Mexican Giants: Myth or Real?

An exploration of the phenomenon of giants with regard to ancient and colonial Mexico.  Was an ancient race of larger humanoids wiped out just a few hundred years ago?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Welcome to Mexico Unexplained, where we will explore the magic,
the mysteries and the miracles of Mexico. This series presents
information based partly on theory and conjecture. The podcaster's purpose
is to suggest some possible explanation, but not necessarily the
only ones to the subjects we will examine. Here is
your host, Robert Bitto.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Welcome and we bian beneath those to episode number seventy
one of Mexico Unexplained, where we examined the magic, the
mysteries and the Miracles of Mexico. I'm your host, Robert Biddow.
In March of twenty fifteen, the Internet was a buzz
with a strange photo that popped up on social media
and paranormal fringe sites. It showed what appeared to be

(01:20):
at least two gigantic human skulls that had been exposed
to the surface by heavy rains. The photo was allegedly
taken in a small village in the Sierra de Tapalapa
in the southern Mexican state of Chappas. By the size
of the people standing next to and on top of
the skulls, one could assume that the skulls belonged to

(01:43):
humans that stood almost twenty feet tall. After hundreds of
thousands of cliques, likes, and shares, the hive mind of
the Internet came through to solve the mystery of the picture.
In October of two thousand and eight, the web site
worth ti one thousand dot com had a contest for
graphic artists to come up with the most convincing depictions

(02:06):
of absurd or anomalous archaeological finds. An image that made
it to the top ten was this image of rural
Mexicans marveling at the newly uncovered skulls of giants. The
image was attributed to an online graphic artist who called
himself Year of the Dragon, a self described single father

(02:28):
raising his daughter alone who lives off of illustration gig
solicited online. While some online fringe researchers were fooled by
Year of the Dragon's intriguing work, others were quick to
point out that there are ample amounts of first hand
accounts and even some physical evidence that Mexico once might

(02:49):
have been inhabited by a race of giants in the
not so distant past. When the Spanish first explored and
conquered Mexico, they heard of mythical races of goas giants
wherever they went, from the Baja Peninsula in the northwest
part of the country to the Maya areas of southern
and eastern Mexico. Some researchers have even uncovered what they

(03:12):
considered tangible proof that some conquistadores came into contact with
actual giants, based on diary entries and early writings of
the first people who made contact with living and breathing
pre Hispanic civilizations, the Spanish heard the myths and legends
from the natives that seemed to correlate with their own

(03:34):
biblical stories about giants, as found in the Book of Genesis,
that sometime in some part of the distant past, giants
roamed the earth alongside modern looking humans. The giants were
responsible for much of what was left behind by previous civilizations,
and the giant explanation was common in many parts of

(03:55):
the New World. To the people of central Mexico the
time of the Spanish contact, giants featured so prominently in
their belief system that they even named their capital city
tenoch Titlan, after a man called Tenoch who belonged to
an entire ancient race of giants called the Quinametzine. In

(04:17):
recent fringe research literature and websites, the Nahwatal word quina
mezzine has been mistranslated to mean the old Ones. A
closer look at the etymology of the word, we find
that Quinametzine almost directly translates to giant people. In the
beginning of the Aztec Fifth Son, or the epic of

(04:40):
time in which we currently live, there were four giants
who held up the sky. Their names were Quao, temoc
iskoitl Ishkokli, and Teneshuchi. The Mishteka people referred to as
the Mixtexts by modern anthropologists and historians, were supposedly fathered

(05:01):
by a member of the Quinametzine, a giant by the
name of Mishtekatal. As briefly mentioned before, giants were often
used by the ancient Mexicans to explain colossal ruins that
had unknown builders. According to the Aztecs, the toll TECs
had helped from giants in building their capital city of Tula.

(05:24):
The ancient Central Mexican city of Teotiwa Khan, with its
large pyramids and broad avenues, had giants as its initial builders. Finally,
the Great Pyramid of Chilula, the largest pyramid in the world,
was said to have been built by Cheloi, a twenty
foot tall member of the Quinametzine tribe. Shelwa was also

(05:47):
credited with founding seven cities in central Mexico in the
times before the coming of the Aztecs. Unlike the Aztecs,
the Maya did not believe that a race of giant
humans exacted before them, but giants were part of the
ancient Maya religious belief system in the form of chacob,
a group of demi gods who would serve the god

(06:10):
Chalk and who would take human form in the shape
of dwarfs or giants. Some researchers cite a Maya belief
in giants as evidenced by larger human figures being depicted
in murals, carvings, and other works of art. Mainstream archaeologists
claimed that these depictions of larger humans speak more to

(06:32):
class and societal position than belief in a race of
actual giants, as there is very little in Maya oral
tradition that would indicate such a belief. As recently as
the sixteen nineties, almost two centuries after the Spanish conquest,
Jesuit missionaries to the remote desert areas of Baja California

(06:54):
were still being told by the local Cochemi people that
the large rock wall art carved so high up in
the cliff surfaces in the rugged mountains of Baja was
done by a race of giants who were tall enough
to paint so high on the wall. Many researchers of
giants point to actual modern post conquest historical references to

(07:17):
races of larger humanoids and claim that the Spanish encountered
the remnants of tribes of giants throughout Mexico, citing writings
from the sixteenth century. One often used reference to giants
comes from a book written by an Italian count called Decades,
which was a history of New Spain commissioned by Charles

(07:38):
the Fifth and published in the fifteen twenties. Here we
have an updated version in English about Conquisto dor Diego
de Ordas in his discovery of what appears to be
the remains of giants. I wish to end this chapter
with a gigantic story, which, like the formidable Atlas, comes

