A Pagan Perspective

Faery lore around the world is remarkable for its uniformity between countries, cultures and times. However, what are the reasons for this? Are these stories just that—stories? Are they tales passed down from generation to generation to explain the unknown or to persuade children to behave in certain ways? Or are they something else? “What is remarkable about fairy belief”, wrote Marc Alexander, “is that it survived so vigorously for so long, especially as it had no organized structure to support it, unlike orthodox beliefs. It outlasted other aspects of folklore, and when witches ceased to be feared fairies were still respected.” [1]

In 2004, a remarkable discovery was made which may shed light on this perplexing question. On the isolated Indonesian island of Flores a cave yielded the remains of half a dozen “little people”—described as Hobbit-sized (or, more accurately only ½ the size of modern humans) that had existed on the island for some 95,000 years. It is possible that for 30,000 of those years they occupied the area alongside Homo sapiens—modern humans. Chief paleontologist Teuku Jacob, of the University of Gajah Mada believes that these people are, in reality, a sub-species of modern man and that the small skull is suggestive of “mental defects” [2] rather than as an indication of a separate species of human. Research that is more recent indicates that Jacob is incorrect and that a race, or species, of human beings with a sophisticated technology and social structure and complex mental abilities survived for thousands of years.[3] Irregardless of whose theory is correct the fact that these small people probably lived an autonomous existence alongside their bigger human brothers and sisters gives credence to the theory that they may be responsible for many of the fairy stories around the world—suggestive in fact that similar groups, existed on other continents. Another scientist, Bert Roberts of the University of Wollongon in Australia, said “the new skeleton sounded remarkably similar to the Ebu Gogo, strange hairy little people that legend says lived on Flores”.[4] The cave also yielded skeletal remains of pygmy elephant and komodo dragons. These little people had amazingly small brains but were as intelligent as their larger cousins. They made fire, stone weapons and hunted in groups. Due to the fact that the island was never connected to the mainland, they evidently also mastered water travel in rafts or small boats.

Geological records indicate that this group of humans may have been eradicated around 11-12,000 years ago when a massive volcano erupted on the island. Evidently, other archaeological discoveries show that the next group of modern humans to arrive on the island showed up around 11,000 years ago or 1,000 years after the volcanic eruption. However, island folklore tells a different story. According to Bert Roberts, an anthropologist with the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia, “The stories suggest that there may be more than a grain of truth to the idea that they were still living on Flores up until the Dutch arrived in the 1500’s. The stories suggest they lived in caves. The villagers would leave gourds with food out for them to eat, but legend has it these were the guests from hell—they’d eat everything, including the gourds!” [5]

Representatives of the Indonesian Archaeologists Association believe that the group of skeletal remains proves that ancient humans, in many forms, migrated around the world. [6]

This discovery has all of the elements of traditional Faery lore. These people are exceptionally small (and not related to contemporary pygmy tribes of Africa), lived in caves, hunted and fought with dragons and received propitiations from the local residents who regarded them with fear and gave them supernatural characteristics. They also co-existed with “modern man” perhaps as recently as 200-500 years ago. Such co-existence may have resulted in a universal application of the Faery lore we have today—in fact, it may be that this race of humans co-existed with modern man throughout the world. The mystery surrounding the Faery probably arose due to the infrequent meetings of the Little People and modern humans and these chance encounters left a lasting impression that has remained etched in the human psyche. Even more likely is the real possibility that this race of little people had developed rituals, traditions and other systems of living that were entirely alien to the local “modern man” residents, which added to the stories of their strange and wonderful existence.

The fact that almost all Faery-lore describes the same creatures with the same characteristics, likes and dislikes as well as powers and failures gives credence that some of these beings existed in enough numbers around the world to perpetuate the tales.

Approximately 150,000 years ago the human race had one distinct language. It is perhaps due to this uniqueness of language at the time that universal “myths” arose around the world. “Myths”, or perhaps tales of a distinct race of mysterious people, with small stature, unusual gifts, rituals and traditions. A group of people that, like humans today, were regarded as benevolent and kind, or malicious and deadly in their cruelty.

