200: The Equatorian Giant

Amazonian giants may be for real, for a research team in 2013 had reportedly found 'several' large skeletons near Peruvian border

A British anthropologist says he has finally found the Amazon giants he has been looking for. A Shuar settlement, southeast of Cuenca, near the site of Russell Dement’s excavation. Although Russell Dement says the tribe of giants has almost certainly died out, he and a team of German researchers have excavated two settlements in the Ecuador and Peru Amazon region and found a half dozen human skeletons that measure between seven and eight feet in height.

Dement said the settlements dated to the early 1400s in one case and to the mid-1500s in the second. “We are very early in our research and I am only able to provide a general overview of what we have found,” he said. “I don’t want to make claims based on speculation since our work is ongoing. Because of the size of the skeletons, this has both anthropological and medical implications.”

Two of the skeletons have been sent to Freie Universität in Germany for analysis, including one that measures eight feet, while the others remain on site in Ecuador.

Dement says he has heard about the race of large Amazonians for more than 25 years as he has studied the Shuar and Achuar Amazon indigenous communities. “The elders in the communities tell a story about very tall, pale-skinned people who used to live nearby,” he says. “They described them as peaceful, gentle people who were always welcomed in their villages.”

Stories of the giant Amazonians have been known for more than a hundred years, since the first anthropologists made contact with Amazon tribes. One of the first mentions of them was in an article by the German researcher Franz Bosch, who heard about it from a community of the Shuar, southeast of Cuenca. Bosch is best known for his study of head-shrinking which, unfortunately, he fell personal victim to. “There are quite a few references to the giants in the scientific literature,” says Dement, “but because the Shuar insist that they belonged to the ‘spirit world’ it was always assumed that they were legend and not fact.” What caught Dement’s attention was the fact that the same story is told by indigenous Amazonians over a large area of the jungle area east of the Andes, in both Ecuador and Peru. “Because the stories were so similar and because I heard them so frequently no matter where I worked, I’ve always thought there might be something to them.”

In December 2013, Dement received a phone call from a Shuar friend who had found part of skeleton about 70 miles from Cuenca. “He said that it was of one of the giants,” says Dement. “I was in Quito at the time and of course rushed down to take look.” What Dement found was the skull and rib cage of a large female who had lived about 600 years ago. The remains had been exposed by flooding of a nearby creek. With the help of his friend, he quickly located the rest of skeleton, which had been moved in the flood. When he assembled the entire skeleton, it measured seven feet, four inches. Within two months, Dement assembled a team of four research associates from Freie Universität in Berlin. The university also provided funding for excavation and research work. “Even though I had been working with Freie for many years, I was concerned that they might not give a grant for someone looking for giants,” says Dement. “To outsiders, especially scientists, I understand this sounds hair-brained.”

Once together, Dement’s team worked for six months, unearthing three more complete skeletons and parts of two more, collecting artifacts and mapping the area. During the work, and with the assistance of his Shuar friends, Dement located a second settlement about twenty miles away, on the Ecuadorian – Peruvian border, where two more skeletons were found. That settlement dated to about 1550. “The exciting thing about the second site is that it proved that the tribe had been in the area for at least 150 years, and probably a lot longer,” says Dement. “It also means that they were both pre-Columbian and post-Columbian, although we’ve found no evidence that they interacted with the Spanish.”

Preliminary study indicates that the six bodies were of relatively healthy, well-proportioned humans. “The skeletons show no signs of diseases such as the hormonal growth problems that are common in most cases of gigantism,” Dement says. “In all the skeletons, the joints seemed healthy and lung cavity appeared large. One of the skeletons that we have dated was of a female who was about 60 when she died, much older than typical cases of gigantism.” Dement says the burials were elaborate. “Bodies were wrapped in leaves that were still partly intact when we excavated them. All the bodies were surrounded by a thick layer of clay, which prevented water intrusion and is probably responsible for the fact that the skeletons are in relatively good condition.”

Dement says he expects the work at Freie to continue for at least a year after which he and his team will publish their findings. “Because of the sensational nature of this, we have to be extremely diligent in our research since it will be met with a great deal of skepticism.”

In the meantime, he says he is collecting DNA samples from the Shuar living near the excavations to determine if there was interbreeding with the giants.

It is reported that Dement had previously studied Amazon indigenous communities for more than two decades and had heard the legends of “very tall, pale-skinned people who used to live nearby,” he said. Community elders described them to Dement as a race of large, peaceful Amazonians who were welcomed by the indigenous Shuar and Achuar people, however, the locals also believed these people belonged to the ‘spirit world’ and were purely mythical.

Since the announcement of this discovery several reports have vastly exaggerated the dimensions of the finds, with seven feet being reported as seven meters (making them 23 feet tall). The bones have also been erroneously connected with hoax photos, as well as a reconstruction of an “Ecuador giant”, which was in fact a fake skeleton for a now-closed theme park in Switzerland. These false reports should not detract from the actual discovery of seven-to-eight-feet skeletal remains in the Ecuadorian and Peruvian rainforest, which are being scientifically studied. Such skeletons, while seeming to fit the ancient legends of a mythical race, are not unheard of or unproven in scientific literature.

Results of the reported Freie University research are to be published a year from now (that was to be at least 2015) according to Dement, who is said to be examining DNA samples from the Shuar communities near the excavation site to see if they connect with the skeletal remains from the ancient settlement. Hopefully the published information will shed light on the people who lived in the Amazonian rainforest hundreds of years ago, and how they might have interacted with the Shuar and Achuar peoples, possibly sparking myths and beliefs which were passed down for generations, resulting in the legend of the Ecuadorian giants.

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And that's where the story ends... No one knows who Dement is. There are no photos of any skeletons and no reports from Freie University in Berlin either. Russell Dement does not seem to exist. Even if he did, it still seems odd that Dement would break the news in a lightly read expatriate publication without even a hint of the supposed discovery making it into mainstream Ecuadoran news sources. I think the case may be closed on this one.