Haunted Cosmos - Giants (Part II): Giants in Myth

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

In this episode of Haunted Cosmos, Brian and Ben continue Season Two by concluding their two part foray into one of the most intriguing and mystifying topics in the world: Giants! Did they exist? How big were they, if so? In this episode, the guys explore the myths and legends from all time and geography to try and find answers.Love Haunted Cosmos? Get access to our exclusive show, The Dusty Tome, early ad-free access to main episodes, monthly AMA's, and livestreams with Ben and Brian by becoming a patron of the show: https://www.patreon.com/c/HauntedCosmosBuy the Haunted Cosmos book: https://www.newchristendompress.com/cosmos PS: It's also available as an audiobook!This episode is also sponsored by Squirrelly Joe's Coffee.Visit their website here to purchase your first bag! Share Coffee. Serve Humbly. Live faithfully. This episode is also sponsored by Private Family Banking Partners. Email them at:  [e-mail] For a free copy of a new book "Protect Your Money Now!  How to Build Multi-Generational Wealth Outside of Wall Street and Avoid the Coming Banking Meltdown" by Private Family Banking Partner, Chuck DeLadurantey,   go to www.protectyourmoneynow.netOr, if you want to make an appointment to talk to a wealth advisor, click on the calendar link here: https://calendly.com/familybankingnow/30min.This episode is sponsored by The Family Captain! Join The Expedition for limited time only (closes Christmas Eve) and take your marriage and family from "just fine" to "thriving."Support the show

This episode of Haunted Cosmos is brought to you by Right Response Ministries, Squirrely Joe's Coffee, private family banking, and the family captain. Did you know that patrons of Haunted Cosmos get access to a weekly patron-only bonus show called The Dusty Tome? And the top two tiers of patrons get early access to add free shows. Join today on patreon.com for these benefits and more. And now, on with the show. What is myth?

On this show, we often refer to Christianity as the true myth. But what does that mean? Doesn't that imply that Christianity isn't really true? That the scriptures can't be trusted? Doesn't it call everything we hold as precious and absolute into question, even our very salvation? No, it doesn't. One day, two friends sat across from each other,

engaged in one of their very usual but amiable debates. The argument was over the value and impact. of story in the human life. The one, a prodigious poet, staunch atheist, and lover of the rich literary history in the Western canon, said in an exasperated tone, myths are lies and therefore worthless, even though breathed through silver. No, replied his Catholic friend, they are not lies. The friend explained that myths were oftentimes the only way in which foundational truths

could be expressed. He said that since we've come from God, myth is woven into our nature. Even though the myths we make are fallible and not authoritative, they almost always convey at least some level of truth. It is the rejection of myth's value that leads to the lifeless abyss of modernism and materialism. The first man, the atheist, was left speechless. He always wanted to love myth, but never felt it was the responsible thing to do. He listened intently as his friend continued, and the friend said that the story, the myth of Christ is a special one because it is the one myth that is wholly true, wholly true without

any error. When one looks closely, he'll see that all of history, all of myth, actually flows from this central one. The implication is that even in the corrupted and errant man-made myths, one can still find kernels of truth because every myth's ultimate inspiration is the fountainhead myth, the true myth that God is writing with and in and through all of creation. Oh, and by the way, the first man actually did succumb to the true myth himself, actually did repent and put his faith in Christ. His name was C.S. Lewis, and his friend was J.R.R. Tolkien. But you've seen the title of today's episode already. I mean, you tapped on it to get this whole thing playing. So what on earth does all of this have to do with giants? In the last

episode we mind the rich gold veins of scripture to seek out anything we could regarding giants there in the text. Now in this episode, we push off into the stormy seas and murky waters of extra-biblical literature, myths and legends from all geography and time, to see what else we might find. In order to do this with wisdom, we have to know what these myths and legends are, fallible stories passed down by fallible men, but often stories that nonetheless contain nuggets of truth. even truth wrapped in the smoke and fog of legend and folklore. We hope to sift the truth from the hearsay in hyperbole, finding the foundational motifs of reality

beneath whatever cultural gilding lies on the story's surface. We implore you, especially when listening to the really old stuff, to constantly be comparing the narrative your hearing to the true myth of Scripture. How much of the two coincide? This is important because if the stories are to be believed, giants are not limited to the grounds immediately surrounding and within the stage of Scripture, far from it. It appears that no matter where you go in the world, you can safely say, here there were giants.

According to the ancient Greek writers, there was only chaos at first. As with any classical myth, apart from the true myth of Christianity, Greek mythology is so full of whirling color and grandeur and intrigue that it can cause one to lose sight of the ever-present contradictions. The first of these contradictions comes from the Greek conception of chaos, which is conceived of as both utter nothingness, yet also full of potential life in essence, much like a ball placed at the top of a wooden ramp is full of potential energy,

even though it hasn't moved at all. From chaos came five things. Gaia, the earth, was the first. She was followed by Tartarus, the underworld. After Tartarus was Uranus, the heavens. After Uranus was Nix, the night. night. And after Nix was Erebus, the darkness of the underworld, the ever-present stench of doom that hangs heavy in the halls of Tartarus. So in the Greek myth, chaos is the churning of

and it made all of these things. But the opposite is true, says the Christian. It was not chaos, but Logos, which made all things. But I digress. Gaia, being the Mother Earth, was of course the one among these first primordial essences to represent life and fertility. Shortly after her creation, her counterpart, Uranus, the heavens, sought her out and surrounded her. They came to love one another and so the two conceived, marking the first haphazard union between the heavens and the earth. From this unnatural union came three kinds of children, the Cyclopes, the Hecatonkeres, and the Titans. Uranus was massively proud of the twelve mighty Titans which he had helped make, but he was disgusted by his other children. The Cyclopees were one-eyed giants, great makers of weapons and other

metals. There's an interesting parallel between these grotesque beasts, their skills with metals and weaponry and the supposed forbidden knowledge given to humans by the watchers in the lore of first Enoch. Anyway, the other hated children were the Hecatonkharis, the hundred-handed ones. They were great monstrous masses of 50 different heads, a horrifying lump of body parts. Uranus, again with loathing in his heart, bound the Cyclopees and Hecatonkarees and placed them in Tartarus. The symbolism here is striking. Tartarus was the underworld, a belly of the earth, so to speak.

And who was the earth? Gaia, these two races mother. In his wrath, Iranus imprisoned his children in the womb from which they had come. But the degeneracy did not stop there. From corrupt roots, chaos, sprang a corrupt tree. Gaia and Iranis, who yielded their corrupt fruit the Titans, who soon proved to house a poisonous seed within. in them. You see, Gaia was angry at Iranis for sending two-thirds of their children to wallow in the

misery of Tartarus. Seeking revenge, she gave the titan, Kronos, her beloved and youngest son, an adamant sickle, and told him to wait an ambush for the coming of Aranus. Kronos would be the hand through which Gaya would exact her revenge. When Iranis came, Kronos leapt at him with the sickle and castrated his father, the heavens, spilling his blood to the earth and into the sea. and be sure to catch what happens next. From the blood of heaven, mixing with the dust of the earth, there came three new races, the furies, the wood nymphs, and the giants.

What's striking to me is the way in which the entire fabric of this mythology is so clearly a corruption of the Christian truth. Logos has changed to chaos, and instead of a triune godhead who is supremely good and sovereign, there are three generations of corrupt divine beings who produce offspring from their corruptions. But what happens when the divine blood mixes with the earth? Giants are born.

And the giants of Greek myth are nothing we're unfamiliar with. Hesiod states that they rose from the earth with spears in their hands in shining armor covering their bodies. A sharp disdain for the heavens was always instilled in them while they remained loyal to Gaia, the earth, their mother. As time passed and the Titans, with Kronos now at their head, eventually begat the gods, and the gods grew jealous and sought to make war upon the Titans to supplant them, Gaia begged the giants for aid and protecting her children the Titans.