(07:59):
to support my claims. Diego de Ordas, whom I have
before mentioned, knew many hidden places in those lands, especially
in the land of Cacao, where he learned to plant
and grow the tree of money. As I have explained,
on that occasion he found in the vault of a
temple the thigh bone of a giant, worn and nearly

(08:21):
destroyed by age. The Licentiate a Leon, one of the
most learned jurists in Hispaniola, brought this bone to the
city of Victoria a short time after your Holiness left
for Rome. For some days I had that bone in
my home. It measured five palms in length and its

(08:42):
width in proportion. Those who were afterwards sent by Cortes
into the mountains if the South, returned saying that they
had discovered a country inhabited by giants. In proof of
this claim, it is said that they brought back many
ribs of the dead end quote. Another story of the

(09:03):
remains of giants being found in Mexico comes from a
Spanish source from the late sixteenth century, a book titled
The Natural and Moral History of the Indies by Jose
de Acosta. Acosta writes, quote, when I was in Mexico
in the year of our Lord one thousand, five hundred

(09:23):
eighty six, they found one of those giants buried in
one of our farms, which we call Jesus del Monte,
of whom they brought a tooth to be seen, which
without augmenting, was as big as the fist of a man.
And according to this all the rest was proportionate, which
I saw and admired at his deformed greatness. End quote.

(09:49):
The True History of the Conquest of New Spain by Bernardias,
written around fifteen seventy, is one of the most read
books on the topic of the Spanish conquest Mexico and
early colonial life in New Spain. It also has a
passage referring to giants in chapter seventy eight, in which

(10:09):
Conquistodor ernand Cortes is asking local kings about the history
of their kingdoms. Here is an eighteen forty four English
translation of the passage by John Ingram Lockhart. Our friends
told us how and whence they came into this country,
and how they had settled themselves there. How it came that,

(10:32):
notwithstanding their vicinity to the Mexicans, they resembled each other
so little and lived in perpetual warfare with each other.
The tradition was also handed down from their forefathers that
in ancient times there lived here a race of men
and women who were of immense stature, with heavy bones,

(10:53):
and were a very bad and evil disposed people whom
they had for the greater part exterminated by continual war,
and the few that were left gradually died away. In
order to give us a notion of the huge frame
of these people, they dragged forth a bone, or rather
a thigh bone, of one of those giants, which was

(11:15):
very strong and measured the length of a man of
good stature. This bone was still entire from knee to
the hip joint. I measured it by my own person
and found it to be my own length, although I
am a man of considerable height. They showed us many
similar pieces of bones, but they were all worm eaten

(11:37):
and decayed. We, however, did not doubt for an instant
that this country was once inhabited by giants. Cortes observed
that we ought to forward these bones to His Majesty
in Spain by the very first opportunity. Those researchers who
proposed that there were giant humans roaming the earth in

(11:58):
prehistoric times cite these early Spanish accounts of remains as
proof positive of a lost race of gargantuan humanoids. Others
claim that these are stories of stories, and that the
gigantic bones may have most likely been the remains of
large ancient megafauna such as giant sloths and mastodons. In

(12:21):
spite of the stories of giant bones being found by
the Spanish, we have no intact giant human skeletons or
even parts of giant human skeletons from the time period
to study. As with many fringe topics, from Bigfoot to
the Lockness Monster, scientists have a simple question, where are

(12:43):
the remains for them to study? Researchers counter that there
has long been a history of government and academic suppression
of the evidence of giants, beginning with the number one
villain in the Cover Up Story, a villain with long
arms that stretch across border and into Mexico the Smithsonian
Institution established in Washington, d c. In eighteen forty six.

(13:08):
There is, however, one curious account that is pretty well
documented of a Spanish encounter with a living, breathing giant
during the siege of tench Teitlan in the final stages
of the subjugation of the Aztec Empire, when forces commanded
by Pedro de al Dorado arrived in Tlateloco, just north

(13:29):
of the main city of tenoch Tiitlan, in the Aztec
home island in the middle of Lake Teeshcoco. No people
came to fight the Spanish except for a warrior named Silcatzin.
According to eyewitness accounts, Silcotzin stood over ten feet tall
and repelled the Spanish by throwing at them rocks the

(13:51):
size of watermelons. Silcotzin's bravery motivated other men of Tlateloco
to fight. As a consequence, the standoff with the Spanish
lasted several days. In the twelfth book a Franciscan Friar Bernardo,
though they saw goons colonial treatise titled General History of

(14:12):
Things in New Spain, the Friar rites quote the Brigantines
came into the neighborhood called Choco Titlan, and they came ashore.
They jumped ashore in the neighborhood fighting, And when that
Indian captain named Silkatin saw them fighting, he came to
them with other people who followed him, and they fought

(14:33):
them out of that neighborhood and made them return to
the brigs When it comes to the topic of Mexican giants.
While interesting and somewhat romantic, very little evidence exists that
an actual race of giants walked to the deserts, Jungles
and Alteplano of Mexico. The medical condition commonly referred to

(14:56):
as gigantism existed in ancient Mexico, as it does today
throughout the world. As evidenced by the stories of the
warrior Titlcutsine, this condition is rare and only occurs in
less than one percent of the population. A mythical and
or magical race of giants inhabiting ancient Mexico is something

(15:17):
altogether different. While there may be truth to ancient legends,
Mexican giants might be proving to be a bit more
elusive than some researchers want them to be. Thank you
once again for listening to another episode of Mexico Unexplained.
Remember to like and subscribe to us on YouTube and

(15:37):
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We appreciate your kind attention. Once again, until next time,

(15:59):
Thank you, Thank.

Speaker 1 (16:02):
You for listening to another episode of Mexico Unexplained with
host Robert Bitto. For show summary, relevant links, and commentary,
please check out our website at Mexicoanexplained dot com, Like
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