Welcome to our classic episode.

Fellow conspiracy realist.

Guys, have you ever looked at a giant and thought this would be way cooler if it was ancient and Chinese?

Yeah, actually very much so.

I'm over here looking at giants all the time, Ben, and when I do, that is my first thought every time.

This is a wild one.

So like so many other regions in the world, China has its own deep folklore, and we see that throughout cultures.

Humans love to tell stories about giants.

We don't know why this is so common, but it turns out that if you look into Chinese history, this story gets really weird really quickly.

We love things that get really weird really quickly, and we think you will too join us.

Yes, who are those creatures from Prometheus?

The Engineers?

Or yeah, of Baldy's those were giants.

I hope you talk about them in this episode of The Fingers Christ.

From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events.

You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know.

A production of iHeartRadio.

Hello, welcome back to the show.

My name is Matt Noel is on an adventure.

But we'll be returning soon, they called me Ben.

We were joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission Control decad.

Most importantly, you are you, You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know before we dive in to today's show, which is it's pretty interesting actually one of those mysteries that we do have an answer for.

We want to give you a quick update on some stuff we learned about COVID nineteen, the novel coronavirus, which is currently sweeping the globe at a pace comparable to K pop but much more deadly.

Yeah, that's right.

And many of you know we are in Atlanta, Georgia where we record this, and this is one of the places, specifically Fulton County, one of the major counties within the greater metropolitan area here in Atlanta, it is experiencing a bit of an outbreak, including within the public school system.

Right as we were walking in to record today this, just this afternoon, I had learned that Fulton County school systems are closing for now just to sanitize the area.

That's the official line.

No one knows how long they'll be closed for, but they're doing so because an employee was recently confirmed to have coronavirus.

At this point, the US still lags behind other countries in terms of testing in You know, many people, including vice reporter and myself have been surprised going back through US customs to find that they just let you in.

Other countries, by the way, are having much more extensive testing.

Some countries have mandatory fourteen day quarantines, which probably still isn't long enough.

So we want to hear from you what's happening COVID wise in your neck of the woods.

And I don't want to, you know, tell anyone's business here, but mission control.

Weren't you about to head over to Italy?

Are you still going?

Okay?

No, he is not okay.

That makes me feel a little safer.

Yeah, well Italy is.

Actually they're also their death tolls.

Their death toll increased by one hundred and thirty three people today.

It's March ninth.

As we record this, and around the world, we're seeing countries take different different approaches, and many countries are getting in front of it.

They're sacrificing, you know, bad press, or they're taking the hit with bad press to look overly prepared or pessimistic or pragmatic.

I would let's go that route every time.

Absolutely absolutely, and you know, Matt, I'm not gonna name names, but there were a couple of people who, yet again implied that I was being paranoid or overthinking it.

Just get a you know, to revamp my bug out bag.

But that's just what I do when I get a new vehicle.

Dude, if anyone throws shade at your bug out bag, no matter who you are out there or within this room, that person's not your real friend.

See I'm not you know what though, I'm like very uh, I'm very boy scout about it.

Yeah, my bug out bag doesn't have one anything illegal in it and two some on the fence about this, but it doesn't have a lot of the heavy stuff that other people.

My mind is like, you're stranded in the middle of nowhere, your car breaks down or something, and you need to be alive for seventy two hours.

I don't think that's crazy.

That's not crazy at all.

That's my entire trunk space in my vehicle right now is did something go wrong open the trunk?

That's great?

Yeah.

Yeah.

As a matter of fact, I was talking with a friend of mine who were made nameless this weekend, and when it just got back and he was he was telling me about a kit he has for gunshot wounds to stitch himself up, and I thought, you know, it's not fat, that's funny.

No, no, no, but you know, we'd like to also hear what what you're doing in reaction to this in your neck of the Global Woods.

Do you feel like this is alarmism?

Do you feel like people are not making a big enough deal.

Did you already have a bug out back?

I hope you already.

We hope you already washed your hands normally.

Yeah, that's one of the weird things.

You know.

I did not apply antibacterial before coming into this room.

Though I did.

Yeah you did, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh boy, I didn't.

I went home and a shower.

I just covered myself in hand sanitizer like Danny DeVito's character.

And it's always sunny in Philadelphia.

Yeah, slapped it on.

The maintenance people came over, and you know, it would have been weird a few weeks ago, but now they were like, we get it.

Yeah, as long as you didn't climb into a leather couch, you know what I mean.

No, yeah, yeah, yeah, not not quarantine yet.

I swear.

There's the last thing we were having this internal discussion here just about these microphone covers that Ben and I are talking into right now.

There are these removable, just black mesh microphone covers, and so many people use these studios now throughout the day and just talk right here in close proximity to these things.