As writer Mike Morwood with the National Geographic said, “It’s breathtaking to think that modern humans may still have a folk memory of sharing the planet with another species of human, like us but unfathomably different.” [7]

Legends of Little People are so common around the world that it must be obvious that a remarkable population of these people did exist. Native American lore in itself is specific about the existence of such a population that pre-dated the arrival of the Indian. The Mohegan Indians, who lived between the Thames and the Connecticut Rivers in what is now Connecticut, spoke of a race of “little men” that had originally occupied the territory that the Mohegan came to know as home. According to legend, this race of men had pretty much become extinct by the time the Pequot tribe worked their way down from the Hudson River area to the Sound area of Connecticut.

“Little was seen of them by the Indians,” according to historian Terri Hardin, “and less was known, until after the disruption of a fractious band under Uncas, prior to 1630…These are the tribal accounts. It seems then that before long the newcomers, the Mohegans, discovered that another people, a smaller and lighter people were the righthful tenants of their adopted home. And from this period, date the original memoirs relating to the mysterious originals.” [8]

Those few that were seen by the Mohegans were probably the last of the race, “leaving nothing but weird reminders in the shape of a few relics and memories among the Mohegans.” [9] Those “relics” include groups of dwarf sized bones that have been washed or plowed up, some exhibiting “inscriptions claimed by the Indians to have been carved not by themselves, but by some ‘other people’.” [10]

Like the Little People of Flores, this group of people may have also survived in the world until approximately 300 years ago.

Nineteenth century antiquarian Caleb Atwater wrote that excavators of the various mound structures near the Coneaught river in Ohio found evidence of a small race of people:

“My informant says, within this work are sometimes found skeletons of a people of small stature, which, if true, sufficiently identifies it to have belonged to that race of men who erected our tumuli.” [11]

“The skeletons found in our mounds never belonged to a people like our Indians. The latter are a tall, rather slender, strait limbed people; the former were short and thick. They were rarely over five feet high….” [12]

Stories similar to other legends of Little People around the world speak of them as running along the banks of rivers or through the forests. Evidently, they reportedly had the ability to become invisible so that they could take what they wanted from their larger neighbors unseen.

Similar legends exist among the Iroquois as well that tell of Little Men who act as protectors of deer and other game animals and who have the ability to appear or disappear at will.

Stories of gigantic beings are common around the world—found in most every remote corner and among most all cultures. Are giants simply an easy explanation for the creation of the magnificent natural features of the world? Alternatively, is their some other reason for these stories that is kept under the guise of fantasy by an academic world that refuses to recognize the possibilities—one of a number of possible alternatives shrouded in a “forbidden archaeology”?

Giants were written of in the Old Testament, which, if nothing else, may have some historical validity for ancient events and people. The first mention of giants is found in Genesis 6:4:

“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old…”

This particular passage would seem to indicate that the giants were the “sons of God” which is similar to other tales of giants from the Old World that equate them to a deity-like status.

The next passage pertaining to giants is Numbers 13:33. In this one, Hebrew spies sent to Canaan reported “And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants; and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.”

Joshua reports that one of the ancient kings who ruled over the vast fertile plains east of the Sea of Gallilee, by the name of Og, “was of the remnant of the giants, that dwelt at Ashtaroth…”. Og’s bed was reportedly nine-cubits” in length, (one cubit is 18-22 inches in length so the bed was from 13.5 to 16.5 feet long). Og’s capital city was Ashtaroth which was named for the goddess of the same name. Joshua refers to the lands of Og as the “valley of the giants”. [13]

Throughout the Old Testament the giants are pursued and engaged in battle by the Hebrews and usually slain, although the New Compact Bible Dictionary claims “Giants terrorized the Israelites from their entry into Canaan until the time of David.” [14]

Do we believe that these tales are simply that? While much of the Bible is religious propaganda and reworked mythology from other peoples, much of it is also historical accounts of events that took place thousands of years ago. The above Biblical passages speak of these giants as inhabiting known terrain, interbreeding with other peoples and in a state of decline when the Hebrew’s destroy and overrun the lands of the giant king Og.

Other anecdotal evidence for a race of giants can be gleaned from Native American lore and archaeological finds. As noted earlier, ethnologist James Mooney wrote of a story related by an aged Cherokee woman: “…a party of giants had come once to visit the Cherokee. They were nearly twice as tall as common men, and their eyes set slanting in their heads, so that the Cherokee called them…’The Slant-eyed people,’…They said that these giants lived very far away in the direction in which the sun goes down. The Cherokee received them as friends, and they stayed some time, and then returned to their home in the west.” [15]

Harvey Nettleton, an early settler of Ohio, wrote the following account of burials excavated in some of the mounds located near Conneaut, Ohio in 1844. This account was featured in the weekly Geneva Times during the late 1860’s.

