- IJ
124: When we say 'tall'...
When we say we are searching for the 8' ‘tall-ones’ that existed before Polynesians came... what do we mean by tall? After all, there are lots of fake photos on the internet of really tall skeletons... but yes, they are all fake. We are surprised that there are people with low enough intelligence enough to believe such photos, but to help them come back to the real world, here is something that might help them.
This is the science. Humans as large as the faked photographs portray are physiologically impossible at the scale of the bones suggested. This is because of the ‘square-cube law’. For example, if a human were scaled up 10 times, his surface area and cross-section would be 100 (10²) times larger—so his bones and muscles would also be 100 times stronger. However, his volume would be 1,000 (10³) times larger—and so will his mass and weight. So his muscles and bones would be far too weak to support his weigh at the scales shown. That people is a fact!
That means that any tall skeleton over 9' (and certainly 12') that looks like a normal human skeleton in proportions - is 100% fake. They are physiologically impossible. Impossible!
A true 12' giant would need radical modifications to the entire body plan, making the bones much thicker, altering the circulatory system to allow for the greatly increased amount of blood flow required, and so on. The giant ‘human’ would not even be the same species as an average-sized human. The square-cube law has many other implications for the minimum and maximum size of body plans. He would be slower, ungainly, and very easy to kill.
Legends are full of giants. Even the bible mentions individuals who were very large. Goliath is probably the best known at 9′ 9″ and even a smaller height would be gigantic to a people with average male adult height of 5'2". The King of Bashan was 13'5". That's stretching it as bit to be healthy and normal. Either way, there are recorded modern examples of people almost 9 feet tall - Robert Wadlow was 8'11". he looked normal but suffered physically because he wasn't from a 'tall race'.
We expect our 8'+ tall-ones to be as physiologically normal as a 6' human being.
Just don't be sucked in to anything that is over 9' on the internet and any new photos that surface should be checked against measuring tapes (not rods - as they can be faked). And any new find (discovered recently since 2010) that doesn't have video or multiple shots from different angles you can also be assured is a complete fake. But there will always be those who are too stupid to notice sadly.
*****
Now, all that said, you will know we found a mammal bone in the cave fill that came from the outside (ie not the bones we are looking for which are dry and laid out on shelves in the cave believed to belong to a race of at least 8' in height because that's what all the stories said they were). The bone we found is fossilized. It is turned to stone - so I also guess you know that that means in terms of age. As the only mammals here in NZ before Europeans arrived were humans, a dog and a native bat, and it's too big to be a dog - I guess you all know what that means too!
We had slowly pieced the broken bits we have (all from one bone) and at first it appeared to be an incomplete femur. By incomplete we mean that neither joint head has been found yet. A femur expands toward the greater trochanter near where a femur attaches to a hip. This appeared evident in our bone but no such expanding occurs at the other end. Therefore we have to assume it's overall length until we piece more of it together. We got it down from 20 various sized fragments to three segments.
But although the tape, and missing bits, suggested someone of over 8' feet tall - it just didn't feel right. The main reason was the bone thickness seemed too thin to be a femur and too small a circumference at one end to be a femur. Rearranging the pieces brought them together better and unlike the initial suggestion, it now appeared to be close to normal length for a human femur. But it isn't! It now appears to be a humerus. (photo next time)
Regardless of all of that, it is older than 1500 years as it is fossilized and was found close to another fossilized bone of another animal (mammal) that is not on record in NZ, even before the Polynesians. We just don't know what it is yet. I hate mysteries I can't solve. But that second bone aside... have we found the first public evidence of a race here long before Polynesians? We believe so. But I'd prefer to wait until we see a complete skeleton and a complete femur from inside the cavern before making that judgement.
Keep in mind that the skeletons we seek are supposed to be 8' tall and were left where they lay when first discovered, and the cave entrance was quickly covered up by archaeologists and iwi when they saw them. Not a single archaeological report was undertaken on the original find.
What exactly were they afraid to reveal?