If any of us get sick, it will be the on air talent.

So I will note, Matt, since our fellow listeners can't see the studio right now unless it takes more pictures of it or something.

You and I a mission control as well.

We keep our mouths relatively far away from the mic in comparison to some other people.

Yeah, and I just keep getting further.

And are you guys okay with me sounding like this the whole episode?

What do you think is that bad for Is that bad for business?

Paul?

Yeah?

Okay, all right, So before the world burns down, and while while we're waiting for your questions, you're probably saying, Okay, I want to tell you about my bug out bag, or I want to tell you why then you're being crazy, or I want to tell you I want to know more about what's in your trunk, Matt.

Whatever you say, you're probably thinking, how do I how do I communicate with you guys directly?

Well, you can find us and a number of places where we're just the internet is riddled with us.

One thing that we've started to do is to give some Twitter shout outs, because Twitter is, you know, at its worst, it is a cesspool of misinformation, and at its best it can help you get around things like state censorship or mainstream media censorship.

It's an invaluable It's like fire, it's an invaluable tool for the villains and the heroes.

That's right throughout mythology, which will come back in the play later.

That's it, right.

So I don't know, Matt, you gotta you gotta Twitter a shout out you want to kick off?

I do.

I want to give a big shout out to Jeff, who made a video message and sent to us and he is only wearing a hoodie because he's he's at a swim function and it's cold, but yeah, he's he sent us a message about a company that he wants us to look into, and we've already done some initial searching around about it.

So thanks for sending that to us.

Jeff.

No spoilers, huh, no spoilers.

Or you can see what Jeff's talking about on Twitter, right, Yes, you can if you follow us at conspiracy Stuff spelled like it sounds on Twitter.

I also want to give a shout out to Sarah at Sarah Allen who said, I love that you all covered the Jeff Davis eight on your last episode.

One point of contention, Frankie Rechard's name is pronounced Rechard, not Richard.

It's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's we appreciate that correction.

You know, proper nouns can always be a little bit tricky.

We also appreciate everybody who wrote in regarding the Jennings eight podcast.

We think it's an important story and it a mystery that is yet to be solved.

So, without further ado, on to today's episode.

This is this is a weird one.

That's when we heard about a while back, but still pretty recently when you look at the span of time as a whole, but I guess everything humans are pretty recent if you look at the span of time as a whole, Earth is sort of a fad.

We're the new thing with.

A new thing let's let's hope we stick around.

Oh my god, what are we going to do?

Hey, we had a good run.

Let's just let's look back while we can.

There we go, There we go.

It reminds me of an old joke in Spanish, doesn't really translate to English, but.

I'll keep that in mind.

Yeah, we keep that in mind.

No, it's about like, what do you do if you're hanging on a cliff and like there's a strawberry bush and it's the only thing that's keeping you, but you see the roots pulling down of the c anyway that the punchline is when they're like, what do you do with the punchlines?

You eat the strawberries.

That's pretty good.

It's funnier and there language all right, But you're right, Matt, humanity, let's look back while we can.

The more we learn about early humanity, the stranger our collective story becomes.

Right.

We know still that the general pattern of human migration from the African continent throughout the rest of the world still seems correct, still seems legit.

There are tons of things that appear to confirm this.

However, recent research has revealed there is an entire mass there's a volume of other chapters that we're missing from the broad strokes of that story.

We know now that a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff that sounded crazy or kooky back when many of us listening were children, a lot of that stuff has been proven.

We know that our ancestors or you know, if you're Homo sapien or ancestors met mingled and may have interbred with multiple other hominids to the early mixtapes of what would become humanity.

Things like Neanderthals, Denisovans were a recent discovery, Homo Florenzius, the so called hobbits, and as a matter of fact, wait oh again, I say there was another kind of smaller early human like species discovered in the Philippines as well.

And well really recently, yeah, and.

Really recently, there are there appears to be maybe another ghost in the genetic code.

In February twelfth, twenty twenty, we found reports that some West Africans may have genes from an ancient what people are calling ghost hominid.

And they found this through genetic research, and they've learned what the DNA from this as of yet unidentified hominin does.

It involves tumor suppression and regulation of hormones.

All to say, all to say that we are very much still in the early days of understanding exactly where we came from.

I'm just gonna go ahead and say this.

Then that ghost DNA.

Come on, we all know what that is.

Oh yeah, that's extra terrestrial, Old Graham Hancock.

Ye, come on, chariots.

I want it to be true so so ardently, you know.

Oh yeah, Well, and here's the other thing.

Just when we're talking about this kind of stuff.

If you're a subscriber to the the theory, we will say it is a theory of evolution in the way that you know, all or most of science believes in the.

Way like gravity is a theory.

Yes, okay, Will you.

