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Ancient Giants
in Australia
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| Rex Gilroy, onetime director of the Mount York Natural History
Museum at Mount Victoria, Australia discovered gigantic fossil
footprints in Australia's outback and began excavations in that area.
Over the years he has gathered sufficient evidence to indicate that a
race of giants once dwelled there. "The implications are," he
wrote in an article detailing his archaeological finds, "that men of 12
to 20 feet in height once roamed this continent."
[1] The Giants he has been researching are probably close relatives of, or in actuality are a hominid race that other scientists are exploring and have labeled Meganthropus. It has been theorized by some that Meganthropus and their close relatives Homo Erectus are not Hominids [Human] at all, because they made no tools. However , possibly linked to Meganthropus and Gigantopithecus "Stone artifacts -- clubs, pounders, axes, chisels, knives etc -- all of gigantic weight, lie scattered over large areas. They weigh from 8 to 25 lbs, implements such as these, only men of tremendous proportions could possibly have made and used." [2] |
 
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3 huge footprints preserved by volcanic lava and ash flows which "occurred millions of years" before man is supposed to have appeared in Australia were discovered south of Penrith, Australia. These prints measured 2' long and 7 " across the toes, were 6 ft. apart, which would indicate the stride of a 12 ft. giant . In Queensland, Australia a farmer plowing his field turned up the large fragment of the back portion of a jaw. It is estimated that the owner of the tooth would have stood at about 10 feet tall. Archeological digs at several sites in Australia have unearthed numerous Stone artifacts / tools which have been attributed to ancient Humans /Hominids of Gigantic stature. |
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| A large jaw fragment was first
found in 1941. Ralph von Koenigswald, the discoverer was captured in World War II by Japanese
forces, but he did manage to send a cast of the jaw to
Franz Weidenreich
who described and named the specimen , and was amazed by its size, it
was the largest hominid jaw ever found at that time. Weidenreich
never made a size estimate of the hominid it came from, but said it was
2/3 the size of Gigantopithecus, which was twice as large as a gorilla,
which would make it somewhere around 8 feet (2.44 meters) tall. Another jaw fragment described in 1953 was around the same size as Von Koenigswalds , but it was severely damaged. Recent work by a Japanese/Indonesian team repaired the fossil, which was an adult, and showed it to be smaller than known specimens of Homo erectus. Curiously, the specimen did retain several traits unique to the first mandibular In 1993 a Meganthropus mandible and ramus were acquired by Sartono , and have been dated to between 1.4 and 0.9 million years ago. Although vital details of the teeth have been lost. It is slightly smaller than other Meganthropus specimens but is very similar in shape. [3] |
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Gigantopithecus , a hairy, quadrupedal, ape.1 It is estimated Gigantopithecus would have been9 to 12 ft tall on its hind legs, and weighed up to 1200 pounds
Meganthropus and Gigantopithecus
A race of pre-historic hominids has been labeled "meganthropus" by anthropologists. These relatives of man were hypothetically between 7 and 12 feet tall.
It was once theorized that Meganthropus was a descendant of Gigantopithecus, and gave rise to Pithecanthropus, and then modern Asians. This hypothesis, part of the multi-regional theory of human evolution, has been largely discarded.
Some scholars have speculated that the the fossil finds of Meganthropus are merely the males of Homo erectus, the alleged large size and robusticity being only due to an earlier assumption that the females were males . The majority of scientists however, believe that Meganthropus is a relative of Homo erectus, and that while it is related to Homo erectus, it represents an entirely distinct species.
There have been similar finds of Meganthropus as well as Gigantopithicus , in China, India, Africa and South-East Asia, indicating these creatures existed over a considerably wide geography.
- TRUE GIANTS: Is Gigantopithecus Still Alive?
- Other Origins: The Search for the Giant Ape in Human Prehistory
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"Aboriginal folklore is full of traditions about giant men and women who lived far back in the 'Dreamtime'. According to the former tribes of the Taree district of N.S.W [Austrailia], the giant men and women were so big, that, if they were to enter an aborigine's humpy they would have to crawl in. The Tjangara of western Australian tribal folklore is an enormous 10 ft. tall hairy man-like beast who wanders the hinterland armed with a big stone club, killing and eating anyone he chances to meet. Is the Tjangara a race-memory of the Meganthropus? " [2] The Tjangara as per Aboriginal myth dwell in the bowels of the earth and occasionally emerge to walk the land. The Aborigines of the vast Aussie outback maintain the Tjangara inhabit Caves and that the humungous stone tools found scattered across the landscape were left by them.
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| Another legendary race of Giants
inhabiting Aboriginal folklore are the Narragun. .Gigantic fossil
tracks said by Aborigines to have been left by the Narragun giants were
found near Mount Gambier, South Australia, they were found in volcanic
deposits which are believed to be up to one million years old.
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[1] Roy Norvil Giants: The vanished race of mighty men
[2] Rex Gilroy And There Were Giants
[3] G. Krantz, S. Sartono, and D. Tyler. A New Meganthropus Mandible from Java. Human Evolution,-1995 Supplements of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
[4] Franz Weidenreich. Apes, Giants and Man.