And so, as Homer tells us, the giants, quote, threatened to make war with the gods in Olympus and tried to set Mount Asa on the top of Mount Olympus and Mount Pelion on the top of Mount Asa that they might scale heaven itself, end quote. In a charge to supplant the dwellers of heaven, the giant's trucement. tried to build a great tower that would allow them entrance into Uranus' halls. Zeus would not have this. In wrath and fury, he cast down the mountains that the giants had stacked. Hercules joined the fray, waging war with the giants and throwing them down in a mighty slaughter. With the Olympian Pantheon, now firmly in charge of the heavenly and earthly rule,

Gaia mourned the loss of the Titans and the giants that had remained loyal to her, not wanting them to be entirely destroyed and still covered in the blood of the giants who had been killed, she gave new life to whatever blood was still steaming and fresh on the battleground. With these new giants also came new monstrous features. Not only were these being said to be of enormous size and strength and appetite for violence, but they were also said to have serpentine legs. Instead of legs, these new giants had snakes. Do you see it there again?

A mythic motif echoing through the pagan lore? Those born from the blood of heaven and the dust of earth are an evil thing, haters of both gods and men. They take the form of a giant serpent chimera. The giant savages so villainous to men now combined in nefarious flesh magic with fallen divines, evil beings seeking the ruin of the world. But the world is bigger than ancient Greece,

and there are many other myths to sift. The Nordic sagas recount the prehistory of the Scandinavian lands, the lands that were once, perhaps, called Hyperbaria. These sagas speak of frost giants, fire giants, and mountain giants that stand between the gods and men, here tormenting them and now helping them, depending on how the giants might benefit from the outcome. One of the more prominent giants, Argelmir, dwells in a grand beer hall whose decoration is of particular note.

The Veluspa saga describes it thus, quote, A hall I saw, far from the sun, on Nastron it stands, and the doors face north. Venom drops through the smoke vent down, far around the walls do serpents wind, end quote. On the other side of the world, in the deepest reaches of South America, the land of Patagonia, which means big feet, by the way, holds dozens of legends of giants. In his quest to circumnavigate the earth, Magellan wrote of numerous, encounters with them, some pleasant and some evil. But these legends really begin with the Mayan and Aztec and Incan myths from the Central American lands to the north. Quetzokouadal and

Veracocha are the gods who brought civilization to the world according to these myths. Quetzokato is worshipped by the cult of the feathered serpent. He being always associated with the rattlesnake and wise birds such as crows. Viracocha was the creator of the world for the Incan people. who settled near Lake Titicaca. His first creations were the giants. Made from large stones, they were brainless fiends who would not follow his commands. In wrath he destroyed the giants with a great flood that lasted 60 days. After this he made the humans out of smaller rocks and was more pleased with them. However, seven of the antediluvian giants had somehow survived of the flood and returned. Fearing another deluge, they built a mighty pyramid, the Cholulu pyramid,

so that they might reach into heaven and stay the God's wrath. But alas, the gods destroyed the pyramid with fire from heaven and scattered the giants in all peoples across the land, confusing their language. The Hindus speak of the Bacasuras, red-haired demon giants who build a great altar rising up to heaven. The Irish people say that the first inhabitants of their land were the Famorians, the giant sea peoples.

These legends serve to fuel the Anglo-Saxon legend of Grendel, the cannibal giant and cave dweller eventually slain by Beowulf. Even in Japan there are legends of the Ono, great horn giants who acted as gods or devils of war. The term, Ono, can also mean ghost or invisible spirit, much like the multiple meanings of the Hebrew word, Raphaim. But what about other less mythical myths, if I might use a strange turn of phrase?

What about things that ride that thin borderline between prehistory and history? Things may be a little bit less difficult for us to conceptualize than these ancient gods and demigods. About 35 miles south of Mount Hermann's summit lies the Gilgall Raphaim, the wheel of giants, mentioned in the opening story of our previous episode, Giants Part 1. And if you'll remember, just ever so slightly to the north of this strange megalith between it and Herman, a twisting and writhing serpent mound can be seen raised up out of the earth. This is all very interesting, sure, but what else could be said? What else can be found that might shed more light on this ancient lore in forgotten history?

In southern Illinois, the Shawnee people have a story about a great 200-mile wall of stone that was built long ago before the Great Flood by a race of immigrant giants. Can you hear the sound of their tools on the great stones as they built? But when the floods came, the Shawnee say that every one of these giants from far away lands was killed in the waters, swept away in the fury of the deluge, despite their desperate attempts to climb the peaks and escape the waters to no avail. Or was it? Other tribes in the area disagree. Some think that a handful of giants somehow survived, clinging to the flotsam of the floodwaters with their unholy strength. In fact, some think that the great stone wall was just the beginning

of the mark they would leave on the North American Midwest. In Ohio, remnants of an old religious can be found peppered across the moderately rolling landscape. Great earthen mounds rise up like a pronounced teetan covered in grass. What they are is no secret. They're burial mounds. We know this because they've been excavated and investigated many times. In fact, some are still being investigated even today. But one of these mounds has remained relatively untouched due to its particular strangeness.

If you walk in a specific park just east of Cincinnati on a small plateau overlooking an old meteor crater, you'll notice a twisting mound of lush grass that writhes its way through the landscape for about a quarter mile. The origins of this unnatural, but on the face of it, underwhelming thing, have always been hotly contested. Some believe it's about a thousand years old, give or take, but many, many local tribesmen and highly experienced archaeologists believe it's much closer to 3,000 years old. But why does anybody really care how old it is? Well, if you're somehow able to get a bird's eye view of this 1300 foot long ridge of dirt, you'll find that it takes a very specific shape. There it is. It's the clear effigy of a serpent with a spiraling, coiled

tail at one end and a gaping mouth at the other. It's the largest earth effigy ever found. It appears to be opening its mouth to swallow something as well. What that something is, we don't know. But the stories say that there used to be an altar on top of it where human sacrifice would be performed. This is probable because of the decapitated and burned remains of skeletons found at the site along with ceremonial knives. Oh, and some of these skeletons, by the way, are fascinating. Some of them are quite large. Now, nothing crazy like the 14-foot-tall-og, King of Bashan. These skeletons are more akin to Goliath, over seven feet, with rumors of some standing even nine feet tall, found by the first settlers who discovered this strange site. Could this be evidence?

of a migrant group of giants, dispersed by Babel or Moses, or Joshua, seeking refuge in what would one day be America, trying to maintain that same religious law of Canaan that they had inherited from their forefathers all the way back at the foot of Mount Hermon. Join us for this and more in this episode of Haunted Cosmos. Welcome everyone to this episode of Haunted Cosmos. Haunted Cosmos. It's the haunted cosmos. Okay, we're not going to do that.

Absolutely not. No, sorry about that, everyone. Just completely shifted the mood. Brian, say hello to the people. Man, people, hello. I just want to say it is so good to join you here. Love the feedback that we heard from Giants Part 1. You guys were hypothetically fascinated by.

We haven't released it yet. We don't know. I'm just assuming. The feedback could be horrible. People could be like, that was the worst thing I've ever heard in their life. But they won't. You know what, they won't. Thank you for the feedback.

Thank you. that is it. We appreciate it. Either way, listeners, whatever you told us about that episode, we probably appreciate it. Right. Okay? But maybe we probably do. But maybe we didn't. If it wasn't about how handsome and smart we were, then we probably didn't. But look, at any rate, you all know the title of the show. We're back for part two of our introductory series and giants. This season has been a lot of introductory stuff, introduction to Bigfoot and now Giants. Yeah. We have some more introductory shows coming ahead, but I'm not going to spoil those. Don't spoil it. Well, in part one,

If you spoil it, I will kill you. If you spoil it, I walk. Right now. Okay, I walk. I actually have. You are armed. Straight to jail. Let's not get us kicked off of any platforms.

In part one of the series, we looked at the scriptural data informing us of giants. We wanted to see what does the Bible actually say about people that are supposedly very large? Or are they even people, right? Yeah. And now in this show, now that we have that foundation, we want to launch off of that and try to build a great edifice of stories from all over the world that talk about giants. Myths, legends, some of it

pretty well-documented history and see what can we take out of that so that we can get a good, well-rounded view of how humans have thought of this phenomenon for all of history. Because giants are really weird, but the interesting thing is that everyone seems to think they existed. And then we also want to see

how much of these myths specifically are just corruptions of biblical narratives that are certainly true. And we touched on that a little bit in the closing story of last week. But to do this, we're going to start by examining the cold open. Yeah. Okay. So, Brian, I want to hear your honest reaction to what we talked about, specifically the Greek myth section.