Realize that there are a ton of experimentations and combinations that occurred through DNA where different things were produced than what we under stand as the model.

Let's say Homo sapien, right, So many varying things must have been produced.

Just that's just the way it functions.

And we maybe forget sometimes that just because you don't have a specific skeleton of a large group of hominins the you know, like a Denisovin or something doesn't doesn't mean that there aren't jumps in between there, or versions of a hominin that is a Denisovan slash whatever.

Just going to use Neanderthal as an example, but I don't know if the timelines match.

I just mean just because you don't find a bunch of those bones somewhere doesn't mean they didn't exist.

It's a big stew a gumbo if you will, a gumbo of humanoid DNA of pominid DNA, and that's you know, just as we just remember that as we continue throughout today's.

Episode Genetic Gumbo.

I love it.

Yeah, So that the most recent discoveries, just to put that in perspective if you're listening to this when it comes out, like last month, we've found evidence of another early thing that was very much like us, such that our ancestors could interbreed with it, meaning that whatever this ghost in the genetic machine is, it is also part of us, and some of us listening today are in a ver real sense then part ghost until we identify it.

If you have Yoruba or Mende ancestry, then you have two to nineteen percent of genetic material from this mysterious population.

Yeah, and we don't know what it is.

It's a you know, quote missing link right now between you know, wherever that genetic population.

Was, right, And we're not saying it's anything crazy.

We're just no, no, no, no, we just don't know yet.

Yeah, So this is where we're at.

There is a fascinating argument to be made that Matt, I know you and I have both gone back and forth over in the years between.

It's about the relationship between folklore and fact.

Could all these recollections of those ancient encounters have survived somehow through properly oral storytelling right before the written word, and could they have inspired those age old legends of meeting sentient not quite human creatures like things we think of as like trolls or elves, goblins, dwarves and so on.

Could it happen?

Maybe?

Maybe that's the thing.

It's fascinating.

There's no proof of this yet and it would be very, very difficult to prove, but still that concept has encouraged conjecture not just about the greatest hits of supernatural sentient beings that we named right now, but other stuff, you know, things, other creatures that were thought to be sentient that have been largely relegated to the land of legend myth, namely giants.

It's giants, yep, this is what's that old, ominous biblical quote?

They were giants in those days, you know?

Oh yeah, I was thinking more of five.

Oh yeah, but that's a good one too.

Grind the bones to make our bread.

Yeah, Giants and cannibalism closely related, yeah, throughout world folklore.

Hey, Ben, what do you say we take a quick break and then get to the facts.

Absolutely, here are the facts.

In several episodes, we have examined the concept of ancient giants before, so if we're a full dive into this, do check out those earlier episodes.

You One specific one would be the legend of the c Tech, which is a Native American legend.

No spoilers, but it's worth your time.

Oh, it definitely is.

And also, just to set this up front as well, you may have at some point on a social media channel found images of giant skeletal remains, just in our researching for the CTECHA episode and a couple other past episodes.

Many of those, if not all of them, are photoshopped and are bogus.

Just putting that out there there are, however, reports coming out that we're going to talk about today of real discoveries that are out of the ordinary when you're talking about the size of a skeleton.

So yes, yes, So let's let's also point out that not all of those photos are necessarily modern hoaxes, right, absolutely shrouded turn style.

Well yeah, hundreds of years this kind of thing has been touted by I don't want to use the word charlatan's, by people who are just trying to builk you for.

Some money, right, yeah, And let's okay, So we'll get this out of the way.

This is this is the factual part of the show, right, So this is where we have to be the palaeontological party poopers.

Just for a bit, long story short.

In most of the episodes we've done regarding what we would call giants, we found that the concept of giants are the stories of the legends.

The allegations can be attributed to some pretty mundane causes, and we wanted to dive into one fascinating example.

Tantalizing I would say, because we can't we can't quite prove it, you know what I mean, Like, you can't he can't get one hundred percent there, but we're about ninety eight percent sure that this adds up, this is a true story.

Well, yeah, if you think about stumbling across the remains of some creature that is unknown to you, it looks very different, is pretty strange.

You look at those bones and you think, well, wow, that looks kind of like a leg bone or an arm bone, and then what is this skull?

What on earth is this?

And what we're going to talk aboutright now is an example of finding a strange goull and maybe misattributing it to being some kind of humanoid creature.

Right, Yeah, yep, we've misidentified bones from other animals.

And what's fascinating here is that In two thousand and three, a geologists with the University of Crete's Natural History Museum named Charlampos Fossolas of Fasulus.

He noted that Greece and the Aegean were, once upon a time, millions and millions of years ago, home to something called Dinotherium gigantium.

The ballpark translation for this, by the way, is huge terrible beasts.

Yes, so.

