People have shared stories about giants for thousands of years, from the Cyclops of Greek mythology to the biblical Goliath. But are these just tall tales, or have giant men really walked this Earth?
If you consider a nearly 9-foot-tall man a giant, then yes. Robert Wadlow, the tallest person on record, grew to 8 feet, 11 inches (2.72 meters) before he died at age 22 in 1940, according to Guinness World Records.
Wadlow was way above the current Average height of men in the US about 5 feet, 9 inches (1.75 m) and even taller than some renderings of biblical descriptions of Goliath. However, there was nothing magical about Wadlow. As with most real-life giants, his stature resulted from a medical condition.
“Most of [giant] patients have a growth hormone problem. Marta Korbonits, a professor of endocrinology at Queen Mary University of London, told Live Science. “That’s what Robert Wadlow had.”
Korbonits noted that the main cause of gigantism is elevated levels of a growth hormone produced by the pituitary gland in the brain. In most cases, these high levels are caused by a benign tumor. One reason why we are unlikely to see a person as tall as Wadlow again is that doctors can now remove the tumor and use medications to stop growth, as gigantism and tumor endanger a person’s health.
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Other conditions can cause people to be unusually tall. These include Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder that causes bones to grow longer, Korbonits explained.
However, some people grow at extreme altitudes without a known medical condition; they include he was the tallest man in the world, Bao Xishun, who stands 7 feet, 9 inches (2.36 m)—a giant without being gigantic. They probably have a number of genetic variants that predispose them to tall stature, Korbonits said.
While it’s easier for researchers to study giants living in modern times, extremely tall people have likely always been around. of The oldest known case of gigantism comes from the supposed remains of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, who was about 6 feet, 1.6 inches (1.87 m), while Korbonits’ explorative has found that many in real life The Irish Giants inherited a gene mutation from a person who lived 2,500 years ago.
“For as long as humanity has been around, we’ve had these diseases, so there’s no reason you wouldn’t have had these giants in Ancient Egypt or any other time in human history,” Korbonits said.
Genetics combine with environmental factors, such as diet early in life, for it determine the height, with the population often increasing over time as civilization progressed. However, it is not always a linear trend.
Pavel Grasgrubera researcher at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic, told Live Science that some male skeletons from the late phase of the Gravetian mammoth-hunting culture, about 29,000 years ago, are notable for their extraordinary height and even helped inspire myths about giants. The tallest of these seven skeletons, excavated in the Grimaldi cave system in Italy around the turn of the 20th century, is evaluated to have stood 6 feet, 5 inches (1.96 m).
“Consider that at the time these skeletons were found, the standard for male height in Europe was under 170 cm. [5 feet, 7 inches]”, Grasgruber said in an email. “No wonder these people must have looked like ‘giants’ to the scientists of the time.”
Researchers do not know if the long remains were representative of the Gravetian population. However, Grasgruber noted that tall men were typical of early Upper Paleolithic populations in France and the historic region of Moravia (present-day Czech Republic), reaching heights that modern industrial nations did not reach until the mid-19th century. 20th.
“The reason for this good physical condition of the early Upper Paleolithic hunters was the low population density and the large amount of prey in the form of mammoths and other large mammals,” said Grasgruber.