Yeah, the Greek myth section. Now, one thing to set this up a little bit for me is that, and this is an observation that really comes dovetailing between now part one and part two. Where we're looking at biblical evidence and now we're coming and we're looking out across the lore and the mythology and the fall. folklore of the world. But unlike many subjects that we cover or might even in the future cover in this section, we know that this phenomenon is real. Yes. Like, I think it's easy to overlook that.

Right, right. We know it's real. Like the whole... It's right there in the Bible. Come on. It's right. Like, the whole point of part one was to make it so that people don't have to suspend disbelief.

Yeah. Because it is real. Yeah, exactly. It's just a matter of how actually. things are now. Right. Are they, are they, and obviously we expect for there to be mythic and folkloric accumulation and accretions on even true history as it runs down into the present. But that foundation gives me a whole different outlook. I mean, you know, at some point we might talk about ghost, you know, ghost things or even with the aliens and extraterrestrials.

Right. We know about like the existence of demons and in, like, deceptive spirits. Well, we even said in season one, it was episode 10, the evangelistic alien. We told the story about, I can't remember the lady's name, but she claimed to be abducted and they were trying to implant a hybrid seed in her womb, you know? Like, this is a motif that happens over and over and over again, and it apparently is still happening today. Yeah, and here you see it in the Greek myth. Yeah.

In a sense, where that was really my biggest takeaway from the Greek mythology is that, number one, it is full of giants and different taxonomies of giants from these kind of dental. emigod, enormous, like, beings with clear supernatural powers and capacities and who are just straightforwardly in the Greek mythology, offspring of the gods. Then down to this mixture, this admixture of the earthly and the heavenly. Yeah. It's not the true heavenly, but the Greek mythological heavenly. Right. And the result is giants. Giants. And other monsters. And other monsters. So to me, that was the most compelling part of the Greek myth, is that, again, it is a distorted echo of the true myth, where we see that there is, in the biblical account,

giants who are the result of the heavens and the earth meeting in an unholy meeting, which is a huge theme that runs through scripture. And I mean this, even if you take a Sethite view of Genesis 6, for example. The implication is still that we have the sons of God. They are the heavenly seed. Right. Even if you take the human, non-supernatural view, symbolically still, it's heaven mingling with the fallen earth.

And then you see Babel, which is man's way of reaching to the earth, which is again echoed in the stacking of, have we gotten to that part yet? Maybe not. The stacking of the mountains? Yeah. Yeah, no. We did. Okay.

I'm so, like, steeped in giants right now. I'm like, what have we covered? We've been giant maxing. Yeah. For hours. For hours. Minutes now. For me, days.

So we've got the attempts to reach heaven again where all of it is the unholy attempt to seize power and to reach the heavens through the unholy mingling of heaven and earth. Right. This is false religion. This is Babel. This is Babylon. This is the flesh magic and ancient sorcery. this is like these themes run through all of these high strangeness phenomena and in all of folklore and mythology right again why because they are distorted echoes of the true myth yeah so that

really stood out to me from the greek myth what what's what are your reactions and thoughts to the cold open stories ben yeah so i mean i'll i'll kind of riff off what you said for a minute if we ignore the giants part of it the the really obvious cool crazy thing and And look at the foundational narrative that we're being told in scripture, specifically at the Tower of Babel. We have this one event where man led by, presumably, it's a good view, a giant in Nimrod, trying to supplant God. Yeah. And then we have God judging that and dispersing them over the earth. And we have a, I was even talking to someone this week.

And we were talking about like, if someone tried to create a universal language, would that be another Babel? And I'm like, no, the thing is, is really every human endeavor that doesn't start foundationally in Christ is another Babel. Like Babylon was founded at the Tower of Babylon. It didn't end. And then we have Babylon continuing even to the very end of Revelation, where it's finally defeated. Even the city of God's people, Jerusalem, typologically and symbolically becomes a Babylon and becomes a great harlot and becomes a Rome. through their wicked throwing off of through apostasy. Right.

Their covenant apostasy. That's one of the themes of the first century is that Israel is overrun with unclean spirits because they've thrown off their God. Right. And they've rejected him. So Babylon continues. Right. And I think where I'm going with that is we shouldn't then be, because it actually did really

happen, the Tower Babel really happened. Yeah. We shouldn't be surprised that that event. becomes a paradigm through which other cultures also see man's relation to the gods, especially in what I say gods. I mean, you know, the true God, but then also their own version of their pantheon. Yeah, their spiritual beings that they worship. Right, especially when they're pagans. Yeah. Because it informs your, it may be a small thing in the books in the pages of Genesis, but it informs your entire view of human history. Yeah. And man's relation to

the higher power. But anyway, that's just another thought. But what? Well, I was going to say... You look like you have something to say, my guy. I do think we've noted this several times. You noted it again in the outline that you start to see the depth of the richness of Lewis's thought. C.S. Lewis as a scholar of the medieval and understanding many of the historical roots of legend and what shaped the Anglo-Saxon mind and what shaped the European and the Western mind. Hi there, faithful listener.

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he makes, and you see this in the Celtic Earth Mother Mother Legend, which is clearly a corruption of Gaia. It's, yeah, it's Gaia, it's Mother Earth, and it's connected with serpentine imagery. Right. Which shows you that, for example, in the silver chair, where you have the Lady of the Green Curdle, who is the Green Serpent, who is the witch, I mean, she's clearly connected, connecting all of those through lines into this, like, children's story. And she lives in the bowels of the earth.

Yeah, she lives in the bowels of the earth and tries to make, so it does. So it does, I think it shows you that when you understand these mythological folkloric streams, it grants a richness to your thought where you start to see the connections everywhere. Right. To the true myth and also to the deceptions that have run throughout human history. So the other two big takeaways for me from the Cold Open is the kind of the Mesoamerican and South American legends, specifically with Quetzokwe. Quattle. That has always been to me one of the, one of the biggest neon signs in my life that has said, like, there is something more here than just people made it up. They smoked some peyote.

I don't know if you do that. I don't know if you smoke peyote. Don't. Don't do it. If you can, don't. Kids don't. Okay. And then also whatever you do do with it, also don't do that. But it's not just like people did that. And then they came up with quetzelquattle. You know, something more was going on. Like, look at this. So he's the feathered serpent, which is always, that already is awesome. And then Vera Cocha is his kind of counterpart in South America. So they bring the flood because they hate the giants and their wickedness. It lasts 60 days, so it's a multiple of 40 at least.

And then after that, some of them come back. So we see that again. And what do they do when they come back? Will they build a huge pyramid that still exists in Mexico? You can go see it. And they judge it with fire from heaven. And they disperse the people and confuse their. language. I'm not making that up. They say that that's really what happened. And guess what?

In a sense, they're right. Yeah. Yeah. Like, it is kind of what happened. It's just that they're getting a lot of the details wrong because they're starting from, with their feet planted firmly in midair, away from the truth of the gospel. And then the other one that I thought was really interesting was looking at how in Japan, the term, Ono, the horn service. That's so interesting. Can also mean ghost or invisible spirit. And it reminds me of Raphaim. Refiame, the shades. Right. It's used as shades in scripture multiple times.

But then also, let's go back further and relate that to the Greek myth. So we have, when the blood of Uranus is spilled on the earth, we have the giants that come forth. Then we also have the furies and the wood nymphs. Yeah. Wood nymphs are deceivers of men, kind of like elemental spirits, who are constantly trying to lure men. They're like the sirens of land, okay? Yeah. So we have something there.

And we're going to probably definitely 100% Lord Willing get into this kind of category of trickster lore as well. Maybe even this season. Yeah. And then we also have the Furies who are clearly like a demonic trope where you do something bad and they oppress you your whole life until you finally die and go into the halls of Tartarus. Yes. And that is so close to what the Bible says about the giants and their disembodied spirits. Like it's so close. the connections that you can make are really striking.

They certainly don't end here. No. But I think one thing that we can all agree with is that we want to get into some more stories tonight. And because the history is rich. Yeah. What were you going to say? Well, I was just going to make a note about pronunciation here. Oh, yeah.

Like, by the way. Great idea. You may hear saying Uranus. It's spelled. We just refuse. Like the planet is spaced. I refuse to say Uranus or Uranus. Because urine and then also the other one's obvious.