This thing, when you understand now again it's millions of years ago, eight or nine million years it is it was a distant relative to the modern elephant, but it was gigantic.

It was four point six meters tall or fifteen feet tall, and it had these huge tusks.

It was one of the largest mammals to ever stroll around this fine planet of ours.

And ancient people in that area, millions and millions of years later were almost certain to have encountered at some point fossils of these creatures.

And since those people were very much like people of today, they did just what you're describing.

Meant, they said, okay, let's let's get let's wrap our heads around this.

What is this thing?

All right?

This is a leg bone, this is huge.

Whatever this thing was, it was huge.

And we're talking about Greece, talking about Greece, very Gan Peninsula and all of this.

Yeah, very very smart culture in many ways, and they try to explain it through the lenses of their current understanding.

Yes, through in this case Greek and Roman mythology.

There's an author named Adrian Mayer, and she argues that both of these groups, Greeks and Romans, that they saw this as possibly evidence of some of the mythological creatures that were pre existing.

And she wrote about this in her book called the First Fossil Hunters Paleontology in Greek and Roman times.

Yeah, yeah, so we know this was a common thing, not just in Greco Roman times, and not just in that part of the world, but in any part of the world.

Whenever humans find stuff, we are explainers, we are classifiers.

We want to be the smart ones in the room.

Essentially, there's this ancient story, this myth about this creature, and now we found this real fossil.

Well, let's let's connect those things together.

Right through the lens of our understanding, because we have to realize that mythology, what we call mythology now, was a very real way of looking at the world, and it explained a lot of stuff.

And plus, at a benefit, a lot of mythology is inextricably intertwined with predictions of the movements of the heavens.

So this stuff seems real.

Right.

So there's an archaeologist named Thomas Strasser who agrees with Adrian Mayer's writing, and he said, specifically, you'll never be able to test this idea in a scientific fashion.

But the ancient Greeks were farmers and they would certainly have come across fossil bones like this from this huge, terrible, terrible, huge beast, and they would try to explain them, and they didn't have a concept of the theory of evolution, So it makes sense to this archaeologist that they would reconstruct them in their minds as things like giants, monsters, sphinxes and so on, and that I don't dying to for anyone who hasn't heard us telegraphing this, like for minutes.

Now, what was the what was the money on?

What did these people think the dinotherium gigantium was.

Well, if you've never seen a dinotherium gigantium skull, I recommend if you can search for it right now before I spoil it for you.

Okay, hopefully you're not driving or if you're in a tesla like do little vocal command thing or whatever.

I don't know how new cars work us cyclops and that might be a little bit bit surprising.

Wait, you're saying it's an elephant like creature, right they have two eyes.

Yeah, and they do have two eyes.

But what they also have if you're just looking at the bones, the skull is a giant, giant centered nasal passage.

Right right, And these skulls clearly differ from the skulls of modern Asian or African elephants.

That nasal passage is huge, and it does kind of look like the where you would put a monstrous eye, especially if you thought maybe where the actual eye holes are are ear holes, eye holes, eye sockets.

Sorry, oh yeah, you're right, dude, you're right.

The eye sockets really do look like it would be where the ears.

Are because they're separated there.

They're separated, so for the way bird eye bird eye sockets are separated on the sides of the face.

Anyhow.

Yeah, so the cyclops we can't prove it one hundred percent, but we're pretty sure it was the misidentified skull of this monster elephant.

And the monster elephant itself is scary enough, right, yeah, so and so cool.

I wonder if it was as intelligent as elephants are today, you know.

It was at least the uh, the precursor.

You can totally Oh wow, it's creepy looking.

It's a bruiser, it's tusky.

Yeah, man, it could wreck somebody with those tusks.

So a lot of monsters in folklore, as the irritating is to say, a lot of them not all of them, but a lot of them were the result of misidentified fossils.

Were things we attempted as a species to explain.

Second, and going to your earlier appointment about photoshop, one mundane explanation for giants in general is unethical reporting from muckbreaking newspapers and other media going back a long time and also going forward a long time, pretty recently here in the United States.

You know, you've probably heard tell as we would say in Tennessee, even if you're not from the US, you've heard stories about the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century discoveries, you know, the eighteen hundreds discoveries, where there would be a reporter with a breathless claim that somewhere out there in the in the lawless lands that were not quite states, someone had found bizarre, huge skeletons.

They're tied into the myth of the American West, right, the pre European existence.

So far, none of those claims have been proven.

If you're talking about like a twenty foot tall giant, right.

Yeah, and again you've probably seen those images.

Again, they're convincing, but faked.

And well, here's the other thing we noticed when we were talking about this previously on these episodes.

There's there are a ton of people out there who believe the storyline that someone somewhere, either at the Smithsonian or the Natural History Museum or some other organization.