“The mounds that were situated in the eastern part of what is now the village of Conneaut and the extensive burying ground near the Presbyterian Church, appear to have had no connection with the burying places of the Indians. They doubtless refer to a more remote period and are the relics of an extinct race, of whom the Indians had no knowledge.

“These mounds were of comparatively small size, and of the same general character of those that are widely scattered over the country. What is most remarkable concerning them is that among the quantity of human bones they contain, there are found specimens belonging to men of large stature, and who must have been nearly allied to a race of giants.

“Skulls were taken from these mounds, the cavities of which were of sufficient capacity to admit the head of an ordinary man, and jaw-bones that might be fitted on over the face with equal facility. The bones of the arms and lower limbs were of the same proportions, exhibiting ocular proof of the degeneracy of the human race since the period in which these men occupied the soil which we now inhabit.”

While many stories of giant skeletons may be attributed to excavated dinosaur and mammoth bones there are those few that give credence to the possibilities of a race of giants in the ancient past through modern times. Rupert T. Gould relates one of the original reports in his book, Enigmas:

“A True Report of Hugh Hodson, of Thorneway, in Cumberland, to S^r. Robert Cewell, of a gyant found at S. Bees, in Cumb’land.

“The said gyant was buried 4 yards deep in the ground, w^ehis now a corn feild (sic). He was 4 yards and a half long, and was in complete armour, his sword and battle-axe lying by him. His sword was two spans broad, and more than 2 yards long. The head of his battle-axe a yard long, and the shaft of it all of iron, as thick as a man’s thigh, and more than 2 yards long.

“His teeth were six inches long, and 2 inches broad; his forehead was more than 2 spans and a half broad. His chine bone could contain 3 pecks of oatmeal. His armour, sword, and battle-axe are at Mr. Sand’s, of Redington, and at Mr. Wyber’s, at St. Bees.” [16] Gould reportedly took this quote from Jefferson’s History and Antiquities of Allerdale above Derwent.

Tales of giants living in Patagonia were generated by Magellan’s expedition in 1520. According to one of Magellan’s companions, a giant sized man was seen on the beach in June of 1520:

“This man,” reported the sailor, “was so tall that our heads scarcely came up to his waist, and his voice was like that of a bull.” [17]

Other explorers such as Sir Frances Drake, Harrington, Carmen, and Commodore Byron also reported encountering gigantic men in the same area. Some of these men were said to be from 9 to 10 feet in height.

Earlier, more fantastical tales were told by Sir John Mandeville who wrote of a race of giants living on an island beyond the Ganges Valley in his book published in 1356, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville:

“Beyond that valley is a great isle where the folk are as big in stature as giants of twenty-eight or thirty feet tall. They have no clothes to wear except the skins of beasts, which they cover their bodies with. They eat no bread; but they eat raw flesh and drink milk, for there is an abundance of animals. …they will more readily eat human flesh than any other. …if they see a ship in the sea with men aboard, they will wade into the sea to take the men. We were told that there is another isle beyond that where there are giants much bigger than these, for some are fifty or sixty feet tall….some men have often seen those giants catch people in the sea and go back to the land with two in one hand and two in the other, eating their flesh raw.” [18]

It is obvious that Sir John was repeating some of the urban legends of his time, however there have been massive, gigantic hominids in the past such as Gigantopithicus that may have survived into later times and that may have accounted for many of the folklore surrounding giants around the world. The various stories told matter-as-fact such as the Biblical stories of the Valley of Giants and Cherokee legend of the visiting giants would seem to speak for the very real probability that a race of giants did exist among the more “normal” human populations of the Earth.

Other archaeological evidence for giants includes the Glen Rose tracks. Several human tracks have been found in a Cretaceous limestone formation near Glen Rose, Texas. Many appear to be of giant men. The Glen Rose tracks are 15 inches long [38.1 cm], and theoretically were made by people 8.3 feet tall. Some, 21½ inches [54.6 cm] long, would have been made by people 11.8 feet tall. Many of these types of findings are swept under the rug by established archaeological institutions that would rather not acknowledge the possibilities of humans exiting outside the bounds of established “fact”.

