A giant conspiracy?

 

Have conspiracy theory finally come of age? This is an interesting video in which a moderately alternative guy, William Brown, interviews Gregory Little, who seems to be an associate of Andrew Collins, a Graham Hancock-type character. What makes the interview somewhat intriguing is that Little, who is presumably very "fringe", actually comes across as pretty reasonable! 

In conspiracist circles, there has long been an idea that the Smithsonian Institute discovered and then covered up giant skeletons found in North America during the 19th century. Brown and Little believe that this is true, but with a few twists. The relevant skeletons were between seven and eigth feet tall - not literal giants, but extremely large anyhow. About 30 such skeletons were found, something Little believes is virtually impossible by chance alone. We must be talking about an actual population of really tall people. The Smithsonian *did* cover them up, probably due to racism. The idea of American Indians having an advanced "mound-builder" civilization was anathema. Little emphasizes that the "giants" would have been colored or brown-skinned, not White. He speculates that they may have formed a kind of elite caste within Native society. Brown mentions Native legends about cannibal giants overthrown by the common people. It *is* interesting how the previously bleached Mound Builders (think Book of Mormon!) have been recast as evil POC overlords overthrown by...good POC commoners. 

Somewhere here, Little goes off track and starts speculating rather badly, making a tie-in to the Denisovans, a vanished human species remains of which was recently discovered in a Siberian cave. Very little is known of the Denisovans, but there is essentially zero evidence that they were giants. Rather, they seem to have been similar to Neanderthals. Not the kind of guys you would want to mess with, for sure, but still a far cry from the Nephilim-like skeletons found in American mounds from a much later time period. What is true is that Homo sapiens interbred with Denisovans, but there is currently no evidence that this happened in North America. Indeed, the cave in Siberia may have been a distant Denisovan colony, the species having its main range in southeast Asia. Denisovan genes among American Indians were probably the result of earlier interbreeding in Asia.  

That being said, I do think this little clip raises some interesting question. Next week, INCREDIBLE HISTORY promises to have a look at the Little People!