So listen, I know, I know that it's not the right pronunciation. But as a U.S. American, I have the authority to change the pronunciation of other cultures words. Because English is the height, the peak. It's the peak. So we get to do it. So we have that right as U.S. Americans. And we just wanted you to know that we know we're doing it. But that is now how you pronounce that word, because the other ways are just cringe.

And Uranus sounds better. It sounds cooler. Uranus sounds like Greek mythology. Man, I just, I just found a bug bite on my finger. Did you really? Yeah, that's bizarre. Dude, you need anything? How did I get a, dude, can you get me some stuff, some salve?

I'm going to go to Chili's. I'm also going to say one other pronunciation note, and there may be little ears watching. I'm not going to go into this. No, there's nothing. This is just, we're just noting it. Okay, so just note. We're pronouncing it correctly. We, when we say Lake Titicaca.

That's what it's pronounced. That is how they say it. There's no way to change that. It's not. We're just not. Tait Chaco. Try to be. Mature.

So we're going to try our best. Okay. Try to be mature. And we already failed. I mean, I had to edit out already a laughing bit. Not me. I just want to note that we're not trying to be ugly.

That is how you say it. And also, if you hear some rain ambience in the background, I don't know how good our noise gates are. It's actually not sound design. It's pouring rain. It's just raining outside. Right out of her window.

And we, I don't know if you guys know this. We work in like a dungeon. A basement dungeon. Right. It's really great. It's a lot like the Tower of London, except underground.

Right. But it is really cool. It's genuinely cool. So let's move on. Yeah, let's jump into some more stories here. And I think, Ben, that it makes sense for us to start on our home turf. Yes. Here in U.S. America, like we've said. U.S. America. I'm going to keep calling. Amen. Because one of the, this is, it was surprising to me, I can't recall exactly when I first started to encounter North American Giant Moore. It's been years at this point since I've started like reading on this and heard the different stories and lore. But you find out that North America is just absolutely rich with giant legends and lore, the Iroquois, the Osage,

the Tuscaroras, the Hurons, the Omaha's, and lots of other North American, Native American tribes that we're aware of. And remember, these tribes don't have written languages. Yeah. And so it has to pass through oral tradition. So there are probably lots more that have been lost as well. But it just seemed ubiquitous.

In North America, if you talk to people who dwelt here before European settlement or Spanish settlement, they talked about giants. And they were quite serious about it. They're like, oh, yeah, there were giants here. My great, great grandfather. Like, there is giant lore riddled throughout North America. And so we're going to start, Ben, if you would, please take it away. Yeah.

with a quote from Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States. He says, this is out of context, but he said it in a speech. Quote, the eyes of that species of extinct giants, whose bones fill the mounds of America, have gazed on Niagara as ours do now. On a warm morning in the summer of 1912,

a dark shadow loomed over the residence of Jeffersonville, Indiana, though they didn't know it yet. One of their youth, an 18-year-old boy named George, had recently begun to get some wild and depraved ideas in his head. Though he had resisted the temptations for some time, they proved too strong, and the boy broke, descending into a crazed and mad greed that would stop at nothing. He finally decided that he wanted money, lots of money, and that he would get the money he wanted, no matter the cost and blood or character. Thus his search for riches began, and he didn't have to look far to find the story.

first victim. George, having resolved to go through with these sins after finding that it felt good to give himself over to them, remembered that his grandmother, Mary, who lived just down the familiar dirt path from his own house, had some lump sum of cash hidden away in her home. He slowly made his way to the old widow's house and let himself in. His poor grandmother suspected nothing, and so put up no fight when George attacked and murdered her. He ransacked the house and found $75, about $2,500 in today's money, and he made off with it. He ran off and immediately spent it on who knows what, girls, booze, gambling. At any rate, the money was gone quickly, and he found himself lusting for more. By now, though, the people had grown suspicious. One of these people, George's older

brother, had connected some logistical dots in his head, and noting George's change in behavior accused his little brother of the murder. Something snapped again in George, whether racked with guilt or anxiety over the prospect of suffering the punishment for his crimes, he immediately fled from his brother and took his own life. As reporters covered the story, they realized something profoundly important

while thinking through the themes of greed and murder. Mary Kelly was the last living direct descendant of a very famous Shawnee Indian chieftain named Blackhawk Stewart. The reporters, may be feeling nostalgic for the old tales of the native Indians, dug up the biography of Black Hawk, and, to their surprise, quickly found that he was not the first Shawnee chiefton to bear this title. Turns out, there had been a chief named Hawkwing much earlier in Shawnee history, a man of war and conquest, a man feared and revered by his contemporaries and descendants. The reporters discovered that some years before the gruesome murder of Mrs. Kelly,

she had sat down with some other reporters and historians to tell them about the storied and epic history of Hawk Wing's affairs with a strange race of people that the Indians found in the Ohio River Valley a long time ago. She remembered the story very well since it had been a chanting song sung to her as a girl. Though she no longer knew the tune, all of the details remained crystal clear, and she believed them to the very bottom. When Hawk Wing came to this land, he found a race of mighty white people that lived near the banks of the Ohio River, right at the majestic stretch of 25-foot waterfalls that span the whole river. Their chief was a massively tall man with yellow hair who led them for ages in defending their claimed hills from the native Indian tribes who constantly tried to snatch it from them. They loved this area.

The falls provided an excellent resource for fisheries, and the grounds were rich with game. These people worshipped the sun, and by all appearances the sun had blessed them with riches and peace from their enemies. Hawk wings people named the chief Yellowhair and quickly labeled him an obvious giant. According to the tradition, the nobility among Yellowhair's people would intermarry among themselves to preserve the great stature of their kings and princes, killing as many unwanted females as they could without completely killing off their race altogether. Despite the vast size of Yellow Hair and the great experience in war his people had,

Hawking coveted their rich lands and determined to take it for his own people. Trying covert tactics first, Hawking sent spies to Yellow Hair, asking for his leave to share the fisheries and hunting grounds with his people, feigning an alliance when Hawk Wing's men really just wanted information.

Yellow Hair said that the land in the river here was just enough to say, sustain his own tribe, bringing in hawkwings people would strain the land. Besides, they preferred to live alone. Emboldened by the disappointing news and hungry for war, the Shawnee spies said that if Yellowhair would not comply with living together, they would slaughter him and his people, and they would take the region by force. Tall and strong, a giant without the disproportionate and awkward effects of giantism, Yellowhair laughed and scoffed them. He said the sun god would protect him and his people with fire from heaven. He cursed the Shawnee people for their bloodlust, saying that any man

who took part in an attempted massacre would suffer a violent death himself, him and all of his descendants who tried to stay on the land. But alas, the Shawnee people had their own God, the great spirit, who inspired equal confidence in them. Hawkwing collected his army and made for the white tribe of giants in terrible force, yellow hair, not wanting to risk his people against greater numbers unless he was forced to, evacuated his people to an island in the middle of the river, feeling certain the surrounding rapids and eddies would protect them. He was mistaken. As Yellow Hair slept that night, thinking himself completely free from any real danger,

Hawkwing and his braves diligently built strong canoes. Just as dawn broke in the east to an already heavy and humid morning, the Shawnee reached the shores of the island. Yellow Hair and his people expected nothing. Instead, they embarked upon their vile worship of the sun, kneeling to pray just like they did every morning. And as they prayed, the war cry of the Shaanese forced its way into their ears, startling them as if from another slumber.

Dozens of the whites were slain as they knelt, frozen by the sheer surprise of it all. But Yellow Hair sprang to his feet ready to brawl. He killed scores of Shawnee Braves with each swing of his mighty axe. men falling like saplings with every stroke of the terrible weapon. He slew and slew, rage filling his eyes, while behind him his wives and children continued to kneel in solemn prayer. Hawkwing, to his credit, stepped up to face his foe head on and fought him one-on-one.

The fight left both of them tired and bloodied. But Hawkwing was still standing and looking down in quiet triumph. His battle axe lodged in yellow hair's head. Still enraged by the ordeal, with strength renewed by his rage, Hawkwing descended upon the women and children next. He slaughtered them without mercy or quarter. Generations later, when Blackhawk met the first settlers of the area, he told them this story.