There are a numbered of documented cases of gigantism over the years. Gigantism results from the overproduction of growth hormone during childhood or adolescence. The arms and legs grow especially long, and it is not uncommon for an individual’s height to surpass 2.4 m (8 ft). Gigantism is caused by a pituitary tumor that, if untreated, usually kills the patient by early adulthood. Physical characteristics may include some deformity and weakened musculature. However, these conditions, as stated above are caused by pituitary imbalances. It is just as likely that isolated populations became gigantic through selective breeding and were not subject to these physical limitations. The world has witnessed gigantic animals throughout time that lived successfully without these physical faults—why not humans?

The ancient homid Gigantopithicus was mentioned above as a possible source for many of the tales of giants around the world. Supposedly, this creature, according to Richard Leakey, “was the ancestor of some apparently very large terrestrial apes of Asia that became extinct.”[19] Fossil remains of this hominoid have been found throughout Asia and, while Leakey states that it was “about the size of a modern gorilla”[20], the size of its skull indicates otherwise. The skull is almost twice as large as a modern gorilla’s skull.

Some researchers have speculated that this creature was more human-like than most archaeologist have allowed. It is possible that the legends of the Sasquatch of North America, Yeti of Tibet and the Yowie of Australia are examples of small groups of living Gigantopithicus humanoids. “Yowie” means “Great Hairy Man” and it has most of the same characteristics of the other two mysterious creatures. However, it cannot be the source for all of the tales of Giant Men. The Cherokee tale of the visiting giants described them as being social and civilized—speaking and living with the Cherokee for some time. Likewise, the giants of Patagonia were often involved in meetings with the European explorers. We would not expect a Gigantopithicus individual to be so agreeable!

As new and remarkable discoveries are made very day we cannot dismiss anything out of the ordinary because they do not fit the established mold that scientists have arbitrarily placed on them. To ignore unusual findings because they do not agree with accepted “facts” only limits our understanding of the universe and the rich past that awaits our exploration.

[1] Alexander, Marc. A Companion to the Folklore, Myths & Customs of Britain. Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing Limited 2002, 91

[2] Santoso, Dewi and M. Taufiqurrahman. “Archaeologists divided over ‘Homo floresiensis” in The Jakarta Post, October 30, 2004

[3] Morwood, Mike & et al. “The People Time Forgot” in National Geographic, April 2005, 12

[4] Santoso, op cit.

[5] Onion, Amanda. “Scientists Find Ancient Hobbit-Sized People”. ABC News October 27, 2004. www.abcnews.go.Technology

[6] Santoso, op cit.

[7] Morwood, op cit.

[8] Hardin, Terri, ed. Legends & Lore of the American Indians. New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc. 1993, 80

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.,81

[11] Atwater, Caleb. Description of the Antiquities Discovered in the State of Ohio and Other Western States. Ohio: American Antiquarian Society 1820, 125

[12] Ibid., 209

[13] Joshua 15:8, KJV

[14] Bryant, T. Alton. Ed. The New Compact Bible Dictionary. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House 1967, 198

[15] Mooney, James. Myths of the Cherokee. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1995, 391. A reprint of the 1900 publication “Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1897-98

[16] Gould, Rupert T. Enigmas: Another Book of Unexplained Facts. New Hyde Park: University Books 1965, 16. A reprint of the 1945 edition.

[17] Ibid., 18

[18] Mandeville, Sir John. The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. Translated by C.W.R.D. Moseley. London: Penguin Books 1983, 175

[19] Leakey, Richard E. Origins. New York: E.P. Dutton 1977, 56

[20] Ibid., 71

Gary is a writer with an archaeological/anthropological background. His first book, "Essays in Contemporary Paganism", was published in June 2000. Gary's new book, "Sacred Wells", an illustrated book about holy wells and sacred waters around the world is now available from Publish America, your local bookstore and all on-line retailers. Two new books will be released in the Fall of 2004.

The major influences in my life have been those early anthropologists and ethnologist who studied human kind's early and contemporary cultures, exploring the technology, rich oral traditions, folklore and religious structures that are still so abundant in the world.