The Vatican, I mean, just roll out the red carpet.

Well, yeah, that these bones were recovered, these these ancient remains were recovered and sent off to one of these institutions, and then that institution is then hiding it from the public.

Right right.

And the big question there would be motive.

What why would they do that?

Even even if it were plausible for that to happen, and it's it's possible, I guess technically it's possible, but again then there's a big leap from possible the plausible.

So why would they do it?

That's that's the piece of the puzzle that we have to we have to solve if we want to engage with that.

That theory, and what you'll hear is that it's to hide the true nature of humanity.

Right right.

And this ties in a little bit with some some cryptozoologists will argue something like that, right, but not on air, Huh, what do you mean?

But not on air anyhow?

Anyhow, so, and we'll get back to that later on in today's show.

Just to hold it in your head bracket, I mean, don't tattoo yourself with that, but you know, remember it for the next few minutes.

So we know, with the notable exception of the cit Techa, a lot of those things turn out to be legends or hoaxes.

And then of course there is the third, the third common cause that we have found, and it's a personal one for a lot of people.

And therefore it being a personal one is something that I it's personal in a way that I don't think other people should intrude upon, by which I mean some accounts of giants come from ancient religious sources or text and this can lead modern adherents of these sources or text or belief systems to accept those stories because they're part of the faith system or the belief system that they have.

You know, especially when you get to people who have literal interpretations of things rather than metaphorical or figurative, this means that in order to practice their belief system, they have to believe everything that is involved.

Right, one example of having to accept everything, all part and parcel of a belief system would be something like the belief in Jin for many people who consider themselves, you know, astute and committed followers of the belief system with Jen, like of Islam, there are people will say, well, you have to believe in Jin because it's in the Qur'an.

You know, it's the and by far, one of the coolest period in my opinion, appearances in the Qoran.

You know, these creatures of smokeless fire, you.

Know, Yeah, dude, it's incredible.

And you have a podcast or you have a you've been involved with a podcast about that, right.

You almost set it up perfectly because it's a show all about Jin.

And I think people will be very surprised by this show.

And it's not out yet been, but it will be out at some point this year.

Ah Okay, that's what I'm what shows.

I'm personally very excited for me too.

So so there we have it.

And additionally, when we encounter the world of faith and religion, there could be a situation in which giants are ascribed some sort of supernatural power, whether just because of their descent from a divine or otherwise supernatural being, or because it's just part of the other thing that makes them not quite human, right, And if they're supernatural, then that means logically the natural rules don't apply to them.

So why would you try to codify these things in human terms?

Right?

If they are agents of the infernal or agents of the divine.

So there you have.

Those are three reasons we've We've done several episodes in this We've found three reasons misidentification, purposeful hoaxes, religious counts.

We didn't even bring up Nephelin.

But we didn't not yet.

Yeah, okay, and we talked about that in an earlier episode.

So that this may leave a lot of us and our fellow listeners going bummer.

So all these giant myths are bogus.

I'm turning this episode off.

The big secret, the giant secret about giants is it's a giant hoax.

You guys are terrible.

Everything is terrible.

I'm gonna throw my phone.

I'm gonna place it on the ground and just be upset about it and wait for the COVID.

Yeah, oh god, don't worry.

We didn't say that yet.

We did not say that these are all focus What are we talking about.

I'll tell you after a word from our sponsor.

Here's where it gets crazy.

Well, guess what we've got breaking news for you.

It appears that there are ancient giants, at least in China.

Right, it's crazy.

We see breaking news.

Mean back in July twenty seventeen, and we spent some time tracing now this story, we could verify this story.

We'll get into it anyway.

July twenty seventeen, not too long ago, right, the story came to us from China's Sinoat News agency and they reported that these archaeologists had discovered the remains of a five thousand year old community in eastern China, and the members of this community.

We have the bones, we have the proof.

It didn't disappear.

The Smithsonian doesn't have it yet or whatever.

These people appeared to be giants, giants.

They were described as giants.

They were described as giants giants.

Yes, So we look to Fenghui, who is the head of the Shendong University School of History and Culture.

And if you look through the reporting we talk about tracing this story because you will find it in like thirty different publications English written publications.

That's pretty much the same story just kind of copied.

Over, right.

So we went to the we went to the primary sources.

Yes, exactly, we got to the original one.

So Fengui describes how since twenty sixteen, the group of archaeologists have been excavating the ruins of one hundred and four houses, two hundred and five graves, and twenty sacrificial pits in this village.

That been I'm gonna let you pronounce.

I'll you at least I'll butcher it.

No, no, I don't know the tones, uh Jaudia, I don't know.

That's way better than what I would say jaojia.