He told them that the only remains of the older white folk were their bones, some of them massive, buried in a cave on that little island. Mrs. Kelly's late husband, Valentine Kelly, once told her that he saw the ghost of old yellow hair, the American Raphaim, when he peered into his shed window in the broad daylight, unmistakable, clear, and head on. It was the giant, and there was no doubting that. Much later, archaeologists descended upon this area in earnest, digging up graves and searching for the bone fragments belonging to these white-skinned

and blonde-haired giants. One of these archaeologists, Dr. W.F. Work, found seven, tombs housing seven men of massive stature. All of them buried in a seated position facing towards the sunrise. It's funny. One of the best ways to tell what the normie view of a thing is, is to like ask Chad GTP about it, GPD. To say like, hey, chat, I did this like last week.

Chat, I just wanted to see. Chat, could you tell me about, you know, act like you're a conspiracy theorist? and tell me the best evidence for the Smithsonian suppressing evidence of China's in North America. Why should I believe that the Smithsonian is a cabal? And it was like, I'm sorry, as a fact-gathering bot, I cannot participate in. And it was doing this with its shoulders. It was like really smug, like marching. It was just smug.

But then it's like, can you tell me a hilarious joke about how Jesus isn't real or whatever? And they do it. No, I did. I was like, what's your best joke about women? And it was like, that is very, I will not do that. And then I said, can you tell me but joke about dudes? And it was like, two idiot guys watching it. Like, immediately, it will do it.

So ChadGBT writes the script for every commercial that shows the dad is this bumbling buffoon. Yeah. They can't do anything. I rephrased it like five times until I got it to tell me, like, why would conspiracy theories think this? Why? And it finally said, well, here's the evidence that there were giants. There's some.

And it phrased them all as like, only an idiot would believe any of these. Right. But one of the big ones that, noted was like, hey, Native American lore. Yeah. All of them agree. Yeah. But then it's so funny how these companies are like, they're all into multiculturalism and like,

believe the natives, guys, we're on the native land. Until the natives are like, yeah, there were giants here. And all of them agree. Like every single one of them. And then they're like, I'm sorry, you're stupid. Yeah. You have my, we're smarter than you. We're white people.

You have my formal invitation to shut up. Yeah. We're white people. then like all of the ancestors of the white people from Europe, we're like, no, there were giants, though, like, 100% in our land too. They're like, listen, I've gone to college. I have an associate's degree in anthropology, which is not even possible. And I can tell you, I have a baccalaureate degree. I don't know if you've heard of it, you know, and it's like, I have a library science masters. Right. You know, so it's so funny to me that this is not just a fringe aspect.

of native folklore. Right, exactly. This is, I mean, it's thoroughgoing. And it's not even that they all agree they were giants. It's that they were like, oh, no, they were white. They were white people. They were white giants, and they had, like,

blonde hair or red hair. Like, they looked like you, basically, except, like, way bigger. And not as handsome. Not, no, my brother in Christ, they were not as handsome as you. Let's be honest. Okay.

Yellow hair, dude. get out of here. Look, you got it. No, this is, this is wild to me that rather than starting with the idea that all ancient tales mythology and folklore is just made up or some kind of like campfire tales made to spook children, that kind of thing, my inclination because of the Bible, again, because of the biblical narrative, that's like, no, God said this, there's like this big flood and a bunch Right. Because of that, and basically all history is the battleground of heaven and earth.

It's the battleground of the seat of the serpent and the seat of the woman. It's this great cosmic, spiritual, physical war that is going to have a total winner and a total loser by the end. It's going to be Christ, by the way. Christ is Lord. Theoretically already is. It's just, is now. He is Lord. Practically, the implication of his victory is being worked out through history. So. But we digress. I just want to say that here. And I know that there are other folks in the Christian world like Doug Van Dorn.

Yeah. Who's written probably the book on the subject, giants, the sons of the gods. Yeah. Where he talks more about this. But I would just challenge people before they have like this skeptical view of history where we wash history and we're like, where are the bones? I'm like, guys, we're talking in some cases about things happened thousands of years ago. Right.

Human remains, skeletal remains, don't just stack up, like walk through. through a forest, you're not going to find a lot of bones, even though millions and millions of animals have lived and died in those woods. Exactly. Because, except in strange circumstances, like human beings intentionally preserving them, or very hot, dry climates, or bogs, or, like, frozen in glaciers, as bear grills would say. Who is? Do I get all my... We have here. A glacier. A glacier. I'm now going to climb this ice cliff for no particular reason. I've been out here for a few hours, feeling thirsty.

I'm going to have time to drink my urine. My uranus. Okay. I can't even remember what I was saying before that. So let me follow up with you. So Joel Beakey and his systematic. Here's me. Shot.

And then you take it under the leg. You're Kobe on Shaq. Yeah, I agree. Except like I'm more handsome. Well, I mean, it's hard to argue right now. Shack's pretty handsome. So Joel Beakey and his systematic talks about how, in order to really have a worldview that's informed by Christ, you have to be steeped in the scriptures

in such a way that you're not trying to say that anything that's not in them is false. Instead, you're using the paradigm that scripture provides to then look at everything. Yeah. So scripture is a lens. It's like a semi-permeable lens where only that which is true according to it can get through. And so anyway, I think that that's also how you're supposed to view nature and history. And the thing that gets me about this is that there's absolutely nothing in the scripture that would prohibit this story from being true. Like, that's where I'm going with this.

But the one thing that I can never understand is, like, what about the white-skinned thing? Yeah, what is up with that? Like, was that a reaction against how they felt like the settlers were, you know, evil? And so they, they, like, put that in to give a villain that they can. could all rally around? Or is there something more? And so this is when we have to use that biblical principle of looking at like, is there anything in scripture that if we look deeper into it could inform this? And it turns out there might be. The milk skins. The milk skins, otherwise known as the Gauls. Otherwise known as the Galatians. The Galatians. I don't know if you know this,

but there's a book in the New Testament called Galatians. Yeah, the epistle of Paul to the Galatians. Right. The Apostle Paul wrote it. And in it, he said some really based stuff. He does indeed. And everyone should go read it right now. I wish they'd go the whole way. Go read Galatians. Not going to elaborate. And Cronus to Uranus themselves. Anyway. I think we've now made a niche reference that the kids won't. If you get it, you get it.

So it turns out the Gauls eventually came from the Galatians. And the Galatians came from further east. And then they migrated over into that kind of fertile crescent north of the Mediterranean. And then eventually they kept going up and, hey, then we got some epic stories of war between them and Julius Caesar. The Gaulic, the Gallic Wars. Right, the Golic Wars, the Galatianic Wars, otherwise known as. But one of the interesting things about the root of the Galatians name is that it's the word Gall, which eventually became the Celts. And it means milk skinned.

Milk skinned. I don't know if you guys know this, but milk is white. Okay? I mean, unless it's a brown cow. The milk I drink exclusively is brown, and it tastes like chocolate. Well, okay, normal milk. Okay. Beef milk is white.

Okay, got you. I'm following now. I'm following. Right. And then another name for it that we get from the Celt continuation of the word is powerful or valiant men. So here's what I'm going to do, because this is the idea. The idea is that the Galatians were giants.

I'm just going to show my hand. Or at least there were giants among them. Or at least they were giants among them. But it's more fun to say. Like, Paul wasn't writing a letter to a congregation exclusively of giants. I just want to make sure no one thinks that that's what we're saying. That is what I'm saying. He may have mentioned that, you know?

Like, he may have been like, the elephant in the room, literally, you guys are giants. This is not in the box. Like, he didn't say that. He didn't say that. He didn't say that. I'm just kidding. But the idea is that they, so from extra biblical sources, they're constantly referred to as valiant, mighty men. That's the name of Celt.

and then Gaul means milk-skinned. So the idea is that as they migrated north into Europe, they also eventually found their way into the Americas. And that's where we get this race of white-skinned, blonde-haired giants. Ben, I'm wondering if you might have any quotes from, for example, Doug Van Dorn's book, Giants, the Sons of the Gods, that might give some amplification and illumination of the point that you're making. My brother in Christ, say no more.

