent Native American populations. However, at times the problem has not been so much misinterpretation as deliberate hoax. Among these are modern photographic manipulations, which simply make these hoaxes easier to “document.”

One Internet hoax was traced to an altered photograph created in 2002 that made it appear that there were normal-sized people next to a giant skeleton.³⁰ Those trusting what their eyes told them and not understanding the ways in which the photograph had been [Page 92]manipulated can be somewhat forgiven for accepting the offered “evidence.”

The prevalence of believers in these ancient giants shows in an article by Bradley Leper, Curator of Archaeology and Manager of Archaeology and Natural History fat the Ohio History Connection:

It seems I can no longer give a public program about Ohio’s amazing ancient American Indian mounds without someone in the audience asking me about giants, or the lost tribes of Israel—or even aliens. I try to address these questions politely and explain that there is no hard evidence that any of these things had anything to do with Ohio’s mounds. Occasionally, if the person asking the question is a true believer, they’ll accuse me of lying and hiding the evidence that would prove me wrong. Some people actually believe that the Ohio History Connection (along with the Smithsonian Institution) has skeletons of giant humans in our collections that we keep hidden from the public. The first time someone accused me of this I was dumbfounded and asked, “Why on earth would we do that?”³¹

When the scientists, based on available hard data, declare that there is no evidence for these ancient giants, promoters of the myths turn to suggestions that the data really do exist but are being hidden. Have the scientists ignored that evidence? In the modern Internet era, it is all too easy for stories to be created and accompanied with “photographs,” which have been equally created to match the desired story. In September of 2020, USA Today online reported:

The claim: Giant human skeletons were “found by the thousands” and destroyed by the Smithsonian

An old hoax has resurfaced in an Instagram meme claiming that giant skeletons were found but were destroyed because “having to explain the existence of these skeletons, contradicted the evolution of mankind and creation.” The July 25 [Instagram] post by the user @conspiracytheories, which has gained over 54,700 likes, reads, “Giant skeletons were found by the thousands, but most were destroyed or [Page 93]thrown in the ocean by the Smithsonian and Vatican.” The account has not responded to USA TODAY’s request for comment. The claim has made its way across the internet in different variations over the years. A similar post appeared in 2015 claiming that the Supreme Court ruled that documentation of the giants was to be declassified, Jacksonville.org reported, finding the claim to be false.³²

The Florida Times-Union report mentioned in USA Today reports:

Social media posts claim that photos of the remains of a giant race of people found in the Midwest disappeared because the Smithsonian Institution wanted to suppress the information. The facts: The posts also say that the Supreme Court ruled last year that documentation of the giants was to be declassified in 2015. Not true on either count.³³

Conclusions

Stories of giants that have become associated with the Book of Mormon are based in just that—stories. There is no scientific evidence upon which giants can be based. Still, we do have the concept of “large and mighty” men in the Book of Mormon.

The phrase “large and mighty” is a literary set, but it was not exclusive to other similar literary phrases. Ammon was described as a “strong and mighty man” rather than “large and mighty” (Mosiah 7:3). Coriantumr is first described as “large and mighty” (Helaman 1:15), but the subsequent reference is only to a “mighty man” (Helaman 1:16). If not to giants, then to what do these ideas refer?

As inheritors of at least some of the culture of the ancient Mediterranean, Book of Mormon writers would have participated in certain cultural values where physical traits were simply assumed and often were not intended as physical descriptions. Bruce J. Malina and Jerome H. Neyrey describe those cultural understandings:

According to the data we possess, men tend to be [Page 94]perceived as either tall, medium, or short. In the ancient papyri from Egypt, for example, we find “iconistic” descriptions of persons, both men and women, who are described as of “medium height” or “medium or less.” . . . In other descriptions, however, the designation of a man as “tall” or “short” may not be realistic or accurate and may actually be intended to convey information about character, rather than stature. . . . Generals and warriors are often portrayed heroically as “tall.” Herodes describes a certain Celtic warrior as “Heracles,” who was “as tall as a tall Celt, about eight feet height.” . . . Generally, tall stature is related to the virtue of courage . . . and is naturally in aggressive males who command armies and rule empires.³⁴

When we remember that those who actually wrote the histories (and the Book of Mormon) had not met many of the people about whom they wrote, the probability that heroic character was declared through their descriptions becomes as likely in both the New World and in the Old. Why were there “large and might men?” They were heroic. It was intended to describe a quality and not a physical trait.

The lack of contextual information that would allow us to read “large” as meaning “tall” (or “giant”) is lacking. The cultural heritage of using physical descriptions for non-tangible characteristics strongly suggests that we should see these references as indicating either a military standing or a spiritual power (in the case of Ammon).

The science is also clear. Scientists have recovered hundreds of human remains in the New World. Some are taller and some are shorter. None were “giant.” Despite the reports of giant skeletons, none have ever been presented for examination. Only the “discoverer” has ever seen them. In the 1800s as well as in modern social media, exaggeration is frequent, and outright hoaxes are not unusual.

Although there are apparently many Latter-day Saints who support the Heartland model of the Book of Mormon, they should understand that when “giants” are claimed to be significant evidence of the Book of Mormon, it is an idea based on perhaps faithful overenthusiasm. [Page 95]Nevertheless, it should not be accepted. Such claims do not support the Book of Mormon at all.