A Mandarin speakers are going to punt shots and right Liso, let us know how to pronounce it.

You can find us on Twitter.

And I would say jiang Qui or jeng jeong Qi, Jeongong Shu jeong Hu district.

Yeah, and that's uh near the capital of Shandong.

These relics are from something a Neolithic era in a community called the long Shan culture, and it's it's in the middle kind of lower reaches of the Yellow River.

And they named the culture after a nearby mountain, Mountain Longshan.

This area, as far as we can tell, was a cultural powerhouse.

It was a center of politics, economy, and of course politics and economy closely related with religions at this time, arguably still today closely related with religions.

So they also found ruins of ditches, clay, embankments, they found tons of accoutrement and you know, a status symbols, jade pottery, all the hits, all the hits.

And since this was a cultural center, these people here again described as giants, lived pretty well.

They had separate bedrooms and kitchens.

We know that they had a solid diet too, pretty consistently, which was super important to this story.

Yeah, you're eating millet their primary grain.

There, they're also eating some pork, some pigs some cases, there are also these giant graves where pig bones and pig teeth were found.

And let's talk just quickly about the archaeologists and this job and putting together you know, the ideas here, like, oh, the ruins that we found are definitely places houses that had separate bedrooms, and we know that because of the way they were set up.

That's a that to me is almost magic, being able to see with a lens like understand having such a deep understanding of the history of archaeology, the history of humanity, to be able to look at something like that and figure that stuff out and put to other of those pieces of Oh, there's millet in this layer of the soil where all of this other stuff is preserved.

There's a lot of millet here, and there's all these pig bones, like we could kind.

Of see what these people live like, right right, And a lot of work goes into a very difficult process.

Yeah, at the end of this episode, I am going to make maybe a somewhat controversial argument, maybe a thought experiment, but Okay, archaeologists are working diligently around the world and around the clock, and they are discovering things and having to prove them.

You know, seven ways to sundown, six ways to Sunday, whatever you want to say.

So this discovery is amazing for these archaeologists.

There's a mother load, there's a watershed moment.

It fills in what has been described as a cultural blank from about four thousand, five hundred to five thousand years ago, so for about five hundred years there are these giants, at least five hundred years and you know, the math gets sketchy and fuzzy the further back now here is the part most of us have been waiting for the big question the geniotherium gigantium in the room.

If you will, just how big were these people?

I mean, Matt, if we genuinely do have physical evidence of real life giants, what exactly do we mean when we say giant?

Oh buddy, let me tell you.

Are you ready for this?

Let me scoot to the edge.

Yeah, see all right, hold on, hold on to something.

Okay, here it goes.

They were between one point eight meters and two meters tall.

So can you America that for me real quick?

Sure?

Let's see one meter is around three feet yeah, okay, so that would be five nine ish five eleven to six two six six if we're reaching.

Sixty six on the out, yeah, on the outside.

Right?

Yeah?

Oh man, Well that's a that's a little bit of a letdown.

Have we have we taken our fellow conspiracy realist and a bit of a shaggy dog story?

Well, I mean, you know, dogs are great.

Yes, the answer is yes.

They found that that height is weird.

We'll get to it.

Taller men were found buried in larger graves, and this could be due to them having a higher status socio politically.

It could also be due to them having access to better food.

We know there was a lot of inviting.

They're sacrificial pits.

There are people who have clearly died by violence in such a violent way that you can tell just by looking at their bones.

You don't even need the rest of the body someone someone mopped them in an aggressively brutal way.

So this height is noteworthy at the higher end in most parts of the world.

Right in our previous episode, we said, you know, the shortest average height will tend to be women in the Philippines' tallest average height is going to tend to be males in certain European Northern European countries.

Still, for most people, if you see someone who's six feet six inches tall, you're going to think, well, that's noteworthy.

But that's not the tallest person I've ever heard of, and it's probably not even the tallest person I've ever seen, especially if I have a television, like just to kick the stats today, the average height of a professional basketball player in the United States is six feet seven inches tall.

Yeah, the average male is five feet nine inches tall, which is still kind of in the lower end of where this community of giants was discovered.

Right, Yeah, I mean I'm walking out at slightly above that average height, and I feel like I'm shorter than most people.

So you know, that's just how how it goes.

But here's the big question, really is, well, what gives is there some kind of comparison to the surrounding population or the people of the time where I mean, it's like, it's tough because we don't have a lot of information to go on.

We're talking about filling in really a timehole here, right, a cultural timehole, So you don't have a ton of people to others to compare.

This to, right, So how do we explain this characterization of ancient giants?

Here's the thing.

The people in the surrounding communities were actually shorter.

So while these mysterious giants might seem kind of unremarkable today, make no mistake that were towering over their contemporaries in adjacent communities.