Okay, let's hear. So I'm going to quote from... Which is a great book. You guys should put it out. really like genuinely great book. We'll put a link to the in the description that you can go pick up a copy for yourself. I said this last episode, but I'm just going to sing its praise yet again. The 10th anniversary edition is out and it's got some bonus stuff that Doug put in there. Yeah. Pastor Van Dorn. And it's very, very good. So quoting now from the book, the early 18th century historian Paul Pezron says

the Gauls, quote, exceeded all others in bulk and strength of body. And hence it is that they have been looked upon to be terrible people and as it were giants." End quote. For example, the Roman historian Julius Flores in the second century AD describes one, Tutobocus, who is a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, Golic king as a man of extraordinary stature, who used to vault over four or six horses at once, but could scarcely mount one when he fled, which means he was too big to Mount Orr's. That's the idea. Can you jump over four horses? I am a three right now. It depends on how they're laid out. I was picturing them like head to tail, head to tail,

and he was jumping over them long wise. I was picturing like evil-cnevel style where it's width-wise. They're width stacked. That's a little bit less impressive. I still can't do that. But I could. I could if I really had like gun to my head. I could do it. Wow. So when this when this Gullet King was captured, he was seen above all the trophies or spoils of the enemies, which were carried upon the tops of spears. Another quote says, The Celts across the Rhine were called Germani. That's where we get Germans from.

And that means true Celts, according to Strabo. The Christian historian Higisippus wrote that the Germans are superior to other nations by the largeness of their bodies and their contempt of death. The Roman Vigetius wrote, What could our undersized men have done against all these tall Germans? Columella says, nature has made Germany remarkable for armies of very tall men. Sedonius Apollinaris reports that so many of the people were seven feet tall and up

that he could not address them properly. As in like he couldn't count how many people were over seven feet tall. Being seven feet tall is not normal, by the way. By the way, these people, these quotations have, they've spanned all the way from like 60 BC. Right. Onward, now we're into the fourth century AD. Exactly. Just not all one group, these are reports that span across centuries.

Yeah, and even Augustine writes that a German goth woman was being paraded around the streets of Rome, who was so gigantic that she topped over all others. She's a woman, generally smaller than men, and yet she was easily visible over top all the other people's heads in Rome, which is a crowded city. As late as the 1500s, a German by the name of Ammere, grew to 11 feet tall. 1,500s, this guy was 11 feet tall. The famed Baron Benton Rider,

who was himself 8 feet 8 inches, hardly reached up to Armin's armpits. Wow. Still another named Hans Braw was estimated at 12 feet and 8 inches tall. I don't know when he lived, but the point is, the point is,

the German people that they're talking about descended from the Celts, descended from the Gauls, descended from the Galatians, and all of them were described as milk-skinned white folk who were very tall. And then the idea is that they somehow, again, found their way over to the Americas, and that's where we get the roots of this Native American legend. And what's even crazier is you start to see the interrelatedness of all these various lore and phenomena

is that if you think back to the Gilgau-Rafayim megalithic structure. Yep, that concentric circle stone structure. For worship and a lot of these often connected with astronomers, associations, the stars and the heavens. Right. Again, heaven and earth. The Celts are known for druidism. Yes.

Stonehenge, these kind of other megalithic structures, and astronomical alignment and astrological interest as well. And also, what are the druids known for? Human sacrifice. Of course. I asked you that. I was like, wait, what's he fishing for you? They're known for a lot of things.

Yeah. Hey, you want to know something? interesting too. I learned to this recently. I was listening to a two and a half hour documentary on Druids. And it turns out, and we kind of knew this, but druidism, as we know it today, didn't come about until long after the construction of Stonehenge. So the idea is that the druids found Stonehenge already made and were somehow able to, we think, grow confident that they knew what it was used for. And then they started using it for the same purposes, which was star worship and human sacrifice.

And it's funny that all of the, again, this is another... Guys, that's crazy. Get out of here. I mean, like, come on. That's nuts. Circles are evil, you know. I think... Spirals, though.

This is another example of the chronological snobbery of modern commentators where they're like all of the ancient sources say that the druids were associated with human sacrifice. Literally, there's not a single source. This drove me up the wall, okay? I'm listening to this guy who put a lot of work. work into this documentary, every single source that he cites says, and they also sacrificed people. They killed people. They were slaves or they were war captives. But if they didn't have any of those, they would just find the weakest member of the village and they'd sacrifice them to the star god.

And then he has the gall. And I mean, pun intended, he has the gall to say, yeah, that probably isn't true. It's probably all made up. Even though it's the only thing that all of them agree on. Yes, about the druids. No, I didn't do that. That needs to speak poorly of the druids. The point is that a lot of these ancient, let's draw some threads together to make sure if people are following what we're saying.

Yeah, because we're just kind of... So we have a lot of connections that we're making here with Gauls, with abnormal size being ubiquitous, testified many, many times over through history across the centuries, different people, different times, all the way up to, like, the Middle Ages. Right. Where they're like, yeah, they're really tall people.

early Renaissance. In early Renaissance. So we're saying, look, this race is associated with extreme size up to seven and, you know, seven feet tall being normal and then beyond that. 12 feet. Yeah. Then we're connecting that with the milk skin, the whiteness, the, the, the Celt being valiant, men of valor kind of thing. And then with druidism and human sacrifice and astronomical and astrological worship and megalithic structures and that kind of thing. What we're saying is that the giant aspect of this

runs parallel with all of the other giant things. Exactly. Yes. It all connects. So the giant thread is right there woven with the thread of star worship, worship of the heavenly host, human sacrifice, serpentine imagery. And you can remember, if you remember from Giants Part 1, I mean, we talk about that pretty explicitly with the Gilgah Rafaiim.

But then I think this episode's big proof text of that is the serpent mound in Ohio that we talked about in the cold open. Yeah. I mean, how much more obvious could it get? It's literally the biggest earth effigy in the world, and it's in the form of a serpent. You can look this up. It's unmistakable. It just is a serpent. Yeah, it's a serpent.

And people are like, no, it seems pretty clear that whatever the thing that the serpent's eating at its mouth, which is a big circle mound thing, of its own. Whatever it was, it was also an altar. And it seems to be an altar where they practiced human sacrifice. And the bends in the serpent's body line up to summer equinox and winter solstice. Astronomical. Calendar days. So all of these things come together. And it's just, it leaves you completely alarmed. Okay, but what about, what about modern day? Yeah, what about modern day? What about, all right, let me ask you this first. We've like teased this, I think, already. Do you think that it's possible for giants to still be around? Not like giantism as a disease, but someone who is giant. The family captain is all about helping Christian husbands

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again, thinking through the semi-permeable scriptural lens, there's nothing there that would make it not possible. Right. There's nothing there that would preclude because we know there were giants before and after the flood. We know that giants have continued lure into very recent times, as we'll see even very, very recent times. So to me, there's no reason why there couldn't be giants.

Right. And sometimes I think human beings tend to overestimate, especially in modern day where we have the illusion of all knowledge at our fingertips through the internet and the cell phone and things like that. We have the illusion

that we know everything, but considering the vastness of the world and just how many places there are in it that human beings, you look on a globe and you're like,

oh, look how small that is. Right. We've shrunk it down as something I can hold in my hand. If you go stand in front of, you know, the rainforest stretching out in front of you and the Congo,

Yeah. I mean, we've cut a lot of it down, but you still look vast. If you go to Alaska. Or the Utah desert even. Go to the Utah desert. If you go to these places, you see the vastness of space.

And to me, it's not impossible. Right. Right. That there are still giant. What do you think, then? So I agree with everything that you said. I also am sympathetic to people who say, well, it seems like it doesn't fit if what we're saying about giants is true,

that they're evil, you know, or they began as evil at the very least, it doesn't seem to fit that Christ has finished his work on the cross. He's ascended to the right hand of God. He's won, you know, and yet somehow giants are still around.

Like, that just doesn't seem to work. And I am sympathetic to that, but I would also say that God and Christ gives his church work to do in response to his victory. Yeah. And that work includes snuffing out evil from the world. And so look at something that's easier to, an easier pill to swallow like dragons.

Yeah. You have dragons being vanquished supposedly in medieval times. We got to do a dragon episode. Yeah, we will. We will. Okay. Because we got to tell about Smog. Oh, Smog.

Yes. Okay, but so what I was saying was, I understand that view. But think about what Christ did. Apart from the salvific part of it, what did he do to the world? Well, it was, in a sense, a recreation of the world. I mean, in 70 AD we had this big decreation event where God, the covenant with Israel alone officially ended. And now it's all of the world that's welcome to Christ.

And so then we have it recreated after this massive thing that Christ did. Well, the only other time that something like that has happened is in Genesis when the flood came. We had the flood, which was, I mean, scripture talks about. it as if it was a decreation of one world and a recreation of the other one. It doesn't mean that literally one world was tossed away and it's now hurtling through space unused, but it's as if one world ended and another began. And yet even after that, we still had giants going around. We still had, you know, Noah, the family that was saved, they had work to do and snuffing out evil in the world.

So I don't think that it's impossible. I think that it makes me uncomfortable. But I don't think that it's categorically impossible. Yes. Does that make sense? Yeah. And so with that said, a modern story of, a modern folkloric story of a giant still existing. As Alexander the Great.

I love how you say a modern story and then you're like, Alexander the Great. It's the first thing you say, we'll get there. Like, trust, trust. Look, you guys know how I do this, okay? Like, this is no surprise to the constant listener. Take us there. As Alexander the Great swept across the Eastern world, during his unparalleled military campaign in the 3rd century BC,

he met and conquered a Persian force in one of their more prominent cities. For already 700 years, the city and the military force here had served the surrounding lands well, offering resilient defensive resources for any nearby dwellers. But most great cities eventually fall, and this one, whose earliest names are lost to history, was no exception. Alexander trotted victorious through the city,

Basking in yet another glory he and his men had won for themselves and for all of Macedonia. The city was prominent enough for Alexander to maintain settlement there for some time. Accordingly, he gave it a new name, Alexandria and Erakosia. The local dialect struggled with the Greek, though. They quickly shortened it to Skandar. As long and storied stretches of time passed, the name of the place settled nicely on Kandahar. In 2002, following the tragedy of 9-11 in the U.S., Operation Enduring Freedom was well into the throes of its most brutal battles. American forces had descended upon Iraq with epic force, thinking a quick show of brutal power would make for a short war.

Oh, how wrong they ended up being. The fighting centralized in the ancient city of Kandahar, the de facto capital of the Taliban at the time. As it had always done before, the city again proved resilient, simply refusing to be overthrown. Her people were as hardy as the jagged hills that surrounded them. At any rate, the fighting raged on, and American forces sought an advantage in those chrysogrim peaks nearby. So patrols were sent out frequently and always returned with mixed reviews. One day, though, a patrol did not return. At least not on time.

Of course, to the top brass, it was unsettling, given the nature of the situation. They didn't want men just lost. So after a long period of radio silence, far too long a period for some, a special operations unit was sent to follow their trail and investigate. They hiked for days over rugged terrain, beaten down by the hot desert sun that seemed to push on their loaded rucks until their knees wanted to buckle beneath the exhaustion. As they left camp one morning, slightly refreshed after a night of touch and go sleep, they quickly stumbled upon the mouth of a great cave.

They had seen many of these already, but this one was different. Army equipment littered the entrance, hope was kindled in the men, but there was no sign of the missing soldiers' actual bodies. Still in quiet consideration of what they had found, and before any attempt at radio contact with OHQ had been made, a massive spear was shoved out of the cave's mouth impaling one of the soldiers with horrifying ease. The others watched in disbelief as a 15-foot-tall giant man creature stepped out of the cave. They say he smelled like death and decay. They say he had

red hair. They say he had six fingers on each hand and massive leather moccasins on his feet. In a blaze of panicked and desperate gunfire that lasted for 30 straight seconds, the giant finally whimpered and stumbled falling to the ground with the thud of a felled oak tree. It took 30 seconds of firing from about a dozen M4 carbon. raining rounds on the monster for it to finally succumb. That's an astounding report, if true. Having made peace, they called for a Chinook to come and evacuate them. There was no hope for the lost patrol, they figured.

They watched with sullen faces as the first Chinook came and carried the giant away. They loaded onto the second and went back to camp. None of them ever saw the giant beast again. And if the story is to be believed, each of them were forced to sign non-disclosure agreement. to kill the wild story right then and there. But despite this, soldiers in the Kandahar region during that time period

considered the story an open secret. All of them feared the caves in the mountains. I think the first thing we can say, Ben, is that this is obviously true. This is 100, I mean, if anyone is critical of this, I don't respect you. I'm kidding.

I'm kidding. No, this, so this is a story where we're telling it to you as folklore. Right. Again, so take some of the stories that we tell in these different episodes. What they are is folklore. Some of them are folklore that are recorded in ancient or medieval, compilations of folklore, books, scrolls, oral tradition.

Some of them are going to be modern sources of folklore, which is fueled now by the Internet. And these stories have their own take on a life of their own. Many people come in copycap. people make stuff up. People do fictional writing for fun or whatever, you know, trying to get their posts to go viral. So this is one of those stories where what we're asking first is just simply, is this possible? Could this happen?

Exactly. Not is it true? Not is it true? We don't know if it's true. Is it possible? Is it possible? Yeah. And I mean, I think yeah.

Again, I don't think there's a reason why this could not be possible. Is it likely? I'm going to say no. I'd prefer the word certainly true to lie. I'm just kidding. It's, I think there's, this is one of those stories that we've probably, you might have heard it before. I know I'd heard it from several different places. Mr. Ballin did a thing on it before, but, um, I think that even Wendigoon has talked about it.

Has he really? And his conspiracy theory mega tier. Oh, yes. By the way, Wendigoon, please. Closer. Closer. Pst. We like you.

Do something with us. Can we talk to you? Can we talk? Answer our emails. He's not going to see this video. He's not going to see this video, guys. Like it. All right. So if we, whatever disbelief you have, okay, if you suspend it for just a minute and allow the following presuppositions. One, the Gaelic people were the Galatians before they were the Gauls and they eventually became the Native Americans. They had white skin and red or blonde hair and they were giant people.

Two, you recognize that some of those people may not have traveled or migrated with all of the others. Maybe they went into the modern day Iraqi region. And then three, recognize that even though it would take a lot of people to continue up to the modern day in that sort of setting, it may not take as many as you might think. Like people are actually pretty resilient if they're healthy. And so I don't think that there's anything that on the face of it makes this impossible. How long do giants live? What's a giant lifespan? Exactly. I mean, I think that they probably, they're giant.

Look, listen. Aren't their lifespans also giant? Let me do some science. Big tall, many inches. So true. Big, big old many years. Many days. I'm Native American, so anything I say is actually true.

Well, I mean, if I remember right, some of the Native American legends say that they were supposed to be like, they lived for a long time. Long lives or something like that. So, yeah, there's no reason why we can't say, like where we'd say rule it out, there's absolutely no way. Exactly, yeah. Also, the government would totally do that.

Like if they had a giant, they'd shunuch it out there. They'd NDA it up and they'd never tell you. Because people are, oh, well, there's no way to confirm it. Duh. There's no way to confirm any folklore at all. You find, like I've read many books on the more like analytical or skeptical or scholarly end and some of these things or articles. And at the end of the day, many of them are still evaluating things that are by their nature

firsthand eyewitness accounts, even things like sleep paralysis. are going to be someone telling you of an experience that happened to me. Exactly. So even if you can document that, yeah, I really sat down with the person. They really said this. It wasn't just, you know, a story that floated around. At the, the nature of the thing is that it's still not confirmable. It's their witness.

Right. It's your witness. It's your credibility that's on the table. And so really the question is, would you trust what you're hearing from the person you're hearing from? And if they're giving a firsthand account and you trust them, well, then you're going to believe that it's true. even if it's very difficult to conceive of actually happening.

So another really cool example, I think, just to show that this isn't a one-off. Like, this isn't a creepy pasta that someone wrote, and there's no other giant stories in the modern world. There's a video that I saw recently that was insane. And it was like these, I think it was like three guys. They were sitting up on a big hill over in some flatland, like flyover state. I have no idea as to the details, obviously.

And it looked like they were glassing for deer or something like that over some various properties. And you know how sometimes there'll be like a river that runs straight through two pastures, and there's a lot of trees growing up around the river. So they had zoomed in on this one section because they thought they saw something moving. And it's crazy, okay? There is a, I mean, there's no other way to describe it, a giant that's walking in the creek. That's like going under the trees and stuff. And it's like as tall as the trees.

Show me, send me the tape. I'm going to have to send me the tape. I'll find it. I'll put it in the show notes as well. Send me the tape. I got to see it. If I can find it. Here's the thing about some of these too is that when you're looking at, okay, photographic or video evidence today, it's almost like, I don't know how courts are going to handle this. Oh, I know.