If you saw a bunch of these folks running at you in your village, in your you know, your area, you would freak out because they were huge, and you know, hopefully they're in a good mood.

Yeah, and the assumption there as well, they must be stronger than me they at least have probably more weight on me, and.

You definitely reach yeah oh boxing rules, Well.

Yeah, but you know, with a weapon or whatever you're dealing with at that time.

And here's the thing.

We don't have extremely great numbers on the average height of the people in surrounding communities, but we do know the average height of Europeans at the same time, and that is around five feet five inches or one point sixty seven meters.

So that's a full that would be a full foot a foot an inch above if you're talking about the six to six individual there.

So the people in this culture, in this community were on average going to be much taller.

So we can also take the example of Confucius, perhaps one of the most famou proven factual historical figures from this region.

Confucius was around five point fifty one to four seventy nine BCE.

He was described anywhere from about one point nine meters tall, which is, you know, six inch feet tall, right to other accounts that have had him nine feet and six inches tall.

Yeah, we we have an excerpt from a book called Confucius, His Life and Thought, and in here we're we're just gonna describe the I'm just gonna give you a quote here, and it says, according to the historical records, Confucius was nine feet six inches tall, a height which seems to have been regarded as quite unusual.

The measures.

The measures of length of the Han dynasty were shorter than those now in use.

The height of a normal adult was about seven feet, out of a tall person eight feet.

Thus a height of nine feet six inches indicated something of a giant, and that certainly would.

But if you know, if you changed it over, I guess you'd be reducing by about two feet there.

So then we have another issue with classification.

We can't just accept the assumption that what we call a foot meant the same thing right the same way we can't really accept what a giant was.

So while these people would certainly have been intimidating, they were not, as far as we know, ten feet tall in the way that we today understand feet.

That's gonna sound so weird out of context, we today in the way that we today understand feet.

Hashtag no Tarantino or whatever that that creepy guy from all the Nickelodeon shows.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

Creepy guy from all the Nickelodeon shows.

There is a long standing series of frankly troubling rumors about a very successful showrunner for Nickelodeon named Dan Schneider, and the allegations are that he has a weird foot thing that makes its way onto the air.

I have heard about that, and these are you know, these are child actors.

Oh, I haven't done a lot of digging into this.

I don't I don't know, man, I don't know.

I haven't done digging into this.

Then, of course, you know this difference between the court of public opinion and in that rumor and then an actual court or investigation.

But well, we'll look at we'll look into it.

Uh, let's get back to the way more comfortable version of feat.

We're talking right here.

You Yeah, So there's one other questions when we don't have a definitive answer to what made these people so tall?

Right?

Why were they literally head and shoulders over the adjacent communities.

Right.

Researchers theorized that at least the men in the community grew to these comparatively soaring heights because they were high status individuals who had access to better food than most of their contemporaries.

If you want to see a real life version of this at play now while you are alive.

Check out the height comparisons between people born on the Korean Peninsula before.

Maybe like some of the eighties babies who would have been developing during the famines of the nineties of the nineteen nineties, they have because of malnutrition.

This population that is genetically homogeneous, has discernible, easily visible differences in average height.

Wow.

So maybe it was just maybe it was the food.

We know that the nature of the burials suggests that these people, these occupants, these giants, were wealthy.

And then it also suggests that there was some grave robbery, grave cases of grave robbery, because pottery and artifacts have been found within the tombs were sometimes not even not even stolen, just deliberately broken.

Someone came in and just smashed it.

So there is a story there that's as of yet unwritten.

Maybe as a revolt of some kind.

Yeah, yeah, again like this ci te kai.

You know.

So this is one of the weirdest parts about this.

These giants are still around sort of.

The people living in Shandong now still consider their height to be a defining attribute of their region and their communities, and Weirdly enough, this belief appears to be true.

It appears to be confirmed.

Yeah, in twenty fifteen, the average height of men aged eighteen in Shandong was one point seven to five to three meters or around five eight five seven something like that.

Yeah, yeah, with the natural national average of around one point seven to two meters.

So again, it's like it's like there were real giants, but we just kind of explained away, like any kind of supernatural reasoning behind.

Them, right, we don't have we don't have a solid again one hundred percent proof.

It's very difficult to try to guesstimate those causes five thousand years ago.

But it does appear there were real giants.

It's just, you know, as he said, a giant back then wasn't the same thing like usually, and we can't speak for everyone usually nowadays, anything a giant, it's we're like ten feet as a minimum as minimum giant.

Yeah, but that's just I think that's just our version of something that would be unbelievable for it to be naturally occurring.

Right, Just ten feet is so beyond what we've observed that you just go, wow, Yeah, that's definitely something else is going on here.

That's just not some kind of genetic combination that just happened to get ten feet.