Because it's so easy now with the technology literally in front of me. With the laptop in front of me, I could make. Right. A giant. I mean, I personally couldn't, I don't have the skills, but someone with the skills could take this. And that's how approachable it is to make something believable now versus. Or even with the advent now of like AI art programs.

It's not true AI. It's like machine learning art stuff. And now it can be video. And like I saw a video that AI made that was a trailer for like 1984 or something like that. It was amazing. Yeah. I was like, I want to see this movie really, really bad. Yeah.

It looks like a great, wow. A great adaptation of the book. Yeah, give it 10 years, give machine learning and those things, and they'll be making films that are Hollywood-level production. Yeah, exactly.

That's the fearful part. And I guess the point in all that is to say that we still live in an age of folklore. Yeah. And the reason is that humans are creatures of story and folklore. Yes.

We'll never escape that. Never. It's just now it looks different than it did in the past. Now it's like, you know, Reddit or something guy that you made a mega threat on Twitter or something or an Instagram video. And you're like, well, wait a minute, wait a minute, what was that? Or TikTok. Like there's stories of guys on

TikTok who think they see a giant up in the mountain and they make six videos like they're trying to go back and see it. And then they're stopped by mysterious men in black. And then their account gets wiped and they never make a TikTok again. Like that's modern folklore. And it doesn't mean that it's false. That's part of what we're trying to say. It just means that you have to approach it is you'd approach any phone more. Yep. Which is with maybe an error of suspicion, but also an error of a willingness

to be proven wrong. Yeah, sure. About your presuppositions. Yeah. Does that make sense? I'm totally following you. So here's the deal. I, we should close out this episode.

Yeah, I think it's time. In the words of C.R. Wiley, let's bring this thing in for a landing. In the words of me right now, of what I'm about to say, we're talking about giants, but the episode doesn't need to be. Oh, that's really good.

In the words of me, what I'm about to say, I have to pee. And so let's close this thing out. We've said what we need to say. An episode has to, it has the limitation of a bladder, of a human bladder. Ben, why don't you start us off

and let's go up to the mountains of Bolivia? Yes, let's do it. Let's do it. In the late Bronze Age, as depicted in marvelous ancient carvings that can still be seen in Egypt, and in the records of other kings around the Mediterranean, a mighty people came from the sea one time

and destroyed many kingdoms. Anatolia, Syria, Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Egypt were all severely crippled by the onslaught of this mysterious group of ocean pilgrims. Their origin and actual identity in history remains a massive mystery even today, but some educated speculation can be done. Most records indicate that the sea peoples were made up of various groups spread across the Aegean Sea,

Southern Europe, and Mediterranean islands, all prime real estate for the giant myths of the Greeks and other surrounding mythologies. After one last attempt at invading Egypt, the great and militant Pharaoh Ramsey III conclusively repelled the Sea Peoples during the Battle of the Delta. This battle was on the heels of the Sea People's final campaign that had already conquered Cyprus in the regions of the far north of Canaan, known as Bashan. As punishment for the, to put it lightly, inconvenience that the sea peoples had caused the Egyptian Pharaoh,

he sent them off to exile, too angry at them to even keep them as forced laborers. In his record, he called them the Pelliset Nation, and he documented giving them a stretch of coastland bordered on all other sides by the mighty Canaanites. And thus, the nation of the Philistines was formed. A nation that we know for certain, thanks to the history of King David, possessed mighty giants. But where else did these Philistines, these sea peoples, come from?

And what else might they have done before embarking on such a grand maritime war campaign? Such advanced seafaring technology certainly had more perks than just tormenting a few petty and a few major kingdoms in the Mediterranean, right? Well, maybe. Just maybe. If you recall our first ever main episode, High Strangeness on the High Seas, you might remember a fun little theory we had

regarding the lost city of Atlantis. What if, we boldly said, what if Atlantis was real? What if it was a real city that existed before the flood that was governed by fallen angel demigods and their giant Nephilim children? And it was. And it was.

Now we must ask some other related questions. What if some legend of Atlantis remained in the minds of Ham's descent, after the flood? What if following the utter failure of Babel, a group of giants and men shoved off from shore seeking to re-find that antediluvian paradise they had heard so much about? What if they still remembered some of the ancient skills possessed by their forefathers? And what if in their travels they found their way to the far western edge of the world? High in the Andes Mountains of Bolivia

lies the incredibly well-preserved remnants of the oldest known city in the world. It's said to date as far back as human history, according to creation and flood timelines, are able to go. It is, as far as we can tell, the earliest complete city that is still preserved for us today. Immediately, though, it presents us with an oddity, for it is held aloft beside the shores of Lake Titicaca

in the mountains at 12,000, 400 feet. At this altitude, the air is expensive. Supply being far outnumbered by the demand of any people here. Exertion for even a very fit people quickly becomes difficult here, so one can imagine the hardship of people would suffer when trying to build a megalithic city this far above sea level. And yet despite both of these factors, the extreme age and extreme altitude, 60-toned stones sit immovable, on top of 100-ton limestone blocks. Some of it looking as if it was just placed there yesterday. Statues of strange giant chimeras litter the grounds

and stick their faces out from the walls like gargoyles on a medieval cathedral. And still today, again, despite the great age, the surface of most of the stones presents itself as alarmingly smooth to the touch of even the most tender hand. The level of precision presented to observers cannot be overstated. The enormous stone blocks making up the massive walls are cut into irregular shapes and are not bonded by any visible mortar or other bonding agent. And yet, one cannot find anywhere in the whole city where the walls are still intact at least, where a credit card can fit between two of these blocks.

What's more, archaeologists believe that the stones were extracted from an ancient quarry just over 200 miles away. 200 miles and 12,000 plus feet of elevation. This task would be impossible today. It's far more than Herculian. It's otherworldly. Even more than that, when scientists compare what they see with their eyes to the generally accepted timeline of human technology,

they're faced with the fact that the wheel was not even supposed to have been invented yet. One of the greatest monoliths at the site, a 10-foot-high, 100-ton stone freeze in the gate of the sun lintel depicts numerous animals that were supposed to only have existed very far back in the Earth's history to a materialist modern. Serpent imagery is, of course, highly featured here. These structures carry great astrological significance as well, with the gate of the sun lining up precisely

with the solstices and equinoxes of the year in various ways. One thing all of this proves is that the ancient peoples, whoever they were and whoever they were informed by, they weren't drooling idiots sitting around and waiting to die. These ancients were active, in many ways advanced, and incredibly aware of the Book of Nature that surrounded them on all sides, even if they couldn't read it perfectly. Even given these points in their favor, though, we still must ask the burning question. Who exactly made Tio Onako and other cities of the ancient? ancient world like it. As we said earlier, Central and South America share many similarities in their myths of how civilization was established after the global flood that destroyed all life. According to them, a bearded white man arrived on the shores of their lands long ago. He gave them

society and writing and taught them skills for building mighty things. They venerated him as a god, a son of the great sun god. The Aztecs called him Quetzelcoatl. The Mayans called him Kukulkan, and the Inkins called him Viracocha. The deep histories of the peoples of the Andes say that it was these high peoples who built the great cities that we still marvel at today. In fact, if you ask who built Tijuana, the Peruvians will tell you what their ancient forefathers told them. The Atlands, they say, they came on boats with Viracocha, bringing great knowledge and skill

with them. It is said that over time, as Viracocha and Virocha and and has other light-skinned semi-divine people settled in the high plains of the Andes. They were attacked by a chief named Kari from the valley below. The chief massacred the mighty and fair people. Only a few of them are said to have escaped into the sea, and they were never seen again. Did this begin the legend of the sea peoples and their tour of vengeance on the other side of the world? We don't know.

Did these giants from the far east build some of the most precise and perplexing structures in the ancient world, high in the thin mountain air, only to abandon them to what was in their eyes, a lesser race? We don't know. What we do know is that the Earth's past is a storied one. There is far more to the ancient history than meets the eye at first glance. It is a glorious story, partially concealed, whose truth will surely sing the praises of our God. Want more haunted cosmos? Then make your way over to Patreon, where you can get early access to our content, as well as exclusive

content in regular dusty tomes and monthly live streams with brian and myself so go to patreon.com slash haunted cosmos and sign up now