We should also point out, yeah, really good point that these people were healthy and normal.

They did not seem to be suffering from the genetic condition that affected Wadlow.

They didn't suffer from gigantism.

It reminds me of So I was in the city of London a while back.

You remember this, and I saw the Tower of London.

Yeah, it fell nonplus and I had to remember it was like at the time this was built, first towers were much more difficult to con trucked and they wouldn't have there.

Of course, it wouldn't be as tall in comparison assay London Bridge, or as tall as you know, multiple other multiple other buildings in the area.

Now you have to put yourself back in that mindset.

So back then, a tower, it was like the Tower of London was.

It's huge, and I'm not denigrating it.

It's an historically significant building.

It's just I don't know what I was expecting.

You know, as a kid, all I heard about was there was a tower.

There were ravens, there's special guards called beef eaters, and get there, and you're like, well, okay, this isn't This is a very very old building, especially for US Yankees.

And you know, towers were different, so it's kind of the same thing.

Giants were different in this part of the world.

I totally see it.

Unless, okay, here's the thing, Unless Matt, there really is some sort of overarching generational conspiracy to repress evidence of actual giants, in which case, the discovery of these suppressed remains would be, without a doubt, one of the largest expose a's in human history.

Here's my okay, here's my all right.

Oh yeah, Matt's crossing his ours because you know you're about to get like a story, right, I'll keep it short, but here's my argument.

So we know, we know that stuff disappears.

I really appreciate your earlier point about how difficult it is to find things, especially organic matter, because Earth is alive, it's hungry, you know, like, there're still there.

Not only have we discovered in the course of the show that there are genuine loss cities and civilizations, but we we we also discovered that many of those things are going to be lost to history, especially in depending on the environment or biome, they're in like if you if you have a lost civilization in a jungle man jungles eat human things and they do it very quickly.

Yeah, and all of the things that humans create, that's really what you're saying.

But yeah, yeah, it's not just the human it's the all the stuff they put together, and they thought, oh, this is gonna be great and last forever.

No no, no no.

So then it is again, it is possible that there could have been an isolated population of even larger things sent hominins of some sort.

And maybe again there's a lot of ifs here, and maybe let's say they were in a very aggressive biome, like that they were in a jungle or something, and then they just the earth ate them.

Between the time that they expired and the time our versions of people came along.

It is possible.

And if you don't think it's possible, talk to us, tell us why, because we really feel like it's possible because of just the evidence we've seen has been just outlined there in our research.

That stuff happens, that the the hungry nature of nature.

It is very very true.

So let us know.

Please find us.

As we mentioned earlier on Twitter, reach out to us we're conspiracy stuff.

We're also conspiracy stuff on Facebook.

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Our group is called Here's where it Gets Crazy.

You can give us suggestions.

You can talk about this episode or another episode, or suggest a new episode, whatever you want to do.

It is your sandbox controlled by Facebook, ultimately, right, but it is It's still cool.

Okay.

So what if what if you're off the grid, you know, and you don't want to you don't want to mess around with Facebook.

If you've you've evolved past social media.

Yes, but you still have a flip phone.

Well, we have good news.

We have a phone number one eight three three st d w y t K.

Give us a call, leave us a message.

Be like this person who called us on Saturday.

Hey, guys, I just listened to your.

Staying on the census and you said something about how many people it would take to count the homeless one day, and I wanted to give you just a little bit of an idea.

I live in a city of about twelve thousand, and it's the tourist town, so we have oftentimes have a lot more people than that coming in.

But when we went to count the census, it was all volunteers except for like maybe two people that were actually getting paid for it, and the other everyone else's volunteers.

And there are about forty.

Of us for a city of twelve thousands.

So yeah, you do the math.

Hey, y'all get care.

Thank you very much.

Wow, first time I didn't know how many people were volunteering.

Yeah, that's quite a bit to get forty people to go out there and try and do the census.

As we've discussed, it is not the safest temporary position to have.

Yeah, not all the time.

No, thank you for thank you for you're putting in your civic duty.

And thank you additionally to everybody who's written in with conversation about the census.

One thing that always I don't know about you, Matt, but one thing that always impresses me about our fellow listeners is that we have people who are even if they disagree with each other online, they're walking through each other's perspectives, you know what I mean.

And that's that kind of that kind of discourse is something that I think I'm not saying we're great, but our listeners are exercising the kind of discourse that I would like to see happen in paid media pundits, you know what I mean?

Oh yeah, for sure?

Like maybe maybe if a story is big, if it's a big story on the news, is a global event, I don't know, maybe push the commercial off.

Maybe maybe spend more than six minutes on it.

Oh god, the next headline.

Old man shouts at the sky, shake's fist, curses son.

Well, that's that's our show.

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